Radio Production Open Day

I spent most of my Saturday at the University showing potential applicants for the Radio Production course around for an open day. There was a good level of interest in BSc Radio Production, and I’m really grateful that people allowed me to whitter on for such a long time, especially as they had traveled from so far around the country. It was great to be able to show them the radio studios, and to give them a sense of what working on DemonFM would be like.

DemonFM is running through an interesting time at the moment, with some good progress being made, but also some steps backwards being taken. It’s really interesting that when things are working well they do so because of the commitment and the agreement of the volunteers. Unfortunately, when things run badly its because the station management team are trying to exert too much control and not working on the basis of consensus.

DemonFM is a great test-bed for the development of a non-hierarchical media organisation, in which a spirit of collaboration and development if fostered and shared between the volunteers. We seem to run in to problems when the elected student reps think that they can impose a structure on the rest of the volunteers. The station was supposed to ‘relaunch’ it’s schedule this week, but most of the volunteers are still in the dark as to what and who are working is which time slots.

There has also been a very limited level of communication, with no blogging from the station management team about how they are developing what they are working on. The result is that loads of the volunteers are being left in the dark about who is responsible for what, and about when they are supposed to be doing things. It’s really important that the station teams get over this period very quickly, because there is a very clear withdrawal of support by some volunteers.

My message has been, as ever, that this isn’t a rehearsal, and that the station shouldn’t be run as a social club for volunteers to run around Leicester on pub-crawls. After what has happened to the DMU Rugby Club in the press this week, it’s really important for the board to keep a focus on the conduct of the station.