CEO - BELINDA TILLEYS's AGM REPORT

STATION COMMENTS:

PROGRAMMING

Further to the Chairman’s report I would like to comment on the ‘to air’ programming content we have managed to produce this past year.

 

Les and I have worked together to ensure coverage of the World Cup Rugby, The Cricket, and the Olympics through our relationship with 2Kplus in the UK. This included event coverage, mission at the event and testimonials from sports persons. Of particular quality was the daily Gold shows which Les faithfully put to air.

 

BIBLES FOR CHINA: We also produced and ran a campaign during the Olympics to raise money for Bible in China which resulted in over $2200 being raised and over 220 Bible being sent to teenagers in China.

COMPASSION: 104.9 also again participated in the national Compassion day event and saw 8 of the 1518 children sponsored out of poverty in Jesus Name. Special thanks to Bronny and Lorraine for their time in hosting much of the day, and Les who was brilliant in programming the day as I needed it.

SHORTS: We have also added some extra shorts to our content such as John MacArthur’s Portraits of Grace, additional sporting moments, Oz family life moments and others.  Of note is Mission news which airs daily in the 9am hour.

RADIO THEATRE: We have broadcast John Bevere’s audio drama’s Affabel and Recued and run accompanying competitions with giveaways secured from Messenger International

GFA CHOOK DRIVE: This Christmas we have chosen to support a national Christian radio campaign being promoted by CMA in the form of the GFA Reverse Chook drive, which has our listeners giving a gift of a pair of Chooks this Christmas to a Dalit Family in India through the GFA Christmas Catalogue. We are giving away books and DVD’s in a draw linked to this campaign.

 

TALK SHOWS:

This year has had Deanne, Narelle, Lorraine, Bronny, Wayne , Alister and myself bringing live programming to 104.9. Unfortunately due to other commitments Wayne and Narelle are unable to continue. Deanne has returned for a few months running a Tuesday show from 8am to 10am but work commitments mean that in summer she will again be unable to produce her show which will leave us pitifully short of announcers. And in actual fact we have only one breakfast announcer on doing breakie from 7am to 8.30am so am on Wednesdays. There are no other breakie shows on weekdays. The Only other live shows are my show Window on the World on a Sunday from 8am -9.30 am and Bronwyn’s Ontrack on Air on Thursdays from 12.30pm to 2pm.

 

With less than 7 hours per week of live content we are drastically short of live and Local content in terms of our licence agreement. This is a very serious concern and must be address urgently.

 

My recommendation is that as a matter of urgency we need to find and pay a salary /honorarium to a breakfast show team of two to do a 6am - 10am show 5 days a week.

Our stations breakfast show is the bedrock of what we do as it is for any station. Even TV stations recognise that the breakfast Anchor teams are what they have to get right. Our breakfast shows set the tone for the entire station, are our peak listening times and so must be reviewed. The new ‘sound’ that will carry us to the next level as a station can only come from the breakie show.

 

Thanks to MEDIA POINT from Australian Christian media we are now running The family show on Saturday mornings and Talking life on weekdays from 9-midnight. These have a ‘live’ feel but in reality are recordings from 96.Five in Brisbane made available to the new technology of media point.

 

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

CHRISTIAN MEDIA AUSTRALIA

The station has this year become members of Christian Media Australia and now enjoy the benefits of their software Media Point and other support services.

 

MediaPoint is a solution to securely and effortlessly share content across the sector. A provider can drop audio, video, documents or any file into a folder on their computer, and within minutes it will be copied to a folder on the computer of anyone who has subscribed to that content.. All this content is stored and transferred in a secure manner and is only available to other CMA members (and can even be further restricted for 'private transfers' if required).  There is also an option to publish a feed publicly as a podcast. Not only does MediaPoint provide an effortless podcasting facility, you can now also add audio on demand to our website! MediaPoint currently contains 779 episodes across 55 feeds. There are 173 subscriptions across the sector to the various feeds to date, and a grand total of 4809 episodes have been downloaded to the 24 stations who currently use MediaPoint!
 

We also benefit from receiving  technical tips and information for all areas of the station, as well as special interest information for on air Like special dates, big events like AGMF , artist news etc, plus we can access their online forums. 

 
FORUMS: FREE HELP FOR STATIONS. Online forums are a fantastic reminder of the influence the internet has had on society. CMA has set up a dynamic forum environment for use by ALL staff at member stations.  Forums are all about like-minded people helping each other out topics include  Management Talk, Programming Talk, Sales Talk, Promotions Talk, Production Talk, News Talk, Announcer Talk, IT Talk, and Tech Talk.  There are also general news and opinion areas including Christian Content, and Family Content.
Their aim is to make these forums the most valuable resource for us. They have been scouring the net, and using our suggestions so far, to find the "best of the best" in the way of blogs, newsletters and feeds - and they have subscribed the forum to them!  In the last few weeks there have already been more than 90 "auto-posts" from these various sources - directly into the appropriate forum area.  For example, in Programming Talk you can find the latest from Dan O'Day, and from the Up Your Ratings blog; Sales Talk has the Monday Morning Memo from Roy H. Williams, and the SitePoint Tribune newsletter amongst others; and Tech Talk includes Radio World International Newsbytes and the latest from Corey's Radio Blog. To use the forums, login at http://christianmedia.org.au.

SECTOR NEWS AND UPDATES: We also receive information on the community broadcasting sector such as funding submission to Federal government, transmissions grants , volunteer grants and any new Compliances such as the new code of Practice.  It is important that we as a station get familiar with the new codes and ensure we are compliant.

 

 

SPECIAL NOTE:  NEW CODES OF PRACTICE: The Australian Communications and Media Authority has registered new codes of practice for community radio broadcasting services. The new codes of practice are the result of extensive consultation coordinated by the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) during 2007-08, including public consultation during February and July 2008.
 
