college radio

zap

what do you all expect from college radio is just a way of training the djs, producers etc of tomorrow or should it be more?

anyone any ideas?

daphne22

zap wrote:

what do you all expect from college radio is just a way of training the djs, producers etc of tomorrow or should it be more?

anyone any ideas?

I think its a great starting point for young people interested in media, plus it really unifies a college as the radio broadcasts are confined to the campus environ

zap

it depends on the station but belfield fm in ucd broadcast from the ucd water tower so it can be heard outside ucd

LegacyUser

I would expect a college radio station to be aiming at being as professional as possible.
BCFE's 1st year students host a radio station on a temprary fm license annually, and their content is always admirable.
If you are going to get involved in a college station, it is likely that you have an interest in a career in radio, at some level, and therefore, I believe that it is a good foundatation level from which to gain experience, and relevant contacts, but also something that should be taken seriously by those involved.

segadreamcast

I've been giving this quite a bit of thought - and I've come to the conclusion (ill-defined or otherwise) that perhaps the Dublin colleges (DCU, DIT, UCD, TCD, BCFE, NCAD etc etc) should group together and create a unified, ongoing student station? The frequency is there...as is the talent. All they need is a transmitter and a location.

flogen

NoelRock wrote:

I've been giving this quite a bit of thought - and I've come to the conclusion (ill-defined or otherwise) that perhaps the Dublin colleges (DCU, DIT, UCD, TCD, BCFE, NCAD etc etc) should group together and create a unified, ongoing student station? The frequency is there...as is the talent. All they need is a transmitter and a location.

It does raise a number of problems though, venue being one. I also think colleges prefer to have their own station that only covers their issues and has their students, they don't like sharing space with the others.
It is a good idea though, a community level station for students only.
Saying that, I think DCU, UCD and possibly TCD are all on the way to getting their own permenent licences (perhaps only small broadcast ranges though), so continuous student radio is on the way.

billy the squid

NoelRock wrote:

I've been giving this quite a bit of thought - and I've come to the conclusion (ill-defined or otherwise) that perhaps the Dublin colleges (DCU, DIT, UCD, TCD, BCFE, NCAD etc etc) should group together and create a unified, ongoing student station? The frequency is there...as is the talent. All they need is a transmitter and a location.

It would require an increase in the power allowed on the frequency used by those temporary stations, and that would require the go ahead from ComReg rather than the BCI.

Although in saying that it seems to work with the three colleges in Limerick using Wired FM. The station broadcasts from mary Immaculate college and covers UL and LIT. A second frequency had to be allocated to reach the students of UL though.

The broadcasts relocate to each of the other two colleges for events like Rag Week etc.

segadreamcast

flogen wrote:

It does raise a number of problems though, venue being one. I also think colleges prefer to have their own station that only covers their issues and has their students, they don't like sharing space with the others.
It is a good idea though, a community level station for students only.
Saying that, I think DCU, UCD and possibly TCD are all on the way to getting their own permenent licences (perhaps only small broadcast ranges though), so continuous student radio is on the way.

Yeah, the venue is a problem...obviously it'd need to be central (or relayed via satellite to three rock, but that'd be prohibitively expensive...).

Not sure about the permanent licence thing Flogen, I'm in DCU here and I haven't heard a thing about it...(?)there's talk about stretching it out to a month potentially...but even at that, by the time the station ever starts hitting consistency, things start winding up again - it's a little bit counter-productive in a sense (not that I'm being negative, it's wonderful, but it could be better if it were allowed to continue on a semi-permanent basis).

Yeah Billy, I suppose you'd be talking about a broadcast range similar to that of Anna Livia, in theory at least...

htmf

Ballyfermot College has recently setup a Student website, there are 2 addresses, both are below.

http://www.hackingthemainframe.net/

and

http://www.htmf.biz

LegacyUser

Congrats on the site guys, its really good, and a great idea.

Well Done!

(only wish I had thought of it while I was there)

BrianD

NoelRock wrote:

Yeah, the venue is a problem...obviously it'd need to be central (or relayed via satellite to three rock, but that'd be prohibitively expensive...).

Not sure about the permanent licence thing Flogen, I'm in DCU here and I haven't heard a thing about it...(?)there's talk about stretching it out to a month potentially...but even at that, by the time the station ever starts hitting consistency, things start winding up again - it's a little bit counter-productive in a sense (not that I'm being negative, it's wonderful, but it could be better if it were allowed to continue on a semi-permanent basis).

Yeah Billy, I suppose you'd be talking about a broadcast range similar to that of Anna Livia, in theory at least...

