October. Newsletter. 101FM October 2015 Newsletter

Transcription

1 October 2015 Newsletter

2 Presidents Report I ve enjoyed the last twelve months as President, because the current Team of John, Sefton, Mark, and Diane, have been so supportive. Can t forget to mention Gail either, who put in such a great effort right up until her resignation, due to personal reasons. As President, I am so appreciative of our Technical Engineer, Sefton for the way he has been about taking care of 101FM, by keeping us on air, sometimes under very trying conditions. All of these people have been a complete joy to work with. Revenue has increased over the past twelve months, so much so that ALL of our outstanding debts have been cleared. Our Station manager, Terry Blacker, has been mainly responsible for this, because of a host of major sponsors, such as The Bendigo Bank, McDonalds, The Greenbank RSL, who are currently tong term Sponsors and have been complimented by other Long Termers such as Keith for Wheels, Southern Cross Care, DND Roofing, and Motorama Mitsubishi Springwood. We ve had compliments regarding the production of their Sponsorships. Patti Alchin s efforts in providing this creative service deserves a huge thanks. During the current Management Team's first Term, we implemented a new Station Logo. Although at first there were a few concerns, we feel that the members have warmed to it. We also saw a very successful Radiothon conducted, during which we received kind pledges of over $15,000 being raised. Hopefully we will be able to repeat that in one for To our Great Team of Presenters, thanks for your professional attitude towards your programs, which has made 101FM a much listened to Community Radio station. We welcomed a host of new Presenters, Ross Burns, Eddie Shannon, Stu Robertson, Paul Tyler, Bluey, and Steve Cini. All have settled in and are doing a great job! And to those Presenters, who for various reasons have left 101FM, a most sincere thank you for your many years of unselfish service continued next page

3 Presidents Report...continued As you know, new carpet tiles were laid, and thanks to those many people who gave up their time to put them down. Thanks to Stu Robertson who, representing his employer organisation, The Salvation Army, we obtained them at no cost. Yet another big thank-you to the Salvos, for all of the office furniture and computers which were so kindly donated. We now have a dedicated Fund Raising Committee which has already shown its effectiveness towards our Father's Day Promotion. We tare grateful to Gail for her enthusiasm and contribution in organising many of our beaut fundraising efforts such as Sausage Sizzles at OfficeWorks and at Bunnings. We need to mention Mike and Lyn Anderson who worked hard to contribute to the success of these events, and of course the many Volunteers of 101FM who crewed the sites. Another great contribution was made by members, like Cyril Callaghan, Neil Willis, Bob Ballantyne, Alister Robertson, for their assistance at the many 101FM O.B. s (Outside broadcasts), which have generated a lot of revenue for the station. I must make special mention of Alister who also worked hard crafting well-worded submissions to enable us to receive a sizeable Community Broadcasting Foundation Grant towards upgrading much needed technical equipment. Thanks, Mate.!! It's great to welcome a regular Sponsor on-board to 101FM, Terry Lindsay, who has volunteered to assist Sefton with the duties of setting up Outside Broadcasts, and helping Sefton with other Technical requirements. A special thank you to Dennis Krause for his great negotiation skills in obtaining two Great Father's Day Prizes, A Weber BBQ from Barbeques and More, and a $200 Car Care Voucher from Rides Car Detailing. Well done Dennis! Where would we be without our team of Receptionists? (The Directors of First Impressions), Julie, Lorraine, and our newest recruits, Rita, Roz, and Fifi. These are our listener s first point of call and are vitally important. Thanks to Yvonne Carter, who has health issues, but continues to keep us up-to-date with all office matters. And Finally... Finally, thanks to YOU the Members, for the great support you have given this Committee. This support has enabled us to carry out the managing of 101FM with very few complications. Alan Casonati 101FM President 3

4 101 FM 4 Classifieds Masden Alan s

5 The Station Managers Desk The UPDATED Code of Conduct manual is now available to members It contains important rules and guidelines. (The Conduct Acceptance Form at the back should be completed & forwarded to Julie at your earliest convenience). Please note that new guidelines for Presenters are issued from time to time, to help improve & maintain our broadcasting standard. They are there for the benefit of all Members and Presenters. There are 4 main reasons people CARE to listen to radio: *Companionship *Access (to info) *Relaxation *Entertainment Our aim is to convince the listeners we are talking to them not reading to them! That is the way to build a personal relationship with your listeners. Whatever your program content, listeners should be able to hear your enthusiasm, every time you open the mic. I can only reiterate that an important condition of your membership is to devote some time to help your fellow members by supporting Outside Broadcasts, fund raising activities and other events as they occur. It s both frustrating and disappointing to see the same old faces that are willing to come along and lend a hand. Also, there are other Members and non-members who give their time to keep us operational on a day-to-day to basis. Remember, it is your Station. All these Volunteers have taken on extra duties...because they see the difference it makes to the Organisation. I would like to thank those Presenters who have undertaken the training and development program which I hope will help to improve and strengthen their On-Air skills. Effective Communication The Key to Good Radio To present a radio program effectively you must develop your announcing skills. When you are On -Air, the most important person in your life is the listener. 5 All your On-Air work requires preparation (including interviews). When you re a Radio presenter, part of your life should be devoted to preparation for your show. Commit your thoughts to paper, not memory! The best ad-libs are prepared ones. Get a feel for the program you re presenting. Remember the 5 P s of Presentation: Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance! Community Radio music policies varies from Station to Station. However, whatever the Station format, it is there for a specific reason. There may be times when you dislike a song you are playing you must never negate a song... ever! Remember, that particular song will be someone s favourite and if you criticise it or fade it out early, you may lose a valuable listener and alienate part of the audience. Happy presenting from Terry Blacker

