2RPH Listener Survey - Barry Melville

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Speaker 2 00:30

Hello, welcome to this week's New Horizons episode. I'm Vaughan Benison, thanks for joining us. This week we get to discuss all things RPH - a subject very dear to my heart. We're joined by 2RPH General Manager Barry Melville.

It's not often we get to speak to the manager of one of the stations that broadcast New Horizons. Tell us a little bit about 2RPH, where does it broadcast and what is its actual service?

Speaker 1 00:54

Broadly speaking, we're a radio reading service. But I'm not quite sure that radio reading service captures it all. We're certainly part of a radio reading network. And we're part of a tradition going back over 40 years of RPH stations. So print disability radio, certainly our focus intended to remove the barriers that people with low vision or blindness have accessing published material, but not just those people, but others that may broadly have print disability or low-level disability or even social disadvantage. It's a service that started up in 1983 in Sydney, extended into Newcastle, and in the past two years, in my time here, as extended into Wollongong. So we now have coverage in New South Wales of some six million people, about just over 75% coverage reach.

Speaker 2 02:01

Well, we'd like to hope that 6 million people are listening, but to be clear for those not living in New South Wales, distance-wise, we're not talking about a huge distance, right, from Newcastle down to Wollongong. What would you say, about 300 kilometres? 

Speaker 1

Yeah, at the most, yes. And that covers the bulk of the population, which is really quite amazing. 

Speaker 2

And as you said, two RPH has been going since 1983. And you haven't been involved with it that long, but you have had a significant involvement with the broadcast industry for a while. Tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 1 02:35

Okay. Well, I'm middle-aged-ish, probably on the top end of middle-aged, so I've been involved in broadcasting for almost 40 years myself. And I've come at it from various different angles. I worked in Canberra as a graduate trainee in the, back in the 80s, and I worked in the Broadcasting Policy Division there. At a time when the government was putting together all sorts of proposals. I worked on cabinet submissions that were going to amalgamate the ABC and the SBS, and then I worked on a year later, that complete policy flip, and I worked on cabinet submissions that were going to separately incorporate ABC and SBS.

I worked on the future directions and delivery for commercial radio. I saw the whole opening up of additional FM spectrum, and then I moved to Sydney to join what was then called the ABT, but people might know that now as ACMA, the regulatory body for broadcasting. And then I left and worked in many different sort of areas for several years before finding myself in the late 90s working for the Community Broadcasting Association as a policy manager. And then eventually the general manager there, but this isn't going back now more than 15 years.

And for the past three years, as I said, I have been with two RPH, which is one of four independent radio or print disability radio services, which is part of the network of about 21 services, 17 of those being operated by Vision Australia. Vision Australia does a great job, but I'm trying to emphasise that there's four significant organisations, and I'm proud to manage the Sydney Wollongong Newcastle part of the network.

Speaker 2 04:38

And of course those stations are the key stations that take this program and the RPH network has been well established as a method of getting information out there for blind and vision impaired people as well as for people with other disabilities about events and services that they can be a part of. You I understand at 2rph are taking part in the National Listener Survey and finding out a little bit more about the people who listen to your service, what they like and what they don't like and other things like that. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 1 05:14

Well, it's true, Vaughn. We're part of a community radio listener survey that's run on a national basis under the direction of the CBAA, commissioned through the McNair research organisation. And it gives us a big set of figures for listenership and some demographics. But what we have lacked to date is any really fine granular detail of who's listening, like even something simple like that divide between people who have disability, people who don't. If someone has disability, is it specifically print disability? Because we know that other people, for various reasons, enjoy radio reading programs. And they also enjoy some of the other broader topical interest programs. 

So we're conducting a independent focus survey to try and supplement the data we already have. So just this week, we've launched a 2RPH listeners survey, and we're seeking to promote it broadly through a bunch of other organisations, such as Blind Citizens Australia, who have agreed to help promote our survey. And hopefully a growing list of relevant organisations who help us get people to tell us, as you've said very well, why you're listening, what you like about it, even what you don't like about it, how we can improve, how we can diversify some of the questions we need in order to make our content and our servers as suitable and as accessible to as many people who need it or want it indeed.

Speaker 2 07:12

And I think would you say Barry that it's equally important to find out from people who don't listen, obviously people who are within your broadcast area, Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, but people who don't listen to the service and why don't they listen? What would encourage them to listen a bit more?