I have always been amazed that DCU, with it's communications degree the first one of its type in the country, does not have a permanent radio station. They did have a service called Dublin Weekend Radio many years ago but it was not a student radio station (in the American College Radio sense). They had radio art and other such lofty stuff that was neither engaging radio for students nor the general population. I went for a job interview at the station and I had a presentation based on providing a US college radio service. From the questions asked by the panel of interviewers ib became apparent that the radio service they envisgaged was poles away from mine! They wanted to know how children could be reintroduced to the medium or radio and so on (you lost that battle years ago!). DWR lasted for a year and was forgtten even faster. It was on 102.2 FM as I recall. Galway and Limerick have student stations - why not Dublin?

zap

why indeed???

segadreamcast

Mmm, well, this is all positive stuff... I'll open a line of dialogue (a little earlier than I thought) with TCD, UCD, DIT, BCFE and see where we can go from there...

PlanetPob

Hi there.

I spent a good part of last year organising that very thing. I established the Dublin College Radio Co-Operative. We (in UCD) met with TCD, DIT, DCU and Grffith College on three occasions. It resulted in a meeting with the BCI in March, where the idea of a Dublin College Radio functioning on a single frequency was discussed.
I cannot tell you how much work I put into this, so I would encourage you to contact me if you want any advice or help on forwarding this venture.
I have archived all the meetings and agendas and I am going to post them onto another thread as there is loads.
What I discovered was that in order for this project to work you need:

All members to be completely dedicated to the service.

To do this, the cooperative has to be operative and functional for every new management team each year. My goal was to have this cooperative run self sufficiently (if that is an alright term to use) by before the summer. I came to the conclusion that the only way of doing this was by having the cooperative provide a service that all colleges would need. It was interesting to meet the other college radio stations and discuss everything with them, but the survival of the cooperative came down to its functionality.

I do have a suggestion on how this can be made to work, but I am far too busy this year to carry it out. I will leave this for another posting as I am beginning to ramble.

zap

I should also point out that I'm with Belfield FM in UCD, how about we go about trying to re-establish this with the aid of boards.ie members?

Riamfada

zap wrote:

I should also point out that I'm with Belfield FM in UCD, how about we go about trying to re-establish this with the aid of boards.ie members?

Im with Belend Fm aswell. Happy Days

thejuggler

BrianD wrote:

IThey had radio art and other such lofty stuff that was neither engaging radio for students nor the general population. Galway and Limerick have student stations - why not Dublin?

UCC in Cork also has a student station but suffers badly from the "lofty stuff" that you mention. I was involved with it for a while many years ago and the amount of work put into the programming was substantial. Its a pity that the listeners were so few. The conditions in the college radio licences are very restrictive - 60% speech content limited hours etc.

Its agood training ground for those seeking to get into news or speech radio but for anyone with music radio ambitions - you'd be better off going to a pirate or hospital radio.

projectmayhem

this talk of a unified dublin college radio station is nice and all, but there's an issue there, given the scope of each campus, especially DIT (seeing as it's campus = city center).. would such a station not just be a normal radio station, run by students? as such, would it not be extremely expensive and difficult to obtain a license for?

Agent Smith

I'm With Trinity Fm!
how are you's?

The Muppet

thejuggler wrote:

UCC in Cork also has a student station but suffers badly from the "lofty stuff" that you mention. I was involved with it for a while many years ago and the amount of work put into the programming was substantial. Its a pity that the listeners were so few. The conditions in the college radio licences are very restrictive - 60% speech content limited hours etc.

Its agood training ground for those seeking to get into news or speech radio but for anyone with music radio ambitions - you'd be better off going to a pirate or hospital radio.

Is the College Radio Licence not the same as the hospital stations ? I'm pretty sure it is and so they would be able to apply for whatever music to speech ratio they wanted, 80/20 appears to be acceptable . Of course they would have to justify their reasoning for their requested ratio.

lawhec

I believe that Queens Radio at QUB in Belfast are to soon broadcast on a low-powered licence on 1134 MW from sometime in February. It should be powerful enough to cover most of the Queens Campus area and the south of the city, though if they can set it up well it might be possible to cover most of the city.

cmmni

college is just like a community radio. the idea behind it is to intice people to switch on and tune in. i have worked in uni radio for 5 years starting when i was 16.

you are ment to train them but even offer for schools or students in TY to come on work experience week if they are interested in radio, get them to do a small programme, read the news even a promo and they will be on a high cos they will be on radio.

The Muppet

cmmni wrote:

college is just like a community radio. the idea behind it is to intice people to switch on and tune in. i have worked in uni radio for 5 years starting when i was 16.

College Radio will be covered under the Institutional Sound broadcating Licence which is very different from the community Licence. That should work in their favour if those filling in the application are on the ball. They could put a very good case for a quality service covering all aspects of radio given that they are training the future of the industry.