From The President's Desk

Transcription

1 Macleay Valley Community FM Radio Station Inc Monthly Newsletter Studio: Phone Fax Office: Phone/Fax Sponsorship: Web: ABN In This Issue President's Report Real To Reel VP's Comments New Committee Tech Corner Sherwood Hall O/B Program Guide Meetings TankFM meetings are usually held at the Kempsey-Macleay RSL Club in York Lane, Kempsey. Management meets on the first Thursday of each month and Members' Meetings are held on the second Thursday of each month. Meetings commence at 5.30 pm. The next meeting dates are: Members - 14th April Management - 5th May Annual Fees The Annual fees were set by Special Resolution at the Special General Meeting on 9th December. The membership fee for 2011 has been set at $20. There is no concession rate. Fees fell due on 31st December 2010 and must be paid prior to commencement of the AGM. Need to write to us? Please address all mail to The Secretary TankFM P.O. Box 3200 WEST KEMPSEY 2440 Vol. 18 No. 4 April 2011 From The President's Desk Welcome to the April edition of IYE which, I fear will be published a week later than the scheduled time. My objective with the IYE deadline, usually the Saturday prior to the management meeting, is to enable printing and distribution prior to the management meeting that is held on the first Thursday of each month but, sometimes, this is not possible. The members who contribute to IYE are also heavily involved in other important areas of the station, areas such as programming, production, technical and management and, ocasionally those positions must take precedence over IYE. It's better to keep the place running than to write an IYE article on time. This month, for example, a LOT of hours have gone into preparing for and executing the Sherwood Hall O/B. Fingers crossed that this edition is on time. The Annual General Meeting has been conducted and attendance was quite good with numbers up on the last few years. Thanks to those members who took the time to attend this most important meeting. Elsewhere in this edition you will see a list of committee members for the 2011/2012 year. I thank those members who raised their hand to accept a position on the committee. Significant and welcome is the return of female members to the committee, with Colleen Campbell-Cook accepting the position of Indigenous Representative and Brenda Elkington being elected as an Ordinary Member (Constitution definition). Colleen is a proud Dunghutti and is eager to commence dialogue between her people and Tank FM to forge a working partnership. In the last edition of IYE it was advised the current program cycle would be of fivemonths duration as a step towards shifting all future cycles. The current wave of new and trainee presenters has caused a re-think of that plan so that new presenters are able to get a program as soon as possible. At this stage it is little more than a re-think and any suggested time frame would be premature on my part. Adequate notice will be sent to all presenters once a decision has been made. It must be emphasised that we have reached that long awaited position where, in order to make room for new presenters, two things will be under consideration in programming; 1. presenters who currently have more than one program will eventually lose programs in excess of one and, 2. programs in excess of two hours duration, except Breakfast and the Saturday Show, both of which are owned by the station, will eventually be trimmed back to two hours. It is likely that afternoon and evening programs will be affected first, followed by morning programs. In Your Ear - April Page 1

2 Rise and Shine Breakfast Monday to Friday 6 am to 9 am The introduction of these steps will be a staged process with timing being dependant on the number of new presenters. Kempsey Shire Council employees recently installed the steel gates that will prevent the Rudder Park toilets being used by the public. When they finished they locked the doors and presented Tank FM with a key, leading to the conclusion that public access ceased at that time. Wrong! Some days later KSC unlocked the doors and posted signs indicating that the closure date was the 8th April I anticpate Tank FM will receive formal advice from Kempsey Shire Council advising the responsibility and obligations that will apply from that date. All Tank FM members are advised that under NO circumstances is the toilet key to be given to members of the public. The key is deliberately attached to a large piece of plastic that is too large to fit in your pocket. We don't want the key going walkabout. Being that the key is part of KSC's Master Key system it is highly unlikely that Locksmiths will cut duplicate keys. Some Locksmiths will even report attempts to have Master Key System keys duplicated. Well, it's finally happened. After a few trial runs, Tank FM has finally conducted its first in-situ Outside Broadcast (O/B). The chosen event for this historic event was the Centenary of the Sherwood Hall and, what a wonderful event it was. The O/B kicked off with 70's Saturday at am with Gary Delaforce and after Gary, from 1.00 pm to 4.00 pm, it was Warren Miller in the chair. Throughout the proceedings we crossed to our roving reporters Warren Miller or Gary Delaforce for live interviews with visitors and organisers. We also broadcast the speeches associated with the cutting of the centenary birthday cake by Deputy Mayor, Liz Campbell. I won't go into any detail about how the day was put together, I'll leave that for Ross and his Tech Corner column. The photo (left column) shows the antennas at the Rudder park end of the link. Ross has informed that he will do a report on the Sherwood O/B in the May edition of IYE. I most certainly want to thank Gary and Warren for being in the hot seat on the day, the Sherwood Hall committee for making Tank FM so welcome and, I especially want to thank Ross Delaforce for the number of hours put into planning for the event and executing it so well on the day. The feedback I've received from listeners has been nothing less than praise for a well-executed broadcast that was professional in every sense of the word, from sound quality to presentation. Congratulations and thanks to all involved, you've done us proud, as Slim Dusty said in song. On a personal note I say welcome home to Lenore Blight, wife of Richard, who recently underwent a hip replacement in Newcastle. Whilst still recouperating and needing some assistance, Lenore is progressing well at home. And this is where I spot the end of the page. Ray Wells President ray@tankfm.org TankFM acknowledges the financial assistance of the Community Broadcasting Foundation In Your Ear - April Page 2

