Adelaide community radio station Fresh 92.7 has launched a fundraising campaign to save the station from ‘crashing’.
“Our technology needs a serious update, and we need your help.“
Fresh 92.7 has been serving Adelaide’s youth and electronic music communities for almost 20 years and as the station and business grows they are looking towards the future and restructuring the entire technological framework.
“It’s outdated, it’s tired, and there’s not enough of it to go around.
“As you can imagine, running a radio station involves some pretty complex technological setups – from our on-air studios through to our volunteer workstations. We have up-and-coming announcers, producers, journalists, sound engineers, designers and more who all need a solid IT setup to do great work, develop skills and create content both for the station and to further their careers.”
So where’s the money going?
IT Restructure: “We want to simplify and stabilise our servers, systems & hardware, which will enable us to save money on things like electricity. Fun fact – Fresh 92.7 has the same number of servers asthe Royal Adelaide Hospital. That’s way too many for a community radio station. The whole situation needs an overhaul – it’s messy, and it’s sending our power bills through the roof.”
Training People: “We need money for more software licenses so that our young journalists, audio engineers and other volunteers have the resources they need to create in our studios and provide you with the best possible service. Right now, we have a lot of eager and passionate volunteers and there’s just not enough to go around. So we’re forced to ask our Wavelength reporters and Production interns to edit audio on their own computers.”
Production Course: “We want to purchase hardware and software to bring our Production Course in-house. For the last few years, we’ve been teaching emerging artists how to put together their own electronic music tracks, using the facilities of the School of Audio Engineering. SAE have been really generous providing us with their facilities for free but it means that Fresh 92.7 Production Course students don’t get the full Fresh experience – a pathway that provides the opportunity to go behind the scenes of the station, meet the decision makers and build relationships that will help them get their music played on the radio and receive the on-going support they need in their formative years to succeed.”
On top of a desired upgrade here’s a few of the yearly costs the station says they have to cop:
· $130,000 for the licensing needed just to play the music
· $86,000 for our current IT support, internet and phone systems
· $65,000 to rent the building our studios are in
· $53,000 for power
· $53,000 on bookkeeping, auditing and insurance
Hold the phone....
"$130,000 for the licensing needed just to play the music"
Lets be clear here, APRA AMCOS and PPCA have cheap and simple charging model for community stations (all public information on their respective websites), to owe them $130K would mean they have a gross income already of about, or just over, 2.5 million dollars.
....and as for some of the other dollar amounts for services, they are doing something very wrong. 86K for IT? ... seriously? the only acceptable and fair cost there is the stations rent.