Perth’s Radio Revolution

The university takes the axe to 6UVS

Fellow Perth public radio station, 6 New Radio (6NR), was more like an access radio station. Programming included educational programmes from West Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), ethnic broadcasting, radio for the print handicapped, Aboriginal, Christian evangelism, children's stories and local issues.

Each interest group was responsible for organising members and airtime. Management believed it was more appropriate for those decisions to be made through democratic representation of the interests of each group.

But rather than provide producers for broadcasters, as the ABC had done with access radio station 3ZZ, 6NR provided training and encouraged a range of broadcasting styles.

Pieta O'Shaughnessy, the station’s first production assistant and deputy to station manager, Duncan Graham, says there were some fiery conflicts due to shared and acrimonious history.

She recalls, “having a shower in my bathroom down in Fremantle and luckily throwing a dressing down on before walking out the door, which is not always my want. [I found] thirty people sitting around my kitchen table that my daughter had let in.”

“There were the Macedonians,” O'Shaughnessy explains, “the Belarusians and the Yugoslavs. You could imagine there was quite a lot of conflict inherent in those groups. So I sort of staggered out, just about died of shock. Then my daughter said, ‘there’s another thirty people on the road Mummy, waiting to talk to you when these people have gone’. There was an internal conflict of some kind.”

Management did intervene at that point, but O'Shaughnessy believes it was very unreasonable to expect groups to come to Australia and forget what could be hundreds of years of history. “You had to accept there would be these long-standing grievances.”

Two other access groups produced some interesting programming.

A social worker approached the station to broadcast material for the ‘forgotten generation’. Namely, listeners over fifty who had no opportunity to hear music played during their youth.

“Even the ABC had moved away from its Don Juan and the big traditional memories type programs of the past,” O'Shaughnessy explains. “The British comedies were off. So those older people were feeling very disenfranchised because everyone was 16 to 25 or, at the very most, 35. And they felt that they’d been eliminated from the world, in a sense.”

The Old Time Radio & Glee Club program started on 6NR to cater for that audience and continued on air for many years.

Alongside the retirees, prisoners from Karnet prison on the verge of release also produced programming on the station. A warden would transport them back and forth each week for a request program called Inside Out.

O'Shaughnessy says the, “regular visits were quite good because they then interacted with our volunteers. This was a very good kind of preliminary to coming back into the outside world.”

But, on one occasion, the Superintendent was far from impressed. “I remember getting a call,” she recalls, “who said very gloomily to me that one of the prisoners had escaped on the way back from doing the program. He said this was a very serious thing.”

“I was searching my mind for something reassuring to say and I said, ‘well think about the program ethic. He did wait until the program had been produced before he flew the coup, which wasn’t received with great mirth on the other end [of the phone]. But, I thought it was quite an important point. “


The Dawkin’s Regime



The so-called Dawkins regime had a significant impact on the higher education sector, which subsequently affected university based radio stations.

In 1987, John Dawkins became Minister for Employment Education and Training in the Hawke Labor Government. As the youngest member of Cabinet at 36 when the government first came to power in 1983, he was keen to make his mark.

Dawkins had already undertaken public service reform as Minister for Finance. Following a change in portfolio, restructure of the education sector was next on his list.

Reform included fee deregulation and the Higher Education Contribution scheme began. Under the banner of economic rationalism, universities were forced to amalgamate and focus on their core business.

“For a university like the University of Western Australia,” Tonks explains, “owning a radio station was a great thing to do but it wasn’t core business. It’s not training, it’s not research, it’s not getting students out into the community.”

“A radio station was considered something on the side. Because unlike Murdoch University, no one was teaching communication studies or radio at UWA. So the station was unlike 6NR or 2SER, which were immersed into the educational process itself.”

Stations across the country struggled to prove their value to university management.

2NCR-FM, for example, was relatively fortunate. In 1988, the former Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education (CAE), the Armidale CAE and the University of New England undertook steps to merge.

