Connections,community,coconuts: exploring the history of regional community radio

Abstract

Regional community radio enriches and diversifies local media landscapes in Australia. It is also a space where communities isolated from mainstream processes of media production can actively participate and, subsequently, ‘see’ themselves reflected in their own media. While the importance of regional community radio generally is well-established, less explored is the history of regional stations. Most historical research on Australian community radio focusses on urban stations while regional and rural stations, which form the majority of the sector, are distinctly underrepresented. Exploring the history of regional community radio stations reveals the relationship between stations and how regional communities choose to represent themselves and construct their own mediatised identity. This article details the findings of a case study focussed on North Queensland station Triple T. One of the oldest regional community radio stations in Queensland, the history of Triple T offers rich insight into the mediatised identity of regional communities.

Introduction

Australia is home to a vibrant community radio sector, one of the most well-established in the world. Regional community radio stations play a vital, if at times underappreciated, role: providing essential local news and information, and maintaining and reinforcing a sense of community. In the contemporary Australian media landscape, the role of regional community radio stations is growing in importance. The pandemic has exacerbated an existing trend of media outlets syndicating and consolidating their regional coverage (Zion et al., 2016; Hess, 2020; Meade, 2021; Fisher et al., 2022). One-third of regional community radio stations report that they are the only source of locally produced content in their area (CBAA, 2020). A lack of locally produced content means that vast parts of Australia do not have access to local news and information, nor are they likely to see or hear voices like theirs reflected in the media that ostensibly serves their interests. Regional community radio stations are notable exceptions to the broader trend of syndication and consolidation and serve a vital function within their communities.

Despite the importance of regional community radio both to the sector and to regional communities, there is a dearth of literature about regional community radio stations. This is particularly noticeable among the historical work on Australian community radio. While urban stations are well-represented, with colourful and detailed histories painstakingly recorded and, in some case, critically analysed, the same cannot be said for regional stations. As the Australian community broadcasting sector approaches its 50^th anniversary, it is timely to consider the underexplored aspects of community radio. This research begins to address this gap by focussing on a case study of a regional community radio station and taking an in-depth approach to documenting and exploring its history and role within the community. This article presents Triple T, in Townsville, North Queensland, as a case study of both the historical richness of regional community radio stations, but also as an example of the role of community radio in establishing and maintaining a sense of community identity. Applying a critical historiography approach, this article discusses several key aspects emerging from a microhistory of Triple T. This microhistory reveals the complex relationships between a community radio station and its communities and offers insight into the potential role that community radio plays in helping communities craft their own sense of mediatised identity.

Regional community radio in Australia

Community radio is Australia's largest independent broadcasting sector. With more than 450 broadcasting services reaching 5.3 million listeners each week (CBAA, 2021a), the Australian community radio sector represents one of the most well-established and, relatively, well-support in the world (Anderson et al., 2020). Community radio enriches the Australian media landscape by serving diverse geographic communities and communities of different interests and lived experiences including people with print disabilities, LGBTIQ+ communities, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, First Nations communities, youth, older people, religious groups, and special interest music (CBAA, 2021a). Regional stations generally fall into the former category. In their sector-wide study, Forde et al. (2002: 36) describe the different cultural roles of regional versus metropolitan stations in communities: where the saturation of metropolitan media markets forces stations to differentiate themselves and their communities – to be an ‘alternative’ – regional stations do not have the same ‘critical mass’ and ‘often adopt a generalist format catering to their geographic constituency’.

