Bilby Awards 2013

The SACBA Bilby Awards celebrate the contribution community radio makes to our community and encourages high achievement within the sector.
This year we introduced our new silver pewter Bilby, from Save the Bilby Fund.

Winners of the 2013 Bilby Awards:

Can’t Get Out Of The Car

Winner – No excuse. Ever. Interview with Kat Evans – Kristen Theologou, Radio Adelaide

For White Ribbon Day, volunteer producer Kristen Theologou spoke to a friend about her own history of abuse. This is a careful and respectful production, a strong story that makes the issue of domestic violence real and personal. It’s compelling listening as Kat conveys her story and reflects on what happened, making for great can’t get out of the car radio.

Runner Up – Science week on The Vibe – Kath, Sasha & Viv, RoxFM

Performing science experiments live on radio can be tricky, but the wannabe professors from the Vibe and their guest Professor J managed to get an egg into and out of a bottle, live on air during science week for Roxby Downs school students.

Interview

Winner – J-Lowe interview with Toni Childs, RoxFM

Toni Childs lives in Australia and is self funding her latest album. J-Lowe has breakfast in bed with Toni Childs and learns about Kick Starter Campaigns and what she does in the shower!

Runner Up – Sonia Kisielecki interview with Iva Davies, Gulf FM

Iva Davies; frontman for Icehouse, Salvation Army volunteer, oboe player and philanthropist. Sonia Kisielecki talks with Iva about all things, from his love of bagpipes to writing film scores and Aussie pub rock.

Sponsorship Message

Winner – Race Day, Fresh 92.7

The main goal of this message was to promote the event and push ticket pre-sales. With the right talent, sound effects and message the event sold out a week prior, proving this message worked for everyone.

Runner Up – Karaoke @ the Club – Rox FM

Most people sing Karaoke when they’ve had a few drinks, in a room full of
like-minded people and with backing music. How willing would you be, to do karaoke without these things? This was the dilemma when approached to promote Karaoke@theClub. The local community club was thrilled with the result and luckily our performers’ enthusiasm for karaoke has not dampened, despite regularly hearing themselves on the radio

Station ID or program promo

Winner – Bleep! This Game Rocks – Steve Parker & Tom Campbell, Radio Adelaide

Bleep! was a retro game show on Radio Adelaide. Steve Parker and Tom Campbell proved that, if you do radio right, any topic can be entertaining and appealing. Losing the show was awful, losing the message from the airwaves was much worse!

Runner Up – Analogue Love Life – Fresh 92.7

The ‘Commit to Community Radio’ campaign resulted in the Fresh team producing some very funny messages, promoting digital radio as a more attractive alternative to analogue or FM radio. This message shows a young guy attempting to impress a girl with music, only to find a dicey FM signal. If only he had a digital radio! The message promotes the crystal clear quality of digital radio in a fun, lighthearted way and resulted in Fresh 92.7 generating the most audience response nationally to the campaign.

Local Music Program

Winner – Local Noise – Radio Adelaide

Local Noise is a long standing program on Radio Adelaide that has recently been expanded and revamped. Each week an SA act, of any genre, plays a 30 minute set live to air and chats about their music and current projects. Each live set and interview is uploaded to the Local Noise page on the web site and the posts are proving popular with local music fans.

Runner Up – The Saucermen special on Rockabilly Fever & Doo Wop Chills – Rob Leo Wow FM

Rockabilly Fever and Doo Wop Chills is a 2 hour specialist music program on Monday nights on Wow FM at Semaphore. Adelaide has a vibrant but somewhat small community of rockabilly musicians that often appear in more than one band. This hour long Saucermen special examined the origins of this iconic Adelaide band, their discography and where the band is heading.

