Gail Southwell, General Manager
I was looking for an extension of my career, I had been GM at Polyglot Theatre, and this job at 3MBS came up and I thought community radio— fantastic! I already had a strong interest in classical music so I thought this would be a good fit for me.
The vision that I have for the station is a community that provides a breadth of classical music in Melbourne and that listeners, artists, and anyone working in classical music or jazz, has 3MBS on their radar and thinks of it in positive terms.
When I first came to the job, our presenter training course was not up to standard. We really needed to get the course up to speed before we could invite younger people, who we were trying to attract, to come to the station. This is something I am most proud of improving training to improve the quality of the on-air product that we present.
When I arrived, I didn’t realise the enormity of the role and how much time it would take. That is not to say that I have not loved the challenge of doing it—you must if you are going to stay in the role for any length of time.
With the volunteers, I also wanted to listen to their stories and their vision for the station. I wanted to make myself present not just upstairs in my office. I get why other General Managers have spent a lot of time in their office because of the workload involved in the job.
One of the things that first struck me, even when I first came to the place for an interview, was the positive vibe of the station. I was greeted so warmly at the reception desk, and when I did a tour of the place people introduced themselves even though I was just a candidate, at that stage, for the position. It felt like people loved the station, and had a passion for something bigger than themselves and were giving joy to the wider community. That is just golden.