Approaching its 50-year anniversary, Australia's community radio has a long and vibrant history. The initial push for community broadcasting came from four distinct, and seemingly disparate, groups - ethnic communities, universities, left-wing political groups, and fine music enthusiasts – who collectively lobbied successive governments for more equitable and diverse access to the airwaves (Melzer, 2010). Given the diverse aims of the early supporters, there is some debate over Australia's first ‘official’ community radio station, which depends largely on the definition of community broadcasting applied at the time. Radio Adelaide was established in 1972 as VL 5UV under an ‘E-class’ education license (Anderson et al., 2020). Other early stations include CHY FM in Coffs Harbour which was cable broadcasting prior to receiving a community broadcasting license in 1973; 2CT in Sydney and 3CR in Melbourne, which was first licensed as advertising-restricted commercial stations in 1974, alongside 3ZZ, a ‘community access’ station with multilingual programming (Thornley, 1999). Also noteworthy is the role of educational institutions in supporting community broadcasting. In addition to Radio Adelaide, Triple R in Melbourne, 2SER in Sydney, and Curtin Radio in Perth were other early community radio stations supported by universities, stations that have been referred to as some of the most resilient and enduring in the world (Gordon, 2012). Universities were crucial in the licensing of early regional stations. One of the government's initial strategy documents for the allocation of public broadcasting licenses (the precursor to ‘community’ licenses) seemingly exploited the sector's dependence on government funding and technical expertise by only offering licenses in capital cities – where government offices were concentrated (Thornley, 1999). In contrast, educational institutions such as the University of Newcastle, the University of New English in Armidale, and Mitchell College of Advanced Education in Bathurst were among the first regional community broadcasters (Thornley, 1999), with their institutional support partially circumnavigating reliance on city-centric government funding and know-how. Despite the success of these pioneering stations in the cities and regional areas, it was not until 1978 that community broadcasting was formally enshrined in legislation.

Despite more than 50 years of community radio history, and a strong accompanying culture of academic research developed over the last 20 years, Australia's regional community stations are often overlooked. This is by no means a uniquely Australian phenomenon: community radio histories are often focussed on national sectors: for example, Guo's (2014, 2017) work on US community broadcasting and Pavarala and Malik (Pavarala and Malik, 2007; Pavarala, 2013, 2015) on community radio in India. There is also historical work on specific aspects of community broadcasting: Gordon's (2012) history of the relationship between universities and community broadcasting (explored in the Australian context by O’Connor (2010)), and Raghunath's (2020) in-depth exploration of the history of community broadcasting policy development in South Asia, for example. Notably, King (2017) traces an ambitious global history of community radio. In Australia, Thornley (1999) offers a detailed history of the policy environment leading to the licensing of community broadcasting, Meadows and Molnar (2002) have also traced the development of First Nations media including broadcasting, and, more recently, the history of three early urban stations was explored by Anderson et al. (2020). Other historical approaches focus on individual stations, such as Fox's work with Melbourne's 3CR (3CR Community Radio, 2016; Fox, 2019), Melbourne ethnic broadcaster 3ZZ (Dugdale, 1979), Brisbane's 4ZZZ (Knight, 2001, 2007; Anderson, 2017), 2SER in Sydney (Giuffre, 2019), and Radio Adelaide (Bedford, 2019), among others. This research seeks to further contribute to this body of work by focussing on the history of Triple T – a community radio station in the regional centre of Townsville in North Queensland.

Regional community radio represents a significant part of the sector. While most community radio listeners live in urban centres on the coast, the vast majority of community radio stations are located outside of the major cities (CBAA, 2021a). 76% of stations are in regional or remote areas and one-third of these stations are the only media outlet with local programming in their area (CBAA, 2020). Regional community radio stations play an important role in their communities, acting as both a vital source of information and a way for communities to see themselves and their experiences in the media (Meadows et al., 2007). This is particularly important for regional areas, given the concentration of media ownership and production in the cities and the various content licenses and affiliate relationships that influence regional media (Brevini and Ward, 2021). Media produced in cities relies on hackneyed discourses when discussing regional areas: Waite (2018) describes two commonly reproduced discourses in discussions of regional and rural places: the ‘idyll’ – where regional and rural places are framed as closer to nature, safer and with stronger community bonds (O’Connor, 2005; Rye, 2006) – and the ‘rural dull’ – more conservative, traditional, racist, and static than urban counterparts (Goodwin-Hawkins, 2015). These discourses are so pervasive that they were found to be prevalent within regional and rural communities themselves, not just their urban counterparts (Short, 2006). Community media offers an important intervention here, as it provides opportunities for local communities to take ownership over the processes of media production in order to create and control their own media self-representations. The diversity of media outlets in regional and rural areas, particularly those that produce local content, is rapidly diminishing (Hess, 2020; Meade, 2021; Fisher et al., 2022). As newsrooms increasingly consolidate and local bulletins yield to state-based or even national news, self-representation and access to media production processes becomes even more important.

