Oppression Breeds Creativity
Author: Craig Liddell | Source: 2SER-FM | Date: 09-11-03
4ZZZ banana logo
As the fine music aficionados pushed for the introduction of Frequency Modulation (FM) during the 1960s and 1970s, many students became increasingly radical through a series of protests that began during the Vietnam War. The two movements shared a common goal in wanting an alternative on the airwaves even though they operated at opposite ends of the spectrum..
They were standing shoulder to shoulder in the Student’s Union building at the University of Queensland. Students, activists, and communist tradesmen were passing bricks along a human chain. The day that 4ZZZ got their licence, they were ready to start building.
Such was their enthusiasm that volunteers demolished the top floor before realising the building could not take the weight of the construction. They abandoned the wreckage and settled on the bare concrete basement as home for the radio station.
But the origins of Brisbane’s first new radio station in over thirty years began much earlier than 1975 when they began broadcasting with The Who’s 1960s classic, Won’t Get Fooled Again.
“We’ll be fighting in the streets,” sang lead singer, Roger Daltry, just as many of those involved in the establishment of 4ZZZ had done on the streets of Brisbane. Several students had become radicalised through a series of protests that began in the 1960s.
“There had been a whole series of youth actions,” says former University of Queensland student, Alan Knight. “Firstly, there were protests against the Vietnam War. But when all the people who took part were arrested, civil liberties and the right to demonstrate became an issue.”
Further south, students at two Melbourne universities had experienced the same
restrictions when they staged anti-Vietnam War protests. Hamstrung by similar limits on civil liberties as their Brisbane counterparts, they established two pirate radio stations, which were largely a token gesture of opposition to the war and could only be heard through part of the city.
Reclaiming the Airwaves
4ZZZ crew (Jim Beatson pictured front row left)
Out of those movements grew two quite different community radio stations despite a common background. Melbourne’s 3CR was based on a federation of community groups from the centre and the left. Brisbane’s 4ZZZ established a non-commercial, conventional rock station with alternative information.
Student groups in Brisbane also considered a pirate radio station that was similar to Radio Draft Resister and People’s Radio in Melbourne when protests peaked during a tour by the Springbok Rugby Union team in 1971.
Operating under the ultra-conservative Joh Bjelke-Petersen National Party Government, crackdowns and police arrests were the order of the day in Brisbane from the 1960s.
Both street protests and the distribution of information were made illegal, which sparked further demonstrations and arrests.
But the Springbok protest was different. The Premier declared a State of Emergency, suspended civil liberties, ringed the rugby field with barbed wire and called in hundreds of country police in their khaki uniforms.
In response, staff and students of The University of Queensland staged a strike. Students occupied the Union building where a printing press was established to run hundred of leaflets on a daily basis.
This “led people to rethink the way communications was being organised,” says Knight. He originally proposed the idea of a pirate radio station that quickly turned into a plan to secure an FM licence.
A Real Alternative
4ZZZ cartoon and news article
The person behind the push for a genuine radio station was Jim Beatson, a fellow University of Queensland student and member of the Society for Democratic Action.
Other former students such as Knight and John Stanwell were interested in using radio as a way to continue their history of activism. “We were promoting an idea that was a kind of protest action [and similar to] Draft Resister’s Radio in Melbourne,” says Stanwell. “That was not about media. That was about politics and protest.”
“But it was Jim who had a very quiet and considered view. He had observed the power of radio and was aware that it was an affordable medium. So when we were talking to him about our trouble maker idea of having a pirate station that would last for five minutes and get on the news, he said we should be looking to do real media.”
Radio was considered another tool in an already impressive range of outlets. The Society for Democratic Action was very active in the late 1960s through a bookshop they ran.
Since 1968, the radical student movement had also published an underground newspaper called The Brisbane Line. Newsagents frequently refused to sell the papers, so they purchased a van and sold on the streets. Street sellers were frequently subject to harassment and arrest and Brisbane Line ceased publication after only three issues.
Once the focus had shifted away from a pirate radio station, Beatson called meetings on the campus of Queensland University based on the idea that a collective could establish a radio station. A loose alliance of people interested in music, information, and technology slowly joined forces.
During those early meetings, the founders clearly believed that it was possible to attract a mass minority audience, according to Stanwell. “That is [the station] would not be a vehicle of pure protest [or a] megaphone. The station would attempt to be a serious radio station that would always skirt just on this side of legality.”
Converging Forces
Coinciding with those early meetings to develop 4ZZZ, several interest groups around the country had mobilised to challenge the duopoly on the airwaves that had existed since the 1930s.
Key among those were fine music interest groups who were frustrated by the limited opportunities to enjoy classical music. They were primarily interested in the quality of Frequency Modulation (FM), which could broadcast high fidelity stereo sound with low interference. By contrast, FM would enable 4ZZZ community radio station to bring the rock ‘n roll culture that had rolled throughout the Western world to Brisbane.
Those diverse interest groups gained further unity through two government initiatives. In July 1974, the Whitlam Labor Government held a wide ranging conference to discuss developments in broadcasting. Secondly, they established a Working Party on Public Broadcasting in 1975. Both Peter Hyde, then Chairman of the Community Broadcasting Foundation that established 3CR, and Jim Beatson were appointed members of that Party.
4ZZZ also became aligned with the commercial manufacturers of stereo equipment that were also pushing for the introduction of FM.
