David Melzer gave his final speech as CBAA President at the opening of the 2003 CBAA conference. His words were what he considers to be a snapshot of the communtiy broadcasting sector. He talked in-depth about its strengths and emphasised its weaknesses, leaving those in attendance with plenty to think about. David has been succeeded by Paul Terdich from JOY FM Melbourne.

The community broadcasting sector has grown rapidly in recent years as a consequence of community demand and ABA planning and licensing activities, and we are confident that perhaps more than ever, it has the capacity to be a vibrant, mature and importantly, accessible and diverse broadcasting industry.

It represents youth, indigenous, ethnic, religious, print handicapped, specialist music, local, and a thousand other diverse interests. This sort of diversity should breed healthy debate over the next couple of days – I am not saying that we should have a wild rumpus, but almost 400 licences should produce one or two differences of opinion.

With 70% of stations outside capital cities; 264 radio stations; over 80 BRACS Radio and TV licences and a further 6 Community TV stations waiting a licence (I am hoping that Professor Flint will hand them out this morning) we have more licensed radio stations than either the commercial sector or the government brand stations combined. Yet our collective annual income is $40million. We have more stations but less than 10% of the commercial radio sector’s income. And it will always be thus.

The word community is back in fashion – community festivals, community centres, community banks, and in Victoria there is a government department of communities. Community broadcasters can play a vital role in building them, making them better. It depresses me to think about how we are now faced by less and less human contact. Some might say that this is a good thing – not me.

Think about it – when you pay a bill or make a phone call these days, you are extremely lucky to speak to a human. Last week I rang the department of human services and got a machine. It wished me to “have a nice day”. What the?? How good, how embraced, how encouraged do you feel when a computer tells you to have a nice day?

But to be able to build communities, we need to be a meaningful part of our communities. Despite our relative lack of resources, we have many natural advantages. One is that we are not hampered by commercial imperatives or the bureaucratic agendas of the government broadcasters. But I argue that we have not used our advantages enough. I believe we have to do better.

Some will argue “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. That is, community broadcasting is chugging along just fine. Well, if you are a fulltime ethnic station with healthy income streams from members, sponsors and the government, or a station with university support, or a new youth station with a narrow program focus that screams out for MacDonald’s ads, or a full-time Christian station with help from above, things might look fine.

Many community stations are struggling, barely surviving, cutting expenditure on equipment, training and marketing just to pay bills. With declining participation rates and listeners, community broadcasting has to do something.

Last year, a university in Perth wanted to hand back its community licence because it couldn’t make it work. The lesson of 6NR is instructive. It had a million dollar turnover, professional on-air staff (that is, paid staff) few volunteers and good university support. But it kept making losses. When reviewing its involvement, the university stated that it was a mistake to abandon contact with the community for which it was originally licensed.

That many stations are struggling to make ends meet is not the only problem. And it is not just that one station has handed back its licence and a university almost surrendered its licence.

What is perhaps symptomatic of the sector’s condition is that the drive for new ideas, for new forms of involvement and expression, the rationale for community broadcasting, has faded over time, and it’s about time to have a good hard look at ourselves.

But for the hundreds of other stations things have to get better. I want to argue that community broadcasters have to do more in order to survive and develop. I want to argue that we have to do more in three areas.

We have to be better at providing access, make better programs, and be better at teamwork

The sector is extremely diverse. Not only in format, but in income - the largest station has a turnover of well over a million dollars a year while at the other end of the scale, there is one station with an annual turnover of less than $10,000.

Firstly, we need better access and broader participation, so that community broadcasters are the first thought by people in your community who have something to say and not the last. Stations have to be open to be able to build communities.

Building needs access. We can only build if we are part of the structure. How robust and ongoing are your efforts to get more people involved? How attractive is it? Do participants have power within your station and if so, is it a problem if they do?

Think about your Board. The diversity of participation at board level is a measure of the connectedness with your community and I would argue that the more diverse the interests (and perhaps skills) represented at that level, the healthier your station.

There is a problem with this. Which leads to my second point – we need to make better programs. The very diversity, for which I am arguing, goes against every rule of building an audience

But so does bad broadcasting - and that is why community broadcasting, more than any other type needs to be good broadcasting. I know we don’t have the same resources as other sectors to train people and I know we don’t employ people for 40 hours a week to develop their program skills, but that is no excuse for bad radio.

Most importantly, our on-air content has to be interesting, engaging and amazing, and the way it is produced should also be as good as we can make it. Whatever our community, we are the natural forum for a broad expression of ideas – ideas that help explain and make sense of the world.

Community broadcasters can do this, but generally speaking do not. I know of one community station that has had the same Elvis program running for ten years. What does that say about new ideas? Enough of Elvis already.

In terms of what we say, the content of our programs, I am confident that we can shit all over commercial broadcasters. This leads to another natural advantage we have. Not only do we not have to sell Coca-Cola, but also in every community there is a huge range of talent, interests and ideas.

We should be able to tap into creative forces within our communities. We should be able to put a range of ideas to air. We should be able to be a channel for many people’s imagination. And then we start to build communities. Lack of imagination shrinks the spirit in us and in our leaders, it shrivels our collective souls, narrowness leads to the demonisation of suffering people because they are different. It is the same lack of imagination that breeds fundamentalists without the understanding to interpret their religion with compassion or inclusivity. We need to be inclusive.

It is imagination that enables people to develop. Community broadcasters have the freedom to communicate these ideas. This is what we should be striving for. More often, we should be able to stand proudly and boast that ideas or music were first heard on community broadcasting. We should have a reputation for airing ideas and stories first and we should have a reputation for being a source of independent news.

I feel a bit like I am preaching to the converted. You wouldn’t be here unless you believed in a collective forum, or the beach. But you are here, and I’ve got the microphone - your turn will come.

But I cannot emphasise enough that community broadcasting should be about what, as part of a community, we hope for and what we fear. About ideas and what “could be”. These are difficult times to make sense of, but we have the means to do it.

It is a time where there are assaults on Australians’ rights in the name of national security. There are assaults on our education system in the name of “freedom of choice” and shocking assaults on human rights in the name of border protection.

My 3rd point is about teamwork. Working together to achieve things, despite our differences.

A community station should be an exercise in broad scale teamwork. Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.

But I suspect that there are many of you here who come from stations where you are in a position of power – the chairperson, the manager - and have been perhaps for some time. Have a think about that. Power is only a liberating force when it is in the hands of many. How we exercise power, even within our small stations, is the measure of our citizenship.

Because it is not easy to make good radio and because we have so few resources, teamwork is crucial to our survival. People in numbers is the one resource we do have in abundance. We have to use this and work together.

We all have the capacity for braveness or cowardliness, generosity or selfishness, open-heartedness and fear in equal measure. The capacity to choose between these makes us human.


This conference is one way for the CBAA to build its community. Not just by working with its members, but also by engaging and developing with its partners, supporters and even its critics and the disinterested. We can do better than we are doing now, with better access, better programs and better teamwork. This will enable community broadcasters to better play a vital role in building communities.

This conference is an opportunity to build our community. I hope that you will actively and enthusiastically contribute to it. Thank you.


David Melzer
Nov, 2003