Mediatised identity

The increasing mediatisation of society has meant that the expression of identity is increasingly important in everyday life. From curated social media profiles to the types of media outlets we engage with, each choice represents a performance of mediatised identity. Media plays a critical role in identity formation as it impacts on the way we understand and define ourselves and others. Fornäs and Xinaris (2013: 12) argue that ‘people shape their tools of communication that then shape them’. Traditional media – newspapers, radio, and television – seem obsolete in this sense: lacking the choice and immediacy of their digital counterparts. Yet traditional forms of media, particularly at the hyperlocal, grassroots level, represent important outlets for the construction, maintenance, and expression of individual and community identity.

In discussions of media participation, identity is intrinsically linked to voice (Tacchi et al., 2012). Voice represents personhood and individuality, and is significant as a marker of personal identity: Kunreuther describes this as ‘as natural in its relationship to identity as the fingerprint or signature’ (2012: 51). The increasing consolidation and homogenisation of mainstream media spaces have led to a prevalence of what has been termed ‘voice poverty’. Voice poverty refers to where groups with negligible access to the mass media, often groups not recognised by the market, are denied opportunities for political participation and self-expression (Tacchi and Kiran, 2008; Malik, 2012; Thomas and van de Fliert, 2015). Thus, the expression of mediatised identity is far from an exercise in self-indulgence, it has serious implications for political engagement and participation. Therein lies the importance of community media in this space.

The expression of identity is part of what differentiates community media from the relatively homogeneous mainstream media. For groups that are excluded or silenced in the ‘monolithic public sphere’ (Vojvoda, 2015), community media offers a space to create and disseminate alternative discourses in alternative public spheres (Fraser, 1990). Community radio is widely considered among the academic literature and the industry rhetoric to be a ‘voice for the voiceless’, but in a more targeted analysis, Bailey et al. (2007: 14) suggest that participants in community media can ‘take responsibility for distributing their own ideologies and representations’. Community media, therefore, represent an important ‘challenges to hegemony’ (Atton, 2001: 19) both in terms of overt political goals and also indirect challenges to dominant media approaches and structures which may subvert and address voice poverty.

In the Australian context, the consolidation and syndication of media platforms mean that regional communities are increasingly affected by voice poverty. When a small regional town has its news coming from a capital city, which may be hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away, there is little opportunity for those in that small town to see themselves and their stories represented, and even less of an opportunity to participate in the processes of media production to tell their own stories. Community radio can be an oasis in these ‘news deserts’ and act as important amplification and repositories of community stories and identity. This forms the basis of the theoretical approach to this research: community radio's role in providing voice and facilitating alternative public spheres is well-established, but how community radio stations construct and maintain a sense of mediatised identity, particularly over time and within regional communities, is less understood.

Methodology and methods

This research explores issues of mediatised identity in regional community radio by taking a critical historiography approach to crafting a microhistory of Triple T, a community radio station in the regional centre of Townsville, Queensland. One of the oldest community radio stations in Queensland and the 35^th station to receive a license in Australia, Triple T officially began broadcasting in July 1982. The station broadcasts to the greater Townsville area, with the broadcast range extending south to the Burdekin, west to Charters Towers, and north through the Hinchinbrook region. While officially Triple T's community of interest is classed as ‘general geographic area’ (ACMA, 2022), the station features a range of programming including talks and interviews, multicultural and multilingual programming, and shows dedicated to specific music genres, such as classical, jazz, country, rock and nostalgia. The station has two full-time staff members – a station manager and an administration officer – and a part-time technical manager. Broadcasting, administration, events, and other station activities are largely dependent on the work of a steady roster of volunteers. The station is financed through a combination of paid sponsorship from local businesses, listener memberships (subscriptions), and government funds, administered in the form of grants via the Community Broadcasting Foundation. Triple T was approached to participate in this research for two reasons: firstly, it is one of the oldest, non-metro community radio stations in Queensland, and secondly, the station's milestone anniversary (40 years in 2022) represented an opportunity for applied, community-engaged research to record, preserve, and celebrate Triple T's history into the future.

