The technology at Fresh 92.7 needs a serious update, and they need your help.
Fresh 92.7 is a community radio station, serving Adelaide’s youth and electronic music communities for almost 20 years. As you can imagine, running a radio station involves some pretty complex technological setups – from our on-air studios through to their volunteer workstations.
They have up-and-coming announcers, producers, journalists, sound engineers, designers and more who all need a solid IT setup to do great work, develop skills and create content both for the station and to further their careers.
Fresh been fortunate enough to have some very talented and generous volunteers over the last 19 years, who’ve put in the work and sourced the equipment they’ve needed to get by. However, Fresh has grown as a station and a business since then, and they’ve reached a point where they have to look towards the future and restructure their entire technological framework.
It’s outdated, it’s tired, and there’s not enough of it to go around.
If they don’t address this now, Fresh will crash.
As a not-for-profit community station, they need your help to LEVEL UP, and stabilise their systems so they can continue to deliver you the best electronic music, provide career pathways for their amazing volunteers and build an audience for Adelaide’s emerging artists.
https://www.facebook.com/fresh927/videos/1669196229789725/
So where’s the money going?
Simply put, there’s a whole bunch of technology-related stuff that they need to update right now.
IT Restructure: They want to simplify and stabilise their servers, systems & hardware, which will enable them to save money on things like electricity. Fun fact – Fresh 92.7 has the same number of servers as the Royal Adelaide Hospital. That’s way too many for a community radio station. The whole situation needs an overhaul – it’s messy, and it’s sending their power bills through the roof.
Training People: They need money for more software licenses so that their young journalists, audio engineers and other volunteers have the resources they need to create in their studios and provide you with the best possible service. Right now, they have a lot of eager and passionate volunteers and there’s just not enough to go around. So they’re forced to ask their Wavelength reporters and Production interns to edit audio on their own computers. With more computers and greater access to Pro Tools and Adobe products, they can ensure that all of the volunteers have access to industry standard setups, enabling them to create great content for you and gain the skills they need to move into the workforce.
Production Course: Fresh want to purchase hardware and software to bring their Production Course in-house. For the last few years, they’ve been teaching emerging artists how to put together their own electronic music tracks, using the facilities of the School of Audio Engineering. SAE have been really generous providing Fresh with their facilities for free but it means that Fresh 92.7 Production Course students don’t get the full Fresh experience – a pathway that provides the opportunity to go behind the scenes of the station, meet the decision makers and build relationships that will help them get their music played on the radio and receive the on-going support they need in their formative years to succeed.
Why do you need our money? Isn’t Sponsorship enough?
Fresh 92.7 is a community radio station, a not-for-profit organisation, and a registered charity. They’ve worked really hard throughout their 19-year history to generate revenue outside of donations, including through sponsorship (i.e. the ads you hear on the radio for other businesses) and their Fresh Mate subscriber program. However, even though Fresh have plenty of ads on-air and a respectable amount of Fresh Mates, running a radio station is expensive.
Here’s a few of the yearly costs Fresh have to cop:
· $130,000 for the licensing needed just to play the music
· $86,000 for our current IT support, internet and phone systems
· $65,000 to rent the building their studios are in
· $53,000 for power
· $53,000 on bookkeeping, auditing and insurance
You get the picture. You can see why Fresh are saying they don’t have a spare $100,000 to guarantee their future. So, they’ve put a call out asking everyone to please, DONATE NOW and Stop Fresh Crashing.
For more information, and to learn about the Fresh donor reward tiers, visit http://fresh927.com.au/the-fresh-92-7-level-up-stop-fresh-crashing/