How We Turned 2BLU Around
Author: Ken Quinnell | Source: BLU FM 89.1 | Date: 19-01-06
BLU FM secretary Narelle Pfeiffer with the Tony Staley Award the station won in 2004
This story was contributed to CBOnline by Ken Quinnell of Blu FM, Blue Mountains, NSW as part of the Toot Your Own Horn initiative
BLU FM serves the upper and mid Blue Mountains, two hours from the Sydney CBD. We were licenced in 1993 and broadcast to an area with a population of about 20,000 all of whom can receive dozens of Sydney stations – community, national, commercial. The area is a major tourist destination and tourism is our only significant employer although we are close enough to Sydney for commuters.
At the start of 2003 BLU FM was a mess. Internal disputes, incompetent management and an overall deterioration of our on-air sound had made the station all but irrelevant. At best it was a clubhouse for a handful of members. At worst, it had such a history of failure that virtually nothing to improve the situation was even attempted. I won’t go into details, other than to say that the perception of our local community was that we’d be better off without a community radio station than to be burdened with BLU FM any longer.
Turning this situation around, rebuilding member’s morale, attracting listeners and reaching out to become a vital and valued part of the community was a tall order. I became president following the sudden resignation of the previous president after less than three months in office. Since the position was seen as a poison chalice, I was elected unopposed. But, I had a good team supporting me.
Musicians from the group Bother recording in the studios of BLU FM 89.1 Blue Mountains
Our first step was to make an assessment of every facet of the station’s operations. It was a sobering experience. First, it was clear that our whole technical infrastructure needed serious attention from our dilapidated CD players to our poorly performing transmitter. We were clinging to the airwave by our fingertips.
It was clear that we needed to make improvements equally across the board. So, we developed a station plan. Ten members responded to the invitation to participate in the planning. The process itself highlighted some of the problems. Narrow vision, small thinking, and our poor self esteem as an organization. Clearly this had to be tackled first.
We decided to re-launch the station. The intention was to mark the starting point of the new BLU FM. We threw a big party at a popular venue with local musicians performing. More than one hundred attended and the mayor did the official launch. There was a palpable sense of renewal amongst us. The improvement in morale was immediate and the event attracted a great deal of positive publicity. A new logo and on-air IDs underscored our new image.
The follow up was a festival day at the Edge Giant Screen Cinema. The cinema has an enormous foyer and dozens of local organizations from community, environmental and welfare groups to council, SES and the Rural Fire Service had information stands. We premiered a short environment film and many musicians performed on the stage in the foyer. It was all free and attendances were better than expected. Schools came in large groups. There was a street parade that culminated at the cinema. The official guests included local MPs and others with environmental credentials. We did an outside broadcast using some of our youth presenters. The ensuing publicity was tremendous.
However, the negativity and lack of pride persisted amongst some members. I came to the studio one day to find a group of people engaged in some minor building work. Great, I thought, until I realised they were doing a very shoddy job. I queried this and they were astonished. “It’s just a community radio station,” they said. Clearly we still had a long way to go. One of the problems was that successive management committee’s had actively discouraged members from participating – especially in fundraising. We had to get out of the way, support the people who were prepared to give it a go and hope for the best. And the best is what we got.
For some time the prevailing philosophy at BLU FM had been to replace equipment only if there was a grant to pay for it. It seemed to me that this lack of even the most basic attempt at self-reliance was a contributing factor to poor morale. It also meant that frequently we had equipment in service that was simply not doing the job. We needed to stir up some enthusiasm for fundraising. Fundraising, if it was done at all, was approached as a chore and often as if it was a punishment. Worse, it was always directed towards our own members rather than spreading the cost of running the station to the larger community. The idea that fundraising could be enjoyable was scoffed at in disbelief.
Under the guidance of a proactive program coordinator, the program had been organize so that equal consideration was given to listener needs as to presenter’s convenience. The number of presenters increased quickly from about 40 to more than 60. Many of these new presenters had a commitment, energy and positive vision that older member lacked. I looked to them for support. Several of them had a strong interest in Australian music and local music in particular.
The Blue Mountains is an area with a rich, diverse and thriving music culture. We have numerous professional musicians and many hundreds of musicians who play for enjoyment. They are from across the board, classical to hip hop, touching every genre. But, our links to this section of the community were tenuous. When local musicians released a new CD we had to beg a copy for airplay! The idea gradually formed that support for local music could be a good initial point of contact with the community. After all, radio and music go hand in hand. And it was an opportunity for fundraising that would be fun – certainly an alternative to yet more raffles, garage sales and trivia nights. Indeed, whenever we wrote the word we gave it emphasis – FUNdraising.
