Community radio station 2ser to restructure after funding freeze
Community radio station 2ser is to restructure to ensure its ‘long-term viability’, the station’s boss has said.
With no increase in funding from its university backers to cover rising operating costs, ‘tough decisions’ are to be made at the current affairs and talk radio station, with all staff positions under review.
Among the proposals would be the redundancy of Mark Robinson, Talks Co-ordinator at the station, one of 11 paid members of staff. Robinson oversees the station’s current affairs output.
According to a volunteer journalist at 2ser, the axing of Robinson’s role would see a decline in the quality of content at the station.
Neighbourhood Watch producer Shant Fabricatorian said: “With no Talks Co-ordinator present in the newsroom, there will be an immediate and noticeable drop in the quality of our talks content. This move will directly result in some programs being unable to go to air, and volunteers are gravely concerned that by the end of the year, 2SER news and current affairs programming will amount to just a hollow shell of what exists today.”
Melanie Withnall, MD of 2ser, responded with the statement:
2ser is not cutting talks programing and committed to providing both talk and music based content.
At times of financial constraint organizations must sometimes restructure to maintain long-term viability. With the universities that fund us also working in financial constraints there has been no increase from them to meet growing operating costs at 2SER. There have been no cuts to our funding, but our income has not kept pace with expenditure we must operate responsibly within financial constraints. We also need to plan and prepare for future challenges. In order to keep the station viable for the future some tough decisions will have to be made.
The current change proposal,
recommends changes to all positions at 2ser. A staffing restructure is not taken lightly, however, we are at a point where we need to look at where and how resources are utilised, to be able to keep the station broadcasting into the future.
2ser faces a similar scenario to FBI Radio, which launched the ‘Ask Richard’ project by Naked Communications in March 2010 to salvage the station.
In an interview, Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes and Naked’s Adam Ferrier discussed the Ask Richard campaign.
2SER has 12 staff positions.
Only ONE position is having hours cut – The Talks Coordinator.
The music position is staying intact and full time.
2SER has decided that talk content is a very low priority. Not a good look for a university stations. Does UTS and Macquarie University think this is OK?
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Great music selected and presented by knowledgeable hosts = people will listen and enjoy. Listeners will even tolerate advertising, advertorial and presenters who are sometimes too chatty, if they know they’ll hear songs they like and can learn about some new ones. Throw in some local info, and wow, radio’s not dead.
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Great station, bad move.
If anything they should be throwing more resources at the talk side to improve the quality and differentiate their offering further from FBi and TripleJ.
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I worked as a volunteer in talks at 2SER during my time at university with Mark and I find this decision hard to comprehend.
If there are TWELVE staff positions and 2ser chooses one to cut, why the dedicated news and current affairs position?
Mark already singlehandedly oversees a massive amount of current affairs output and juggles a very large team of volunteers.
That output is the only thing that differentiates 2ser from stations like triple j and fbi.
There is no way the quality can be maintained if the role is axed.
Cut the talk programs and leave the music, all you have left is a poor cousin of the other alternative music stations in Sydney – what’s the point?
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From someone who has been both an interviewer and presenter on 2ser the loss of both Mark Robinson and his role as Talks Producer for the station is at the least disappointingly short sighted. Everyone and their programs, who pass through the newsroom bring benefit to the station as both supporters and subscribers – all of this enabled by the calm mentoring of the Talks Producer. This will be a significant loss to the station and the media in future
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