This research brings together critical historiography with practice-led analysis, an innovative methodological intervention that aims to capture the context and changes in communities over time and the role of community radio therein. Much of the research on the history of community radio in Australia and globally takes a traditional, linear interpretation of historical research. A critical historiography approach is overtly emancipatory and places emphasis on exploring how communities engage with and produce knowledge about their past (Hirsch and Stewart, 2005). Such an approach has parallels in ethnography, given its focus on context and immersion, while also representing a departure from historical research that privileges archival or authoritative sources. A critical historiography approach has an emancipatory agenda and seeks to empower those with little or no voice in society (Berger, 1996). Rather than viewing history as a linear progression that is narrated objectively, critical historiography applies an analytic lens to the writing and telling of histories to question traditional emphasis on ‘science’ and ‘objectivity’, and subvert the ‘epistemological relativism’ that accompanies value judgements over whose histories are count (Pihlainen, 2012). This is a particularly valuable approach for studies of community media histories as it allows for an analytic lens to explore how identity has been constructed, and by whom. A critical historiography approach has been applied to studies of community radio policy (see Raghunath, 2020) but has not yet been applied to explorations of community radio stations.

While critical historiography offers a valuable analytic lens, this approach will be used to guide the development of a ‘microhistory’ of a regional community radio station. Microhistories refer to the ‘intensive historical study of a relatively well-defined smaller object’ (Magnússon and Szijártó, 2013: 5). Microhistories, in contrast with case studies, are not concerned with an overarching theoretical framework, comparability, or a hypothesis, instead they seek to find answers to undefined large questions in small places. Focussing on a community radio station as the subject of a microhistory offers insight into the ‘lived experience… on the micro-level of everyday life’ while also offering more general insight into past societies (Szijártó, 2002: 210). While microhistories are often presented as a methodological approach to writing history ‘from below’, Apor (2008) suggests that a critical perspective must also be applied to avoid reproducing dominant historical narratives and to ensure that the complexity of social and cultural relationships are not lost in the micro focus. Thus, a critical historiography approach creates space to situate microhistories within their broader context from a lens of numerous temporalities. Critical historiography also allows for the analysis of the creation of historical texts, while microhistories as a method paint a vivid picture of the role of community radio stations within their communities by drawing on a diverse range of sources and bringing historical reflections and objects into conversation with contemporary experiences and practice.

Developing microhistories through a lens of critical historiography makes an important contribution to understanding of regional community radio. Current literature on regional community radio stations is limited to reflections on government policy and anecdotal histories, some of which exist only within the knowledge of the communities involved. While community knowledge and oral histories are invaluable sources of historical understandings, recording, analysing and bringing these stories into conversation with contemporary knowledge, literature and practices offer a multi-faceted understanding of the ever-changing role of community radio stations within their communities. A critical historiography approach to crafting microhistories creates methodological space for different types of data and knowledge that offer insight into the complexity of everyday life and the impacts of community radio.

While critical historiography informed the standpoint and analysis of the data, and microhistories shaped the focus of data collection, the specific methods of data collection were archival research and interviews with people associated with the station. Historical texts and items were drawn from a range of sources including desk research at the State Library of Queensland, which yielded policy documents and news articles; archives held at the station, which included internal and external station communications, policy documents and license applications, training materials, budgets and financial documents, photographs, program recordings, newspaper clippings and station merchandise; and the personal archives of interviewees. All of these historical texts were digitised (with permission of the owners and where digitisation was possible) and shared with the station to add to their own archives. A total of 24 interviews were conducted and participants were recruited using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling. Based on archival research and early discussions with the station, key interviewees were identified and additional participants were suggested and recruited as the interviews took place.