We approached local music venues. Two of them responded with enthusiasm. First up was an all day music event at a hotel, which we called the Blue Mountains Music Expo. It was well attended throughout the day and packed out by the evening. The musicians performed for us for free. The door charge was kept to a minimum and we made a tidy sum – and, yes, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Even more successful were several Afro-Cuban DJ nights at a local nightclub, one of which remains our most financially successful ever fundraisers.
However, for this kind of fundraising to be successful, we needed strong publicity beyond our own on-air promotion. We approached the editor of our local newspaper, the Blue Mountains Gazette, whom previous management committees had managed to get off side. He assured us he was pleased to see us on track to becoming a part of the community and we could count on his support. Consequently we have received extensive coverage of our activities in this newspaper.
Amongst our young presenters were a number of would-be graphic designers who could turn out attractive and effective posters. A printer offered us colour photocopying at cost. We have been able to maintain a constant poster presence for the station ever since.
One of our young members designed and built a new Website (www.blufm.org.au). In addition to our program guide and current station news, this carries our gig guide and reviews of local CD releases. The number of visits to the site is now in excess of 35,000 a year. We developed a local music program, Mountain of Music, and this had its own Website, which became important on the local music scene (although it has recently been absorbed into the BLU FM Website). The presenters of this program also ran a local demo comp, which attracted an unexpectedly large number of entries and put us in touch with more and more local musicians.
It was surprising how quickly this first stage of our bounce-back occurred. There was a dramatic increase in listener feedback. There was clearly a significant section of the community just waiting for us to get our act together.
For years our station had not had a printed program guide for distribution in the community. The excuse was that it was too costly. To cover the cost, we sold advertisements on the program guide to our presenters to publicise their programs. Enough presenters took up the offer for us to print program guides on an ongoing basis.
Emergencies such as bushfires played an important role in putting us on the map. Previously in emergencies the station went to the satellite service. We enlisted a group of presenters to train in handling emergency information for broadcast at a training day run at the emergency services centre. Now, during an emergency, the community tunes to us for information. Following our coverage of these emergencies we receive many donation from grateful listeners.
In the meantime, we had replaced much of our seriously failing equipment but a lot more was needed. Our transmission signal was poor and a constant source of complaint amongst both presenters and listeners. An assessment of our transmission equipment revealed a depressing situation – from our CD players to our transmitter, virtually everything needed replacing, including most of the cabling. We needed more than just intermittent fundraising.
We had digital Codecs that, for reasons no one understood, had not been used. We found that we could get a signal to the studio that was more than good enough to broadcast music. So, we began doing live outside broadcasts. At first we did local bands but, to our surprise, touring bands would contact us and ask us to broadcast them live. We established a program called Friday Night Live and broadcast people like Cotton, Keyes and Morris, Bunt, iota, Mousemoon, Dave Graney, Louis Tillett, Women in Docs, Problem Pony, Toe Sucking Cowgirls, Pubert Brown-Fridge Experience, Down Under Beat Crew, and Chris Wilson to name just a few. One venue manager offered to pay us a fee for exclusive access these broadcasts and this brought in much needed funds. The Codecs had been purchased with community grant funding so in addition to broadcasting music, we began regular OBs from fetes, festivals, markets and community and cultural events of various sorts.
Following a second Music Expo, we discussed mounting events of our own on a weekly basis with the hotel venue. Our suggestion was a Battle of the Bands run as a competition over several weeks. To our surprise 24 local bands registered and it became a major event. The trick was to have free admission and judging by audience response. This way the bands bring their own cheer squads. We had four bands in each heat, plus semi-finals and a grand final. With four bands bringing 20 to 30 fans along to barrack for them, plus those who came out of interest, we packed the venue on Wednesday night for nine weeks – something that was previously unheard of. Indeed, on the night of the final we had more than 300 at the venue. Income for us came from a registration fee for the bands, a weekly raffle (we raffled CDs and airtime for the winner to play their own music, which proved extremely popular) and a donation from the venue.
We used the same formulae for two successful Singer-Songwriter Challenges, a Roots and Rhythms Championship, four Unveiled series of gigs that gave opportunities to youth and schoolie bands and an acoustic music competition called Ún Plúgd. All were run-away successes and together attracted more publicity in a year than we had in the previous ten. We produced a compilation CD called Local and Live! which sold enough copies at the two launches we held for us to produce another one.