'The codes, which are a quantum improvement on past codes, have been amended and strengthened to assist the community radio sector in better understanding their obligations and corporate governance requirements and we congratulate the CBAA on the energy they've poured into this responsibility' said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman.
 
'Licensees will now be required to have written corporate governance policies and procedures that support their management, financial and technical operations, as well as documentation that substantiate their efforts to encourage community participation. These are all signs of a rapidly maturing sector.
 
'ACMA is currently developing community broadcasting representation guidelines to provide greater clarity on how licensees can encourage community participation in the operations of a service and in the selection and provision of programs, so it is encouraging to see the community radio sector taking this approach.'
 
'The other initiative whose time has come is the confirmation in the codes that complaints can be made by email, a no-brainer in the reality of an on-line world.'

 

I would recommend that the new board make a point of focus on ensuring our compliance to the terms of our broadcast licence in all areas including completing our policies and procedures manuals.
 

 

PUBLIC IMAGE: A FAMILY FRIENDLY RADIO ALTERNATIVE

An article by Sally Jackson appeared in The Australian newspaper on July 17th. In it she noted that Christian Media is benefiting from commercial radio’s tendency to bad taste. “ Every bad-taste stunt just drives more people to "family-friendly" alternatives. As a result, Christian organisations say they are quietly thriving on the airwaves. “

David Turrell, chief executive of industry body Christian Media Australia. "Over the last five years there has been constant growth in audience numbers. We would attribute that to (our) professional standards and grassroots connections, but also to increasing dissatisfaction with the type of broadcasting put out by the commercial stations.

"Families know that they can listen to a Christian station. They are going to get safe radio. They're not going to have to explain to their kids in a car, 'Where is the most public place you have done it?' and things like that. There was one case of a family having to explain what oral sex was to their children. And that is breakfast radio."
The credo of the Christian stations is "No hurt, no greed, no ridicule", he says. "You can be very funny without being crude."

Taking this encouraging signal of the need and indeed demand for ‘family friendly alternatives’ we at 104.9 can and must respond by reviewing our presentation and public profile to ensure  the greater audience are aware that there is indeed an alternative, and a professional and entertaining alternative  to the better known commercial stations in our area.  Once again I recommend reviewing our public image in the year ahead.

 

LISTENER STATISTICS

McNair Ingenuity have recently release results of their latest survey on Community radio and certain results have been extracted on Christian Community radio across Australia which shows 19% of Australian 15+ tune in to Christian community radio stations each month. While the majority of people who listen to Christian community stations themselves ( 71%), many listeners said they have NO RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ( 23%).

 

A variety of reasons were sited for listening to Christian radio with 44% say it was to ‘hear something they don’t hear anywhere else.’ (44%). Music was also given as a popular reason (57%) as well as  for local information and news (53%).

 

There were many other interesting facts that we could take into consideration in our strategic planning but we should as I have said before also be regularly doing our own local research and surveys as do Star FM and others, as these figures do not accurately reflect our own district and ratings. It is my recommendation that doing some local surveys both inhouse and perhaps jointly with other station through a professional company be a priority in the year ahead.

 

TECHNOLOGY & RELEVANCE

As radio professionals we are perfectly suited to the new world of technologically based relationships. We are or should be constantly asking ourselves “What are the best methods for communicating and connecting with our audience?”

We need to understand who we want to reach and why we are reaching them – The Main thing – The visions and purpose of what we do. Then we need work out as how best to reach them and which technology to use to create an interactive relationship. And then what are we going to do once we’ve connected with them, to make sure we have and keep them plugged into 104.9’s community.

 

To Quote Phil Cooke from his recent blog article @Open Media Revolution:The Shift that will change everything you know about Media: The Challenge for Christian media is how to stay relevant in the age of the internet and mobile devices. He says the biggest threat to Christian media is ‘the internet driven, 24/7 news and entertainment world.’ I agree.

 

The media habits of today's consumer has shifted and is steadily evolving with technologies evlution. They tend to consume ‘a steady diet of bite-size pieces of news in the form of headlines, updates and quick facts.

Cooke believes that “unless Christian media wakes up to the realities of the digital age – it will die.”

 

 I think this is very relevant for us and we need to be looking to develop our technology and the way we interact with and supply media to our community of interest. We need to offer more.

 

 ‘One way communication doesn’t work any more. This generation thrives on the internet and interactivity.”

 

Cooke concludes “If you are doing religious media of any kind – if you are not listening to your audience ( two way interaction), you are being left behind.”

 

 I agree and in 2009, we at 104.9 must address this and develop our relationship with our listeners as well as generating increased audiences and supporters (Members, partners, donors and volunteers) through the use of today’s technology –

• using our website better so that it becomes ‘a relationship portal.’ And a community Hub – offering a one stop shop for community information, utilise it for surveys and feedback etc
• Offering podcasts, live streaming and downloads, etc.
• If we want to be relevant and effective then it's time for 104.9 to enter the new world of social networking. Time for a Facebook profile and a Myspace page. Time for Blogs and Chat rooms linked to our live broadcasts. Its time to hear what our listeners are saying. Social networking allows us to connect to not only our listeners but our members, volunteers and possible volunteers, donors, partners, and advertisers in personal ways, targeting messages that will cause them to become more engaged with our ministry.

 

Technology and communication are two important areas we must review in the year ahead  as they impact heavily on a wide variety of areas of our ministry.

- relationship with our members and volunteers, partners, donors, and the wider community

But Most importantly it will improve

- the ability to reach people through various points of contact to build 2 way relations will help develop our effectiveness in doing ’the main thing’ – reaching people for  Christ, building relationship with them  and discipling them to become transformed God followers.