Culture

Former Critic Editor & Radio One News Chap David Large Puts His Views In Writing

As the sting goes, I've fucked off to Sydney but I still listen to Radio One, 91FM. It's the station that offered an alternative soundtrack during my years at the University of Otago. It’s the station that reviews anything it damn well wants to, because it supports and gives airtime to anything local that deserves it. It's a tastemaker, it sets trends as fast as it sheds them and it is of incalculable cultural value to OUSA members. (I wince at this sentence, simply because the phrase "cultural value" would seem to demand a monetary figure that could be leveraged. It can't. That's the point)
 
The joy of local stations, such as Radio One, is that while you might hear silence, while you might hear the same ad played twice in a row, you'll nonetheless hear real DJs. Real people; the guy who you sat next to in your lectures, learning his way around the DJ booth in an endearingly bumbling fashion or deciding which national news articles are worthy of your attention; the girl who's always twirling and dancing – for reasons known only to herself – at OUSA's market days, now distributing her hoard of pre-70s folk music over the airwaves; shy people who come to life when presented with a microphone; fifty-something shelves of CDs, and a hard drive full of laboriously hand-picked tunes; unshaven louts whose love of drum and/or bass bring out the glow of their radio voices. Students or former students, almost-students or never-students; these are the people who make Dunedin an interesting city in which to live, not just a place to study but a place to live.
 
Andy Flyboy's voice used to wake me up in the mornings, then it was the euphony of Emma Dish and finally Aaron Hawkins' dulcet tones that told me what my association was doing (or what they weren't). Live radio is, for the recipient, a passive medium in the best sense of the term, in that it gives listeners a background to their mornings, their commutes, and their lives. 91FM is my radio station of choice when in Dunedin; r1.co.nz is my webstream of choice when I want to know what's been happening over the years I've been away from the town, or when I feel the need to hear jazz and soft-spoken vox breaks at the weekend. Unlike an outlet like Critic, which requires a modicum of attention – or the ODT, which requires somewhat less – I can listen to R1 and stay informed without missing out on the rest of my life.
 
If OUSA were to lose Radio One, it would be Dunedin's loss, but more specifically a tragic loss to the tenuous masses we might presume to call the University community. OUSA shouldn't rush to cut this loss any more than they should rush to cut any 'loss' like Student Support or Clubs & Societies. A media outlet with any traction in a small university town like Dunedin should be grasped with both hands, and in a potential VSM environment even more than ever. Where else would local bands be able to reach OUSA members or get their flatmates to vote them to the Top Eleven? How else would OUSA reach the wilds between Dunedin and Oamaru (assuming, of course, that the wind is blowing in the right direction)?
 
To the best of my knowledge – which is admittedly somewhat shaky, having been away from the PMDL finance books for a couple of years – Radio One has always been a not-for-profit service, operating under the auspices of a non-tradable licence, and any expectation that it should be operated to give a short-lived exec some breathing room is nothing but bunk. To give away Radio One would be to remove the voices of OUSA members. To sell Radio One would be a brazen attempt to profit in the short term from the minimum or sub-minimum wages R1 has been forced to pay its core technical, management and production staff for the past years, and more importantly, to fundamentally alter whatever modes of positive outreach OUSA – via its executive – pretends to care about this year.
 
David Large
(Still listening to Radio One)
 
Radio One 91FM is under threat. To find out what is going on and to show your support visit r1.co.nz. Submissions close at the end of this week on the 29th July, and should be sent in to consultation@ousa.org.nz.