The desire expressed by many interest groups was for public radio not hamstrung by government funding, as was the ABC, or restricted by a commercial imperative. “From our tradition of operating in the political context in Queensland,” says Stanwell, “we were trying to find effective mediums that could communicate with people. Mediums that were not controlled by commercial forces or not restricted by the government.”
Another frustration for the founders was a limited radio environment stuck in a single format that was completely out of date and had no relevance to Brisbane’s emerging punk scene.
“So we had this whole raft of different political, cultural, and technical issues that we were able to put together,” Stanwell explains. “Out of that grew a movement to develop and get a licence for a real radio station.”
That opportunity came in late 1975 when the then Minister for the Media, Dr Moss Cass, awarded twelve licences to educational bodies. Four years after the Springbok protest, 4ZZ began in December 1975. Three months later, the call sign was changed to 4ZZZ-FM when the Australian Broadcasting Control Board decided that all FM stations would have a three letter call sign.
By that time, 3CR had also secured a commercial licence, fine music groups operating under the banner of the Music Broadcasting Societies had licences and educational radio station 5UV was moved back to the AM after operating for three years on a restricted licence.
Breaking The Deadlock
4ZZZ quickly established a national reputation for alternative current affairs and music. One journalist drawn to the station was Amanda Collinge, who started in the 4ZZZ newsroom in 1983.
“I and some of my friends knew that 4ZZZ was the most radical station that you could work at during that time. Much more so than in Sydney, it seemed to occupy a very radical position within media in Brisbane because Queensland at that time was under a virtual dictatorship. There was virtually no alternative media except for 4ZZZ. So it was a beacon for people like me who was a ratbag student interested in left-wing politics and independent Australian music.”
Collinge arrived at the station soon after two defining moments for the newsroom. ZZZ journalists were the first to expose the Bjelke-Petersen backed police raids on communes at Cedar Bay in 1981. They also played a key role covering Aboriginal protests against the Commonwealth Games in 1982.
There was no mainstream media coverage of Cedar Bay until the story filtered through the hippie network to Cairns, where someone who had been associated with 4ZZZ told them about the story. The station started running reports, which got picked up by other media outlets and became a national story.
4ZZZ also played a key role in drawing attention to the deplorable conditions in the infamous Boggo Road Goal.
“That was fantastic broadcasting,” says Collinge. “Because we had such good contacts. A lot of that was thanks to John Baird, a journalist who had [previously] been part of the Prisoner’s Action Group. That was the sort of place it was. We just had fantastic contacts with the prisoners themselves [and that] meant we had very good access. We were given information about when the riots would begin [and] we were there recording them as they happened.”
“Prisoners [were] screaming out to us [and] refusing to speak to the rest of the media. They were directing their messages to us as Triple Zed journalists. It really proved to me the absolute worth of true community radio because you have a direct link to those groups because they know that you have their interests at heart. They trust you where they don’t trust the other media. So you get information that other media are not getting.”
The mainstream media not only picked up the story but used much of the material recorded by 4ZZZ, according to Collinge. “I like to think that we helped to bring to public notice the deplorable, inhuman conditions in those goals. That was very much thanks to ZZZ journalists that the issue became such a prominent one and the government were forced to do something about it.”
Boggo Road Goal was closed following the 1987 Kennedy Royal Commission, which found prison conditions to be unhealthy and inhuman.
The coverage not only highlighted the importance of alternative media sources but also validated the 4ZZZ model.
During the time Collinge worked at the station in the early 1980s, the three newsroom journalists were given a fair degree of editorial freedom. They were answerable to the overall collective that ran the station rather than a news director or editor. 4ZZZ also secured accreditation from The Australian Journalists Association (AJA) to boost their press credentials.
Aside from the more serious issues covered by the station, journalists also targetted the repressive government. Every morning for around six months, Collinge had to ring up the Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
“No matter what you think of the man,” says Collinge, “he was a complete dictator. [But he] was very accesible to the media. So I used to ring him up and we used it as a bit of comedy between tracks.”
“So you would start recording from the very ‘ring, ring, ring’. The phone would always be answered by [his wife] Flo. You just got this image of a senile couple running the state. She’d yell out, ‘Joh!, it’s the phone’. He’d come to the phone and give you his thirty second, ‘oh don’t you worry about that!’ You’d think fantastic, turn it around and use it as a bit of comedy. So that was always a complete hoot.”
Rock Pioneer
4ZZZ began with several clear aims in mind, many of which have been achieved, according to Knight. They sought to introduce rock culture to the airwaves, demystify broadcasting, provide alternative forms of information and train people to work in other areas of the media.
Knight says the station, “was very successful in the last one. We had mixed success in terms of the type of information that was put out. Because we discovered that there is more to information that just distributing it. You actually have to gather and process it in the first place. We didn’t have many of those skills in those days.”
“As far as demystifying the media is concerned, we didn’t succeed there because people like John Laws, who we hated then, still exist. [The music] has been extremely successful. So successful that stations such as Triple M claim to have pioneered FM and rock music on the air. So if they are wanting to steal Triple Zed’s thunder, it must be good.”
Collinge believes that 4ZZZ was similar to other alternative media who fell into a common trap. “They used to preach a bit to the converted. During my time, I think it had a very committed but a pretty small audience. I think that’s probably because it was radical [and labelled as such]. Some people would have been alienated by that.”
See: Revolutionary Radio
Access - Program One - Oppression Breeds Creativity [4ZZZ]
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