3 70's Saturday Gary Delaforce Saturday 11 am to 1 pm Could someone tell me where the month of March went! Having just arrived back in the valley from a trip to Tasmania, I can tell you there is no place like home. Don t get me wrong Tassie is a great place to visit with heaps of touristy things to keep one occupied plus I met some interesting characters. I also had a chance to visit a community radio station in St Helens on the east coast of Tasmania. The station went under the call sign of Star FM. I actually at first thought it was a sister station to the local commercial body found in Port Macquarie but the giveaway was the words station sponsors mentioned during the advertising for local businesses. The Station Director, Blitz Greig, was more than happy to take time out to show me around the building and a general discussion on how they operate compared to Tank FM. I will be attempting to write a report to go to the next Management Meeting on my visit to Star FM, St Helens. An addition to my 70 s Saturday show in recent months has been a write up on known or little known facts about songs from that decade. I thought that I will now include this in my newsletter column each month as well. Here is my first attempt Tiny Dancer by Elton John Album: Madman Across The Water Highest Australian Album Chart: 8 Released: 1971 The lyrics were written by Bernie Taupin, John's writing partner. They were inspired by Taupin's first trip to America. John and Taupin are from England, and this was the first album they wrote after spending time in the US. The "Blue jean baby, LA Lady, seamstress for the band" is Maxine Feibelmann, Bernie Taupin's girlfriend. She traveled with the band on their early tours, often sewing together the costumes and fixing their clothes. She and Taupin married in The Madman Across The Water album was much more heavily-produced than Elton's first four. It was one of his first songs with a lush string section arranged by Paul Buckmaster, who arranged the stings on many of Elton's albums as well as songs by The Rolling Stones, Train, and Leonard Cohen. Rick Wakeman, who later joined the group Yes, played keyboards on the album. This was featured in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. It is used in a scene where the band is mad at each other, but remembers why they love music when they all start singing this on their tour bus. In 2011, Budweiser used the same "Tiny Dancer changes the mood" theme in a commercial that debuted on the Super In Your Ear - April Page 3