A campus expansion included a multimillion-dollar performing arts complex with new studios for the radio station, which was seen to complement the university’s media activities. In 1994, those merged organisations became Southern Cross University.

But in March 1999, the university announced they would no longer fund the station. After 24 years of university involvement, the station’s members had just over two months to organise themselves to take over programming and day to day management of 2NCR.

At Perth’s 6UVS, the management of UWS considered their options. The relatively new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Robert Smith, decided to end their contribution of just over $200 000 from 1989.

Tonks, who became station manager in 1985, organised a ten-day lobbying campaign.

“The joy of having a volunteer base is you’ve got literally hundreds of people, who’ve got contacts back into the community, in terms of their friends, relatives and loved ones, plus their own time and energy to commit,” she says.

Faced with such immense and unexpected community response, the University Council rejected the decision and UWA decided to reinstate the funding.

Once the Council had rejected the Vice-Chancellor’s recommendation to withdraw funding, it was back to business to usual.

But the same university tried it again two years later.

“This time they had learned their lesson,” says Tonks. “Instead of informing the board or station management that this was going to happen, they simply sent security guards to take over the station and turn off the transmitter.”

The uneasy relationship between the radio station and university management, however, had a longer history.

Pieta O’Shaughnessy became station manager of 6UVS in 1981 after a period as production assistant at 6NR Curtin Radio. She was informed that the university would hand back their licence if changes were not made to reflect university activities, particularly in the area of spoken word.

O’Shaughnessy undertook a number of changes to appease the university. She left 6UVS in 1984 and after a short break, returned to 6NR as program co-ordinator.


A Case of Déjà Vu



Despite winning the first battle, 6UVS again faced an uncertain future in 1990 when the University of Western Australia took the station off the air.

A group of volunteers immediately joined together after the station’s closure and established Arts Radio Broadcasters. They made a submission to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal to restore the service.

In June 1991, after a long campaign to maintain interest and involvement in the station, 6RTR was born. The station became a completely self-funded organisation, which was free to explore their new focus on arts based programming.

Over at 6NR, it was a case of déjà vu in 2002.

Curtin University threatened to hand back their licence, threatening the future of 6NR. But at the last minute, they changed their minds.

“The turn about was created by the dedication of the university’s Executive General Manager,” says O’Shaughnessy, who was acting station manager at the time. “He was in fact the one who recommended that the university would hand its licence back. A number of different factors influenced him to approach the university and turn that decision around.”

This included the emergence of a large access user called Retirees Western Australia and the Totaliser Agency Board (TAB) was keen to licence their AM antenna when they moved to FM.

“Between them,” O’Shaughnessy says,” they provided a revenue stream that matched with our own cost cutting exercises. [That] then offered a chance for the radio station to continue.” She says the programming also fitted with their older demographic.

But some in the community radio sector questioned the station’s focus.

Then CBAA president, David Melzer, wrote at the time, “the decision to surrender the licence came three years after the university changed the station into one that was little different to a commercial radio operation.”

“In the words of the University, the station had ‘lost touch with the community’. This did not occur overnight. 6NR had been ‘losing touch’ with ‘the community’ over a number of years.”

Despite that, many communities who first began on 6NR have since established their own specialist radio stations. These include ethnic station 6EBA, Sonshine FM broadcasts to the Christian community, 6RPH has a brief to serve the print handicapped and indigenous station 6AR has also developed.

For O’Shaughnessy, the experience of educational radio in Perth reflects the challenges of operating within a university.

“The difficulty inherent in all of this, for both stations,” she explains, “both who have come very close to being cut at different times, is that the two stations were launched at the campus by enthusiasts who really took the responsibility for the station. They were dedicated and amazing people. But, in a sense, they did not establish the groundwork or structure.”

“6UVS-FM was a little different because they had a bed in the music department. But neither established the structure to have the universities own the station as part of their core business.”