Sam Bignell, IT & Broadcast Manager
Originally from NSW, I studied in Sydney and moved to Melbourne around 2011. I had a telecommunications background which provided me with an interest and fundamentals for broadcasting. In my previous role I had a day free and volunteered in technical production with Vision Australia Radio on the AM band which lasted five years.
3MBS was looking for someone technically adept; that had at least some exposure to broadcasting and radio and at the time I was looking around for new opportunities—that was in 2017.
The station at that time needed a fair bit of work to update its technology. It was suffering quite a lot of outages, and the technology at the time was a bit fragmented or questionable. The outages were largely caused by equipment failures in the studios. Our infrastructure and systems were long in the tooth, which at the time caused problems. Everything was very much hand cranked; our equipment was getting close to end of life.
Another problem was there wasn’t any real focus on monitoring—if there was an outage for example, the 'what and how' of what has taken place wasn’t always clear.
A lot of what I do in organising the technology is not so much going for the ideal or perfect solution but making sure it is efficient, fit for purpose and usable for our volunteers.
In replacing systems here, it is important to do it by degrees to help our presenters to cope with the changes. If you’re persistently overloading volunteers with new information, then you are going to cause stress and create problems in the community. Those frustrations that sort of come along with technical changes—we all experience them, so for me pragmatism is key.
We decided to select a new digital playout system for broadcasting after a visit that Adrian McEniery and I took to Radio New Zealand. They have a similar presenter body to us at 3MBS and the system seemed reliable as well as being easy to use for the volunteers. In our digital library we have high storage and record keeping requirements compared to other organisations, maintenance and operation of this for the most part is conducted by the efforts of station volunteers.
Some other projects to ensure the station's continuity have been our transmission works which have reduced our operational costs, five studio fitouts, network infrastructure upgrades and our new website which we hope is much more pleasant for our listeners.
I have been involved in a lot of the events we have been doing to improve the station’s reach such as the Marathons and the Made in Melbourne series. It is really pleasing to see the station expanding its reach in the community and further afield to enable more people to listen.
The passion that the volunteers have for the music they present is really inspiring and it’s a great community to be a part of.