Outside Broadcast

Winner – Royal Adelaide Show – Coast FM

In September 2012 Coast FM broadcast their daytime programs from the Royal Adelaide Show – 28 programs, 63 hours of live broadcast, 167 volunteers at the showgrounds, 20 presenters at the station and a tech support team of 3 on duty for 9 days. A purpose built studio was located in the Goyder/Jubilee pavilion and over the week Coast volunteers interacted with thousands of people. On the last day of the show the last program broadcast was the six o’clock request program. The rock n’ roll legends dance club gave precision rock n’ roll demonstrations, attracting a large crowd and providing a great finale to the OB.

Runner up – Do What You Peel – Radio Adelaide

Do What You Peel live event was a highlight of the annual Format festival. The content of this designed-for-radio event was ambitious, with live music, performance art, mural painting, bike riding, handball and a parkour demonstration. As the finale, the crowd came together for a live mass karaoke sing along to the Bangle’s Eternal Flame. This OB is a great example of a community station collaborating with emerging local artists.

Sports broadcast

Winner – The Scoreboard with Gotcha, Woody & Dags, Rox FM

With over 50 sporting clubs in a town of 4000 people, including netball, basketball, football, cricket, swimming, soccer, squash, tennis, athletics, golf, lawn bowls, darts and dirt circuit clubs, you are hard pressed to find a local resident that isn’t connected with one of these clubs. The Scoreboard broadcasts Thursday evenings and is hosted by local sporting identities Gotchy, Woody and Dags. The show is so popular it’s not uncommon to see people standing at the RoxFM window watching and listening to the program. RoxFM have recently started replaying the program on Saturday mornings for those who miss it earlier in the week – usually due to training!

Runner Up – On Yer Bike with Chris & Mike – Radio Adelaide

During the Tour Down Under Radio Adelaide turned some of the drive time slot over to special coverage of this huge event. The logistics of covering a race that ranged across the city and state, with variable start and finish times, was a production challenge that these volunteer broadcasters dealt with beautifully. Race results interspersed with interviews and information made the shows listenable and entertaining as well as informative.

Community Event

Winner – Oz Music Day – Coast FM

Oz Music day was held on January 27th in the gardens surrounding Coast FM. Backed by the City of Marion and many local businesses, the event brings together more than 300 families for a full day of music, food and activities, including the Aussie sausage sizzle and Thong Throwing competition. The Weekend Warriors provided the music, with 13 bands performing on 2 stages set up in the park. The community provided the dancing! This event was entirely organised by more than 40 Coast volunteers and the response from listeners and other community members shows that Coast know what their community likes!

The Runner up – The Happy Healthy Expo Breakfast, Rox FM

Last year Rox supported the Roxby Downs Happy Healthy Expo by having their own stall, with slogans like “you know you’re home with RoxFM’ and doing live crosses to the event. The stall was set up as a warm inviting lounge room where visitors were encouraged to stop, relax, grab some fruit, chat and listen to tunes in comfort. RoxFM’s involvement in the Expo was a great success. Local forums, businesses and services promoted a happy and healthy lifestyle to the community and the event provided great learning opportunities for RoxFM volunteers. With Leroy in the studio and Julian vox popping on the streets, the event attracted over 500 visitors to the RoxFM lounge room.
This event reflects the Roxby Downs community and RoxFM is commended for their participation within their community.

Volunteer

Great volunteers are enthusiastic, hard working people of integrity who give their time, energy and services because they are passionate about community radio.

The nominees for Volunteer of the Year were:

  • The Doran family, ROX FM
  • Jay Burnell, Fresh FM
  • Momir Dacic & Gina Traljic, Radio Adelaide

The winner of the 2013 volunteer of the year is the Doran family, Rox FM
Congratulations to you all, well done, we acknowledge your commitment to community radio and your station says thank you for all you do.

Above-and-Beyond

This year the SACBA Board acknowledged Tim Borgas with a special award, Outstanding Contribution to Community Radio, for his technical and governance support to stations. Tim has helped many stations to get back on air due to technical problems, through the equipment bank and visiting stations, to over the phone advice and fault finding. More than half our member stations have benefited from Tim’s support over the last 12 months and the board wished to recognise Tim’s outstanding contribution to our stations.