It is important to briefly discuss what is meant by the terms ‘regional’ and ‘metropolitan’. Sector reports classify stations as metropolitan, suburban, regional, or rural and remote (CBAA, 2021b), whereas the governing body, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, uses the classifications of metropolitan, regional and remote (ACMA, 2022). For the purpose of this research, these categories have been consolidated into ‘metropolitan’, referring to metropolitan and suburban stations in or adjacent to capital cities, and ‘regional’ which includes regional, rural and remote stations. While recognising that each of these geographic categories have distinct experiences, grouping the categories reflect dominant approaches in the literature. While this article focusses on a case study of a regional station, the histories of rural and remote stations represent important aspects of future inquiry.

Findings and discussion

The microhistory of Triple T revealed several key themes that offer broader insight into the relationship between regional community radio stations and their communities over time. The following section discusses two of the key themes with the most significant links to community identity. The first theme relates to the establishment of Triple T and the historical context of the emerging station's identity, while the second theme explores the role of the station in creating collective fictions that both simulate and facilitate community connections.

A lovely bunch of coconuts

Perhaps the most emblematic example of community radio stations capturing and reinforcing aspects of community identity is the story of the Triple T coconuts. Triple T was first granted a license in 1982 after some 4 years of campaigning. There was a strong sense that those in the ‘south’ – the capital cities and governmental halls of power – were uninterested in a regional town and their repeated applications for a community broadcasting license. In an act of frustration, the Townsville FM Broadcasting Society – the precursor organisation to Triple T – mailed a bunch of coconuts, each bearing messages such as ‘Fair Go for Public Broadcasting’, to the Department of Post and Telecommunications in Canberra. While there was no formal response from the Department or the Minister responsible, the station was granted a hearing and, subsequently, a license not long after, leading many Triple T founders to attribute their license to this bunch of campaigning coconuts.

“After three years and fourteen days, 25 kilos of paperwork and half a dozen coconuts (sent to Tony Staley [Minister for Post and Telecommunications] – with messages on them), 4TTT-fm has been licensed.” – The Townsville Community Broadcasting Company Limited newsletter, 23 September 1981

What initially seems like a quirky anecdote becomes more meaningful through both the emphasis that research participants placed on the story and when placed in its historical context. The coconuts have become an important part of station ‘lore’, with the station's 40^th birthday celebrations prominently featuring a replica of the famous bunch. The coconuts were a recurring theme throughout the interviews, particularly with those who had been involved since the station's founding. They spoke of the assumed novelty and creativity of the stunt – “A coconut in the capital city… people would be curious: ‘what's this all about?’” – and the perceived subversion of stifling government processes – “A coconut is too big to file so you’ve got to take action”. This uniquely North Queensland act of rebellion was a clear source of pride for many of the interviewees, with several asking, unprompted, if I had heard the story of the coconuts.

The historical context of Townsville and Triple T sheds further light on the significance of the coconuts in relation to community identity. Townsville, and North Queensland more broadly, have long been considered a ‘frontier’ – a contested space of invasion and resistance – with white settler-colonists in conflict with the land, the sea, and local Aboriginal groups (Bolton, 1970; Loos, 2017). Dotted along the North Queensland coast are landmarks of the perceived hostility of the landscape to colonisers – Mount Sorrow, Cape Tribulation, Weary Bay, Shipwreck Bay, Cape Flattery, and so forth. The representations of conflict led to constructions of North Queensland as the ‘big man's frontier’ where only the toughest (white, male) settler-colonists attempted to carve out a living (Bolton, 1970: ix). While the materiality of a North Queensland frontier has changed significantly, the frontier mindset seems to have embedded over time: from white invasions and attacks on Aboriginal communities (Burke et al., 2020; see Spearim, 2022), to anti-migrant sentiments and violence (Woods, 2018; Indelicato, 2020), and also the vulnerable yet strategic position of North Queensland during the Pacific conflicts of the Second World War (Palazzo, 2006). The most enduring legacy of the frontier, however, is the positioning of North Queensland as entirely separate and distinct from ‘the south’.