Speaker 1 07:28

It's hard to provide incentive though to get those people to contact us. The philosophy that we as a print disability radio station share with this broader network of publishers, educators, policy makers, technology developers is really a commitment to adjust an equitable society based on information equity. When I was managing the station... and I've been involved in the RPH sector for quite a long time now, not quite 30 years... and one of the key aspects that has kept me involved with the sector for such a long time is, it always is amazing to me when you find somebody and inform them about a service that they have no notion of.

And the way that a service like the RPH services can change people's lives. And, you know, that means a lot to me and I've had that experience a number of times and I've heard from a lot of people across the country. I listened to your service or my mother when she was getting elderly or my father, when he was in hospital for six months or whatever, listened to your service and it fundamentally changed his life. And, you know, that made a huge difference to me and I would encourage you to keep up the good work.

Speaker 2 08:46

But tell us how do people get involved and how can people fill out that survey or be involved with that discussion?

Speaker 1 08:53

We certainly encourage people who already know about us to go to the 2rph website, which is just 2rph.org.au and you'll see the survey tab displayed prominently and it's simply a round about 30 questionnaire which we're incentivising, we're offering prizes - more on that in a minute - or we're encouraging people to listen in as first-time listeners and tell us what they think we need to actually specifically be better informed, more closely engaged and just a little bit self-critical so that the feedback is really important to us. It's the first time we've tried something like this, but we're inviting listeners first time or rusted on, whichever they be, to complete the survey.

And it should take you no more than seven or eight minutes and at the end of the survey we're simply inviting listeners to enter the free draw for a cash prize of $500 followed by up to five $100 prizes just simply by completing the survey. If people want to visit 2rph .org .au or call us on 02 9518 8811 between 9am and 5pm and do the survey over the phone with us, most welcome.

Speaker 2 10:20

Barry, the round table on information access for people with a print disability. You're attending this time. You went last year for a day or so, but you're actually presenting. And this is unusual because the round table doesn't get to hear from the RPH sector very often. Tell us a little bit about, firstly, why you think it's important for you to go to the round table and what your presentation will be about.

Speaker 1 10:45

Things are changing. I mean, a big, a big focus evidently for the round table and information access for people with print disabilities is that they're squarely confronting changes in technology and they're linking that up. I think I'm representing their cause correctly to say that they stand for empowerment and that technology, advocacy and collaboration are key to better representing and expanding the platform for people with print disability. The people involved in this round table year in, year out have common cause, use technology. We've got a whole lot of technology challenges in the broadcasting sector that means that technology isn't, broadcasting technology isn't limited to real time anymore.

We have distributed audio and what I mean by that is just simply podcasts. You can have content by appointment and all I mean is you can choose to stream a program or a service whenever you feel like it. And I think these things are really significant additions to what people with low vision or blindness would already be wanting to use for information access. So I think it's just a really good opportunity. And also I think I want to find out from people in this and it's a pretty impressive number of people judging from the conference I went to last year. It's an opportunity for them to know that we stand for disability advocacy, both at the 2RPH level and also we're proud members of Disability Media Australia, which includes all of the other print disability radio stations.

There's advocacy opportunities. There's more opportunity for people with disability and of course prominently print disability to contribute content. And that hasn't always been the case over our long history.

Speaker 2 12:55

And is that the focus of your presentation, is that how disabled people might be able to contribute content to your service? I certainly want to confront that.

Speaker 1 13:09

This is not a criticism of the proud history we've had, but it started as RPH services and it was to provide services for people who, for whatever reason, couldn't access published material. And so we have more than 200 volunteers at this station. Some of them have low vision or are legally blind, but not very many. So it's obviously people who are reading and providing that service. But radio is a lot more available and the technology is a lot better. It points to many opportunities for far greater inclusion of people with print disability in the process. So I'm hoping to sort of push that one along a bit further.

Speaker 2 14:03

Barry Melville, General Manager of 2RPH in Sydney. If you'd like to find out more about 2RPH, you can have a look at their website, 2rph.org.au ... If you'd like to get in touch with Blind Citizens Australia, bca.org.au is the website. The telephone number is 1800 033 660, 1800 033 660, or you can email bca@bca.org.au ... In the meantime, I'll talk to you again next week.

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