BY NICOLA JOSEPH
SYDNEY — Radio Skid Row will celebrate 20 years of fiercely independent radio on August 10 with special acoustic performance by Spearhead's Michael Franti, who will be in town for a concert at the Hordern Pavilion. Many others will perform and there will be a marketplace with many activist stalls. The event will be at the station's Marrickville site.
Radio Skid Row began with test broadcasts on a landline to Long Bay Jail. It first went to air as a fully licenced station in 1983, broadcasting to the most marginalised in the community. The first broadcasters included members of the Indigenous community, the Communist Party, migrant workers committees, squatters, prison activists and young people.
It was obvious from the beginning that Radio Skid Row was going to be unique. For a start, Skid Row allocated 20 hours of airtime to the local Koori community. This component became known as Radio Redfern and developed into a partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous broadcasters. The station called itself the Radio Skid Row-Radio Redfern Connexion and an Aboriginal-owned studio was built in Redfern, with a landline connecting it to the main studio.
In 1988, during the Bicentennial protests, the little Redfern studio managed to co-ordinate the crowds descending on Sydney and broadcast the protests to the rest of Australia. A group of Brisbane Murris, who were helping out with the broadcasts, were so inspired by what they saw that they decided to set up their own station in Brisbane. 4AAA Murri Country grew out of this idea and is now managed by Tiga Bayles, one of the founding members of Radio Redfern and a former chairperson of Radio Skid Row's board.
"The Radio Skid Row-Radio Redfern experience gave me the passion and commitment to continue working in the development of Indigenous media in Australia. At Radio Redfern, I realised the power of radio in breaking down barriers and developing understanding in the community. Most importantly, we were able to create a space which was Indigenous-owned and controlled", said Bayles.
Radio Redfern later evolved into Koori Radio, which continued to broadcast on Radio Skid Row until they applied for their own city-wide licence and went to air this year.
Ethnic broadcasting has always been high on the agenda for Radio Skid Row. Like the Indigenous broadcasters, the early ethnic broadcasters built their own studio at Leichhardt. The Migrant Workers Committee, which was made up mostly of workers from the Eveleigh railway workshops, were a fixture on air after knocking off from their shifts. They were also active on the station's board.
"As workers we were determined to go beyond the idea of having one Indigenous person and one migrant on the board", said Anna Schinella, who was the first multicultural coordinator at Skid Row and is now program manager at SBS Radio in Sydney.
"It was about genuine representation for people on the margins. They were speaking for themselves and to each other through the radio and educating anyone else who was prepared to learn", Schinella said.
The first management board wasn't so sure about the push for Indigenous and migrant airtime, nor were they comfortable with the idea that those groups should have significant numbers on the board. They were also nervous about the activists, squatters, artists and ex-prisoners who were involved.
After one year on air, the struggle between the workers and the original management came to a head, with the management shutting the station down and locking the broadcasters out. Public protests started the next day, on the street outside the Wentworth Building at Sydney University, where the station was then situated.
While the station was only off the air for a few weeks, it took five months of negotiations and campaigning for the workers to finally sack the management and take over the running of the station. From then, the station grew into one of the most significant forces on the community airwaves in Australia.
Today, the station continues its radical approach to radio by giving a voice to refugees and new, emerging communities being high on its agenda. It has also delivered training in five other countries and regularly has international visitors coming to learn more about community radio. It has continued to be a place where young people can be heard. Almost daily, you can tune in to hip hop, with many broadcasters being skilled rappers. There are all kinds of black and world music programs.
Last year, Radio Skid Row became the first station in Australia to broadcast the award-winning US current affairs show, Democracy Now! It airs daily at 10am.
"During the war on Iraq we kept getting calls from people asking 'How can the poorest station in Sydney broadcast the most intelligent and extensive coverage of the war?", said Paul Thusi, the station's current manager.
Radio Skid Row's birthday bash will be at the Addison Road Community Centre, 142 Addison Road, Marrickville. It kicks off at noon on Sunday, August 10. Entry is $10, with children free. Phone 9560 4254 for more details.
From Green Left Weekly, August 6, 2003.
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