The disconnect between North Queensland as a regional area and ‘the south’, referring to urban centres of power in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, cleaves a clear divide in hearts and minds. This frontier mindset and divide between the North and the South is long-standing, with roots in the Separatist movement of the late 1800s. Separatist activists campaigned for independence from the Brisbane-based Government that was seen to be depriving the North of investments and public works, and crippling the sugar industry that was so important to Northern livelihoods (Bolton, 1970). The perceptions of a dismissive and disengaged south were central to calls for North Queensland statehood. As J.H. Peake, a delegate to the North Queensland News State Movement Convention of 1955, proclaimed: “We will control our own affairs and not be controlled by any Government a thousand miles away, which takes little interest in our needs” (quoted in Bolton, 1970: x). The echoes of these early Separatists remain, with the short-lived North Queensland First party contesting the 2019 Queensland state election on a platform of self-governance and statehood for North Queensland (Brennan, 2020).

Not only did the north-south divide affects how North Queenslanders position themselves in opposition to their Southern counterparts, it has also affected the discursive renderings of people from the North of the state. Ryan and Buckridge (2007: 301) observe that discourses of ‘northern peculiarity’ dominate representations, framing North Queensland as “the home of redneck reactionaries and gun nuts, as well as crocodiles, dolphins and cane toads”. These dominant framings were a hurdle to be overcome in the quest for Triple T's broadcasting license. The assumption that Townville's radio audiences were adequately served by the mainstream offerings of country and western music and sport directly correlates to these discursive constructions. In fact, this correcting this assumption was a key driver of the establishment of the station.

Early Triple T participants lamented the state of Townville's airwaves referring to the prevalence of ‘rubbish music’ and the lack of classical music, jazz, and discussions about current affairs. Far from ‘redneck reactionaries’, it was classical music afficionados and university researchers who were among the earliest advocates for community broadcasting in Townsville. The idea took shape in the staff club of James Cook University through discussions between a solicitor and law tutor, and a Dutch electrical engineering lecturer. The experiences of successful pioneering community radio stations like Brisbane's 4ZZZ were a general guide but, despite the role of the university in the early discussions, Triple T was never intended to follow a campus radio/student union approach. Community access was central, with a call for interested parties placed in the Townsville Daily Bulletin in June of 1978 seeking “… devotees of classical, pop-rock, and jazz music” to form a lobby group. The community response was overwhelming with standing room only at the first meeting of the soon-to-be Townsville FM Broadcasting Society. Early member was solicitors, surgeons, lecturers, students, primary school teachers, locomotive engineers, shop-owners, tradespeople, activists, hairdressers and many others. The diverse backgrounds, musical interests and even cultural differences were formative in shaping the emerging concept of what Triple T would look like. Not only would diverse music interests including classical, jazz, blues, rock and easy listening be represented, but there was also to be ‘access programming’ in a range of languages other than English, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program – which would become the precursor to 4K1G, Townsville's First Nations community radio station – and a range of talks programs focussed on issues ranging from women's rights to communism to environmental conservation. This commitment to representing diverse interests and experiences, not to mention the subversion of media production as an exclusive and highly professionalised space, suggests an important intervention in the media voice poverty that much of Townsville was experiencing at the time. In practical terms, however, wrangling these diverse stakeholders was no mean feat, with the station's founder recalling ‘hosing down many fights’ in the early days. While in many ways Townsville was still a frontier town for community broadcasting, it was self-determination through robust governance procedures and structures, rather than any ‘northern peculiarities’ that allowed for the effective establishment of and campaigning by the Townsville FM Broadcasting Society and all its diverse members.

This disconnect between the north and the south became a key campaign message throughout Triple T's efforts to secure a license. In the license application itself, Schedule 14a situates the proposed station by contrasting the experiences of Northern Queensland with the south:

“The physical isolation of the area and the fact that improvements in transportation have been slow in developing has created the need for North Queenslanders to strive to provide for themselves the amenities of life regarded by southern Australians as a normal part of governmental responsibility…” (Townsville Community Broadcasting Company Limited, 1981: 74).

A further example was a satirical legal summons (Figure 1) issued “by virtue of the authority of the power generated by years of frustration” to Tony Staley, the Minister of Post and Telecommunications at the time or, as he was referred to in the summons: “Minister for State in charge of broadcast policy implementation in the dismally deprived area of North Queensland”. The summons called on the Minister to appear before “the Good People of Townsville” and answer to the charge that:

Figure 1.

