Getting the Message Across - Wayne Stamm, CBAA Board Member and General Manager of 2NUR FM

How did you become involved in community broadcasting?

My first community broadcaster was 2GLA in Forster Tuncurry in 1989. It was a wonderful experience and I was sad to leave my office overlooking the lake and dolphins after only two years. The team there was fantastic and we achieved a lot in a very short time. I loved the passion they had for radio so when I got the chance to join 2NUR 15 years ago I jumped and haven’t looked back.

What do you think community radio services contribute to Australian communities?

Community radio, especially in regional and rural areas, offers a service that few others can match, and that’s a local voice covering local issues. Commercial radio and the ABC are deserting these communities leaving community stations to fill the void. For those stations that take on the challenge of becoming the main voice in their town/city/area it can be a daunting task, but incredibly rewarding.

What do you see as the main challenge for the sector at the moment?

Community radio is really changing. Presentation styles and programming is much more important than ever before. Presenters want to be taken as serious and/or entertaining broadcasters. For some stations, trying to balance that with their presenters’ individual passions for music, humour, current affairs or anything else they broadcast is a real challenge. Metro stations can be a little more specialised in their programming while regional and rural stations are trying to cover a whole range of issues as well as keeping local. A lot of stations are finding that it is nowhere near as easy as anticipated and that broadcasting is a whole lot more than two turntables and a microphone.

And the biggest opportunity?

Certainly outside of the metro area the biggest opportunity is for stations to become the local voice in their broadcast area.

What's been your proudest community radio moment?

2NUR runs a newsroom staffed by Journalism majors from the University of Newcastle. Since 2009, over 200 students have produced in excess of 2000 news bulletins a year. In our pilot year we had just six students but all of them got jobs in mainstream media. The day that the first one of them walked in and said “I got the job in Cairns” was unbelievably exciting for all of us. Most of my team are from commercial or ABC radio - it’s like old folks radio home - and for most of them this was the first time we felt like we were able to put something tangible back into the industry that we all love.

Find out more about 2NUR at www.2nurfm.com

This article was first published in CBX Magazine in April 2017.