radioinfo readers may remember a report in June last year about a group of kids who broke into a local WA community radio station and swore on air. There’s a sequel to the story.

Martin Corben reports on the training work he has been doing with Wangki Yupurnanupurru Radio in Fitzroy Crossing.
 

“We made the National news! (but for all the wrong reasons).”
 
So read the Facebook page of Wangki Yupurnanupurru Radio in Fitzroy Crossing, WA. The tiny radio station had caught the attention of the nation and while it was initially a negative news story, lots of positives have come out of it too.
 
Fitzroy Crossing is in the Kimberly region, about 4 hours drive east of Broome. Like many other remote indigenous stations, Wangki radio covers a large region of small local communities using local broadcasters and other network programs.
 
The back story is that around June 2014, some local children had broken in to the station one night. (see ABC News report). After eating through the manager’s food store, they headed to the studios where they took the station off network programming, and started playing their own music, accompanied by swearing and other antics. They knew how to do all this because they’d just been trained.
 
Listeners contacted police, who put an end to the high jinx.
 
On hearing this story, part of me was impressed with the young people’s energy and their attraction to being on air – even if that energy was misdirected
 
I think it’s safe to say for all beginner broadcasters that our biggest hurdles are developing courage and confidence to go on air. If only that enthusiasm could be targeted correctly, the station could develop more and better young broadcasters.
 
After negotiating with station manager Angie-Lee Stahl, we developed a training program for three specific groups within the station, including primary school children, the ‘break-in’ youth group and existing and potential adult broadcasters. The training was tailored to each group, and involved presentation, interviewing, developing story ideas and show content as basic editing and technical skills.
 
What has developed out of that initial ‘negative’ news story about the break-in is really an opportunity to shine a light on some other positives broadcasting stories. Broadcasters of all ages are testing themselves and their abilities at this remote local radio station striving to serve its local audience with a small band of volunteers.
 
For instance, 10 year old Dylan Storer who presents and environment themed talk program, ‘Tunes’. He’s forever chasing interviews with CEOs and other heavy hitters about local Kimberley hot topics such as coal seam gas extraction and recycling.
 
“Environment is so important to me. That’s what I am interested in.” He’s just 11 years old(!) and doing more weekly interviews than plenty of other community broadcasters. He is also on Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud  – already a multi-platform operator.
 
Or there’s country music devotee and broadcaster Raylene Coleman who came to Wangki Radio almost by accident and is now presenting daily programs as well as a weekly National program on the Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Service (RIBS). She’s got a dream of presenting a program live from the Tamworth Country Music Festival, but in the meantime her main challenge is getting her hands on some more and diverse music to play to her audience.
 
“I like the old style country music – and it reminds me of times with my family. I’d like to access more songs than we currently have available here, and I’m learning to talk a bit more about the songs and the artists. Not too much though, people still want to hear the music!” she says with a hearty laugh and smile to match.
 
The key to the success of stations like Wangki is their ‘localism’ – how they engage with their local community, how they maintain their relevance in the face of social media expansion and public or commercial broadcasters reach. Who else would be able to consider covering the Wangkatjunka Football festival? (Look it up)
 
Outcomes aren’t always in higher ratings, more sponsors or even training superskilled presenters. If anything, I hope the outcome from the training I carried out I hope is that the (relatively) harmless act by some local kids will get this radio station back in the national news, but this time, for all the right reasons.

Martin Corben is a former ABC broadcaster and manager, and also worked at AFTRS.

He is now a freelance trainer and consultant.

Contact Martin via Linkedin or email [email protected].