6 October 2015 Technical Report with Sefton Masden Senior Vice President / Technical Manager D uring 2015 we ve been relying on a temporary website that has not reflected the true image of the Station. We are now in the process of upgrading to a new website (One of 5 transitions to get to completion) that will reflect and maintain the Stations image. Please look out for the new website over the coming weeks and send any constructive feedback to Stu Robertson, who is liaising with our website designer. Remember, it s early days. Anyone who has contacted the Station recently would have used the new PABX (Private Automatic Branch exchange). As part of the PABX installation the fixed GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) lines have been replaced with 2 dedicated fixed outgoing lines. These lines allow outgoing calls even when ALL incoming lines are busy particularly during competitions. To select these lines at the station just dial Zero ( 0 ), before the number. Our internet ADSL line has been moved from the FAX line to one of the new outgoing lines. This move resulted in us losing our normal internet connection for 10 days and relying on our outside broadcast 4G Router to provide emergency internet access! Because of this, we had to cancel the scheduled Outside Broadcast. Now we are back to normal, we ve had O.B. s (outside broadcasts) nearly every weekend. The Logan City Council is also upgrading the fire warning system at the station to bring it up to current regulations. We are very grateful for all the work the Council has done at 101FM to bring this Station up to compliance. Terry Lindsay from Technology Training, who has been a long term sponsor of 101FM, is now helping with the technical work at the station in particular setting up the weekend outside broadcasts. He s also doing valuable work on the office and studio PCs. Over the coming weeks the brand new Transmitter and associated equipment will be installed. This equipment was purchased using a generous $14K Community Broadcasting Foundation Grant submitted by Alister Robertson. During the installation some short transmission outages (testing phase) will be necessary, but these will be kept to a minimum, so please be patient. When the installation is completed, we ll have a very modern Transmitter, co-axial Switch and a state-of-the-art Audio Processor. 6 All in all, Logan s 101FM will be sounding even better!

7 Barry Ralph With Sympathy It s with a particularly tremendous sadness, that we advise of Barry Ralph s sudden passing at his home on Saturday, September 19th - aged 64 years. Barry Ralph was a much loved and highly respected Brisbane announcer and his loss to the Jazz Radio scene especially, will be sensed both locally and worldwide. Logan s 101FM extends to the Ralph family here and overseas our prayers and thoughts at this time of immense grief. This sadness will, and continue to be - felt by many. 7

8 Tech Talkin Sefton Masden: Technical Manager Last issue I talked about our O.B. (Outside Broadcast) setup. This time I ll discuss how the audio from the Outside Broadcast desk gets back to the studio. In the past when an outside broadcast was setup it required either a physical line that was arranged via Telstra or we used a radio link back to the studio. Both of these required a significant amount of preparation work and expense prior to the Outside Broadcast. With the advent of the mobile network we have been able to make use of this network to provide the link back to the studio. Up until about a year ago, we used the older 3G network but it proved to be not completely reliable for our needs. At times we suffered from drop-outs which made managing outside broadcasts very difficult. Since we have upgraded to the 4G network the Outside Broadcasts have been much more reliable. To get the signal back from the outside broadcast desk the audio from the desk is encoded into a Digital signal using a Tie-line coder. This Digital signal is then sent over the Ethernet to a fixed I.P. (Internet Provider) address at the radio station. At the station the Digital signal is then converted back into an audio signal. To overcome the possibility of lost or delayed data packets, we use a buffer at the receiving end so we can provide good quality audio without gaps in the audio. This means there is a delay between when the audio is generated at the Outside Broadcast desk, and when it arrives at the studio. Therefore, if you re listening locally at an Outside Broadcast, you will hear quite a delay when compared to what is heard on the radio. At the studio, the audio from the Outside Broadcast is fed into the Studios, where it s then fed into the normal path up to the Transmitter. The delay mentioned above could be quite noticeable when we change over to the News: because the News and Sport are provided at the Studio. The Studio sitter must time into the News and out of the News so the changeover is smooth and without any gaps. The success of our Outside Broadcasts has helped greatly in keeping us out in the Community and also helps to fund the101fm. We re always grateful to all those Volunteers who come and help at our Outside Broadcasts! 8

9 Thanking our fantastic sponsors! 9

10 101 fm Why did the capacitor kiss the diode? He just couldn't resistor. Newsletter Art & Concept Editor : Heard that rocker Jim Morrison was overrated. Really hate it when people slam the Doors. I can hear reggae music coming out of my new printer. Think the paper's jammin' again, mon. funnies