Excerpt from Summons to Judgement to Tony Staley [Image description: An excerpt from a mock legal summons sent to Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tony Staley by Triple T as part of their campaign for a broadcasting license.].

“the Good People of Townsville have been led to expect that their airwaves would be shortly resounding with the strains of much fine music and other excellent broadcast material and whereas it has come to pass that the Good People of Townsville are yet hearing nothing but news of horse racing, pig prices from the Outer Paroo and other manic meandering mush”.

These actions – the summons, the license wording, and the coconuts – offer insight into how Triple T has been moulded in the image of its community. There is, within these actions, a subversion of southern perceptions of North Queenslanders. Far from the laconic, ‘rednecks’ of common discourse, what can be seen here is an articulate and satirical advocacy that echoes the language of the political processes while maintaining just a touch of ‘northern peculiarity’.

‘Diversity with tolerance’: building affective community

A further key theme that emerged from the data was the role of Triple T in building and maintaining a sense of community among its volunteers and listeners. The station's founding tenet of ‘diversity with tolerance’ has shaped the stations engagement with the community over the past four decades. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (2010), this section argues that, through engagement with diverse publics and exploiting complex structures of community membership, Triple T represents the object at the centre of an affective community. An important example of the station's affective community can be seen through the work of the language presenters.

As mentioned earlier, community radio stations are formally affiliated with communities of geography, lived experience, or interest. While useful in a broad sense, these interpretations of ‘community’ fail to capture the complexity of the term. This complexity is clearly demonstrated at Triple T: ostensibly servicing the geographic community of Townsville, the station also broadcasts programming focussed on niche musical interests, programming in languages other than English, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island programming, as well as programmes targeting both young people and older people. In this way, considering a geographic interpretation of community has a homogenising effect, downplaying richness and diversity. In this way, defining communities with geographic boundaries can erase minorities and marginalised groups within those boundaries through generalisations and assumptions of homogeneity (Sihlongonyane, 2009). I posit that a more useful way of understanding community identity in the context of community radio is to apply Ahmed's (2010: 38) concept of ‘affective community’ where: “we align ourselves with others by investing in the same objects”. Ahmed is primarily referring to the affective dimensions of happiness in this case, but the data from Triple T suggests that nostalgia may have an equally potent affective dimension in connecting diverse segments of a broader community.

The value of exploring Triple T as an affective community is grounded in the station's historical commitment to embracing the complexity and diversity of the broader geographic Townsville community. Prior to the coconuts and the formal license application, the idea for what would become Triple T took seed following some informal conversations between a law tutor and an engineering researcher at the James Cook University staff club. As mentioned earlier, central to many early members’ involvement in the Society was a disdain for the airwave offerings at the time. This dissatisfaction was central to early recruitment, with the founding member submitting a letter to the editor of the Townsville Daily Bulletin (Drew, 1978: 4) calling for:

“expressions of support from members of the public in relation to the establishing of a Community Frequency Modulation (FM) radio station in Townsville. It is envisaged that devotees of classical, pop-rock and jazz music will form a lobby group which will endeavour to obtain a license and set up the necessary broadcasting apparatus”.

This broad call for support was met with enthusiasm from the local community. One participant described the first meeting at a local school hall: “When I got there the place was full, I was lucky to get a seat, people were standing around. The interest was phenomenal.” These expressions of support and subsequent meetings led to the formation of the Townsville FM Broadcasting Society. The society consisted of a range of people – surgeons, teachers, university students, lecturers, labourers, radio technicians and amateur enthusiasts, priests, lawyers, hairdressers, to name just a few. One of the founding members described the experience of the early efforts to establish the station:

“We had all these people, people who would normally not find themselves in the same room together… This was this weird amalgam of people who you wouldn’t think would normally work together, but they did!”

Developing a common goal and a shared identity was central to managing such a diverse workforce. This led to the Society issuing a Promise of Performance to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, committing to “provide quality programmes exhibiting DIVERSITY WITH TOLERANCE” (Townsville Community Broadcasting Company Limited, 1981: 79), which became both the Society and the station's founding tenet. The range of people involved in the society, each with their own reasons for being involved, established their own affective community by investing in the same, albeit unrealised, object.

