David Melzer, Former General Manager
At the interview for the General Manager’s job in 1997 they said, ‘You realise that this is very old music you will be working with?’ and I had a line about having just been working with indigenous music which is way older than Beethoven.
Author: Nick Sharman: Did that impress them?
No, I don’t think they liked that too much, but I still got the job.
I was very keen for the station to develop. At the time I joined, we had a large and very enthusiastic team of volunteers who knew their music very well and that was a fantastic foundation to develop the station. We needed though to harness the skills of these volunteers in finance, fundraising and marketing. When I joined, the station wasn’t doing any marketing—this was seen as a bit of a dirty word by many of the volunteers—and I thought for the station to develop we need to really sell ourselves to the community.
There was still ongoing tension between volunteers and management. Some people wanted to return the station to an all-volunteer operation and that was a live option to get rid of the staff and just have volunteers running the place. We went through a strategic planning process where everyone had a voice, and the majority of people agreed that they wanted the station to develop with paid staff supported by volunteers.
I was used to managing a diverse range of people, that was my superpower, being able to get on with a broad range of people. I really enjoyed doing that because of the enthusiasm of the people who gave their time to the station. We also developed some democratic committee structures where people’s aspirations were able to be voiced and they felt they had some meaningful control over the station.
Nigel Kennedy was doing a tour, and he agreed, after doing a gig at the Concert Hall, to do a bit of a freebie at midnight at the convent. He said 'Don’t tell anyone', but word got out and we had a couple of thousand people squeezing into this hall at the convent. The whole thing was totally wild with people hanging off the rafters listening to him play, which was great.
It was a really good job at 3MBS, the longest time I have stayed in one job and for eleven years. What was engaging was people’s enthusiasm for the music they loved. I really enjoyed working with that enthusiasm.