4 Jazz Made in Australia Paula Langlands Monday 11 pm to Midnight Bowl. In the spot, a gruff cowboy starts a sing-a-long to the song when he gets his beer. Peter Stormare, whose film credits include Fargo and The Big Lebowski, played the cowboy. Elton was pleasantly surprised to learn about this song's use in Almost Famous, as it didn't always get a great reaction when he performed it live. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2011, Elton recalled: "Jeffrey Katzenberg called me and said, 'There's a scene in this film which is going to make 'Tiny Dancer' a hit all over again.' When I saw it, I said, 'Oh my God!' I used to play 'Tiny Dancer' in England and it would go down like a lead zeppelin. Cameron resurrected that song." Elton performed this as a duet with Tim McGraw to open the 2002 American Music Awards. McGraw was named Favorite Male Country Artist, but left before he could accept the award. In 2008, DJ Ironik interpolated this for his album No Point In Wasting Tears, in a version featuring the rapper Chipmunk. This reworking, which was titled "Tiny Dancer (Hold Me Closer)," hit #3 in the UK. Elton John is featured in the video. This track is also available for playing or requesting from the station s library. That s all for this month! Keep Smiling, Gary Delaforce Committee Member Hi All, As we start off a new year for Tank FM it's good to see some new faces come on board the management committee; Colleen Campbell-Cook as our Indigenous Representive, Brenda Elkington and Ted J. Kale. It would be great to see some of our presenters get involved with their station. Maybe we should form a fundraising committee to take the pressure off people who have their hands full, already doing things for the station. We have come a long way over the last four years but as every one knows we still need more money to come into the station and the only way that can happend is fundraising but, the problem with that is not enough hands to help. It's a shame that when we have something on its the same faces all the time. We have a great station and there are a lot of presenters who dont know what goes on behined the scene thanks to a small core of helpers. If all of our presenters had some input for their station we would be flying high. The station does not run itself so come on, let's make it a good year for Tank FM. Warren Miller Vice-President. 2011/2012 Committee Members President - Ray Wells Vice-President - Warren Miller Secretary - Rick Wilson Treasurer - Robert Hoffman Colleen Campbell-Cook (Indigenous Representative) Gary Delaforce Ross Delaforce Brenda Elkington Ted J. Kale Chris Richardson The position of Youth Representative remains a casual vacancy and the committee is calling for nominations. Nominees must be a minimum of eighteen years of age and a maximum of thirty years of age at the time of appointment. In Your Ear - April Page 4

5 The Lunch Box Rural News - Current Affairs - Music Monday to Friday 12 pm to 1 pm TECH CORNER Welcome to this month s edition of Tank FM s Tech Corner. Well, after a couple of false starts, and delays in getting items to build it, our tower at Rudder Park has been 95% completed. The only item left to do is screw on the top cap and the associated rotator hardware for antennas to be moved around from the comfort of the production room. If the picture here is not clear, that s our president, Ray Wells, screwing down the top section of the tower after it was raise from the tank floor via a jib pole, block and tackle, and some heave-ho. From outside the tank, it doesn t appear to be very high up, but when you factor in the extra 2 metres from the ground outside to the ground inside the tank, it is! This tower will form the base to move all of our antennas currently mounted to decaying/rusting items around the rim of the tank itself. These items include the Studio Transmitter Link (STL) to Green Hill, our WiFi network link to the Shop in Central Kempsey, the UCB transmission antenna plus proposed systems. With this mast in place, we were able to mount both our WiFi and UHF audio link antennas temporarily in order to allow us to conduct signal tests from our proposed OB service at Sherwood Hall on April 2nd. This pre-test work was invaluable in assessing what options would work from the hall. We found that while our WiFi link path was shown as being line of sight, vegetation (and lots of it) in the form of trees made it impossible to use. A Plan-B of using our UHF link worked and a test done from the front of the hall showed this was our best option. On the day, we also had the ability to broadcast back to the studio via a 3G link as a fallin Your Ear - April Page 5

6 Two Of Us Ann Cant & Terry Phippen Thursday 4 pm to 6 pm back option, as well as using it to have the news audio from our Tank Digital Network (TDN) delivered. From all of these tests, it became evident of the importance of preplanning a site before a broadcast could be considered. The overall plan of what I thought would work was shown to be not ideal in this situation and we were lucky enough to have other options to fall back on. For those who are considering wanting to do an OB, make sure you allow the time for tests to be done. Last thing we would want is to rush the job, have a bad experience and have the OB experience and Tank FM s image tainted because of it. The Sherwood Hall OB was a success and, continued thanks to Ray and the committee members for their ongoing support during these endeavours. Until next month. Ross Delaforce - ross@tankfm.org Sorry Ross but I had to sneak in a picture of you and the boys hard at work. For readers who don't know Tank FM members, from left to right we have Warren Miller, Gary Delaforce and Ross Delaforce. I was hiding safely behind the camera - R.W. In Your Ear - April Page 6

7 Sherwood Hall Centenary Broadcast Sherwood Hall Saturday am to 4 pm Pictured above is a selection of photographs taken at the Sherwood Hall Centenary celebration on the 4th April From left to right, top to bottom, there is, Gary Delaforce and Warren Miller from Tank FM, the Centenary cake that was cut by Deputy Mayor, Liz Cambell and a couple of shots inside the hall showing a typical indication of the number of visitors. This number remained reasonably steady throughout the day. Other visitors congregated in the adjacent Tea Room. In Your Ear - April Page 7

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