Popular student youth radio station SYN FM may have to close, threatening student’s ability to get experience and the diversity of the Melbourne radio landscape.
The Threat
SYN FM is one of 37 community radio stations threatened due to a short fall in the Federal Budget that may force the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia to switch off the digital signal in two mainland capital cities.
The CBAA’s Digital Radio Project has launched the Commit to Community Radio campaign, which involves an online petition with currently over 35 thousand signatures, to try and get the short fall covered in this year’s budget.
Alex White, 36, Operations Coordinator for the Digital Radio Project says “Community stations aren’t in a position to cover the cost of transmission themselves.”
“This kind of small foothold that we have to the digital platform, if we lose that, then we…run the risk of not being included in the next rollout of digital in the capital cities.”
Radio has changed and the cost is threatening the survival of community broadcasting. Sourced from Flickr Commons.
SYN FM fights to stay on the air
SYN FM has been heavily campaigning along side the CBAA’s Commit to Community Radio Campaign to garner support from Melbourne listeners. On the Day of Action, held on the 13th of March 2013, SYN had 24 hours of continuous programming where broadcasters regularly plugged the cause.
SYN volunteers have made videos pledging their support for community radio, or written personal testimonies.
Kit Harvey, 22, broadcaster on SYN FM says the $1.4 million needed per year is “a drop in the ocean” where the entire federal budget is concerned.
He says the importance of community radio lies in the uncovering of new music, the diversity of voices heard on community radio and its education of future broadcasters; Hamish Blake, Andy Lee and John Safran all started on SYN FM.
Mr Harvey says “Community radio is just all about offering the Australian media consumer access to…a variety of different voices that may not otherwise necessarily get heard.”
The Melbourne Radio Landscape without SYN FM
SYN FM has roughly 80,000 listeners per week. Mr White describes it as “unique,” being one of the few stations where all volunteers are between the ages of 12 and 24.
Mr White says “SYN is more than just a radio station,” with online and screen based mediums, and a heavy focus on training new broadcasters.
Communications student and radio listener Erin Bailey, 20, says if SYN were not on air anymore, she would miss the “niche shows” that explore ideas that “I’d never even heard of or thought about or understood before.”
Do you want to commit to community radio?
Visit committocommunityradio.org.au and join the online petition.
Watch: SYN FM volunteers pledging their commitment to community radio
Still images sourced from Flickr Commons