Another initiative in this area was to organize Blue Mountains Music Week. We arranged for our council to declare a week in November as Music Week and than invited local venues to participate. One organized a three-day jazz festival, another a band day with a barbecue while another booked local music at lunchtime as well as in the evenings. Many local music societies and clubs also participated. Ten venues put up their hands and next year we hope to more than double this number. In 2006 we are also planning workshops and more performances in local parks and town squares across the mountains.
The most successful event during Music Week was the inaugural Blue Mountains Music Awards. We had 122 submissions across 12 categories and the awards presentation dinner was an exceptional night that was booked out weeks in advance and received outstanding media coverage.
An unexpected plus emerged as a result of this support for local music. The mayor, we discovered, had played in a band in his youth. Several councillors have children who are budding young musicians. We also attracted sponsors as a result of our encouragement of the music scene – not just music-related businesses, either, but many that simply appreciated our initiative and wanted to lend support. Seems like everyone in the mountains is a musician or knows a musician! Local music stores supported us with prizes – gift vouchers, musical instruments, etc – and, most popular of all, local recording studios donated recording time.
As our community outreach expanded, festival directors, event organizers and venues looking for musicians began to contact us. We have established an email list of more than 300 local musicians and send them updates several times a year. Being a major tourist destination, we have more opportunities than many other areas with a similar population. The largest of our dozen local festivals, Winter Magic (30,000 attend this street festival), invited us into a partnership to organize the music, which we mounted as a local showcase.
We upgraded our Demo Comp into a national competition, which greatly increased the number of entries. We are negotiating a record and release package with a record label as the main prize for 2006. We run an acoustic jam night in a local venue and participate as sponsors of other local music events. And, it has spread beyond just music. What began as a local music consultation with Winter Magic has grown. We now organize all the entertainment – circuses, acrobats, magicians, ventriloquists, clowns, you name it – running five stages simultaneously as well as the grand parade! We also ran a successful children’s talent quest and a speed chess competition. A partnership between Winter Magic, BLU FM and several other community groups is setting up the Katoomba Amusement Company (the name has historical connotations) which will provide entertainment at local events – jugglers, acrobats, a youth circus, exotic dancers, a women’s circus, community drummers, Street theatre, skaters and much more.
Our most recent venture is the Electronic Music Competition, which is aimed at those who create music on their home computers. The main prize is a day of mixing at local recording studio Stuart Sound Heaven (where Hermitude mixed Tales of the Drift).
An important area of growth has been in internal communication. Meetings are open to anyone who wishes to attend. We established a weekly e-mail newsletter to keep members up to date. This has proved just as popular with organizations in our community and other radio stations as with our members. You can view these on our Website www.blufm.org.au under ‘latest news’.
Once we were up and running, we found people approached us rather than the other way around. Enquiries about sponsorship come in regularly. Community organizations, schools and community markets ask us to do OBs and expected to pay us for the privilege. This was a far cry from our initial experience where we had to beg to be allowed to broadcast. The best of all is that people come to us regularly with new program proposals.
Weatherboard Theatre Company performing radio drama in studio of BLU FM 89.1 Blue Mountains
We were approached by a local printer who was interested in publishing a monthly arts and entertainment magazine. He undertook to sell the advertising, print and distribute the publication. We provide the editorial content and publicity. Of course, it includes our program guide.
Proposals for involvement in community partnerships arrive regularly at our office. We recently played a significant role in the ArtStart Youth Arts and Skills Festival. A local professional theatrical group, the Weatherboard Theatre Company became a partner in running a radio play competition. In association with Mid-Mountains Rotary we are participating in a raffle with a new car as first prize, something we could now do alone. We are constantly looking at value adding in other areas of our operations.
The comedian George Burns said, “I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.” Yes, we had a few failures along the way. The hardest part of failing for the organizers, we discovered, was the attitude of some other members (invariably those who do very little themselves) who insisted on making an issue of it. They seemed to think that someone should be punished for organizing an event that didn’t meet its projected income. We handled these members by inviting them to participate in fundraising. Of course, they declined. A few have learned to be more supportive of the station and their fellow presenters.
It has taken us two years of concerted effort to bring the station up to a satisfactory standard. The recent transmission grants from the Community Broadcasting Foundation could not have come at a better time for us. Our main transmitter failed just a week before they were announced (we were limping along on a low power standby unit). We have now replaced everything from CD players and microphones, through studio console and cabling to audio processor, STL and transmitter. Next in line is an antenna upgrade. The result of this work is a stronger, clearer signal and a better reach into what is a very difficult terrain for broadcasting. And, of course, more listeners.