Triple T's “diversity with tolerance” approach extended beyond different types of music. Triple T's original license application proposed that, once the station was established, nine hours (out of their total of 153 h per week) would be allocated to language programming and 6 hours would be dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programming. The application also claimed that Triple T's test broadcast included “the first broadcast programme fully produced by Aboriginal and [Torres Strait] Islander people” (Townsville Community Broadcasting Company Limited, 1981: 68). The focus on linguistic and cultural diversity was a key differentiating factor for Triple T, and represented a departure from the dominant representations of Townsville, and North Queensland more broadly, as a white, male domain. These representations were reinforced by the limited broadcasting alternatives at the time (Carty, 2011).

In this sense, not much has changed over the past 40 years of broadcasting: Triple T still represents the most diverse programming options on Townsville's airwaves and the language broadcasters are an essential part of the station's community. The language broadcasters offer insight into the fluid and contingent nature of participation in different communities. While the broadcasters maintain their role as essential members of Triple T's affective community, they also had a different, perhaps more tangible sense of and connection to their own cultural communities. Membership of and participation in multiple communities can represent a source of conflict where shared goals and values differ, forcing individuals to dynamically assess the networks that offer the most value (Bailur, 2012; Backhaus, 2021). In the case of Triple T, presenters’ membership in multiple communities contributed to expanding the affective community surrounding the station. Most of the language presenters were highly active in their own cultural communities and played a bridging role by attending community events on behalf of the station. These events were a way to personally connect with listeners and extend the affective community of the station through embodied experiences, as opposed to those of the distant radio audience. One of the presenters fondly recalled a man who came up to her at one event and gave her a hug: “He said ‘I have heard you for years and I haven’t met you so it's so lovely to meet you’. And that stayed with me for a long time.” This sense of connection and belonging was particularly powerful for the language broadcasters, who exist outside of dominant white, English-speaking media spaces. One of the language presenters explained the importance of building a sense of belonging and community among her listeners:

“I realise there's a lot of loneliness when you don’t know the language and you have … nobody to talk to. I used to… I didn’t answer the door because it was someone talking to me in English and … what am I going to do?”

The presenters’ memberships of both communities means that they are uniquely placed to broadcast content that speaks to their cultural communities’ interests, further cementing the value of Triple T within diverse segments of the Townsville population.

Several language presenters mentioned that their shows had followings in their home countries, with friends and family tuning in via social media and online live-streams. In this way, the language programming is not only contesting the whiteness and Anglo-centrism of the Townsville airwaves, but it further challenges geographic interpretations of ‘community’. The Philippines and Costa Rica lie far beyond the broadcasting radius of Triple T, yet listeners thousands of kilometres away are able to participate in the station's community by investing in the programming and presenters.

This strong sense of closeness and connection between the multilingual presenters and their audiences, diasporic and overseas, occasionally caused tensions for Triple T over the years. A former station manager recounted the community outrage that the station would even broadcast their Serbian language program during the Yugoslav wars.

“We had some pretty hairy moments, especially when there were all the problems going on in former Yugoslavia. We had protesters… people outside the station petitioning that 4TTT supported genocide. It was a very sad time really. We actually had a whole section of the community come in when I was on my own and threaten me because of what was happening… Because we had a Serbian program.”

Triple T no longer has a Serbian program but there was a common thread among the language presenters that they avoided political topics, both those affecting their local diasporic community in Australia and in their home countries. For language groups like the French program, which is supported by the Townsville Alliance Française – a global organisation that promotes francophone culture – political issues are avoided in favour of showcasing French music and culture. Similarly, the long-term presenter of the Latin American program has identified that the local audience of the show consists predominantly of older migrants, so her focus is on nostalgia music from the home countries of the listeners. For the Filipino program's coordinator, the role of the show was to bring the local Filipino community together and make new migrants feel at home, as opposed to discussing politics or current affairs. This approach goes beyond avoiding conflict and difficult conversations but instead shows an understanding of the local context in which the program is listened to. The program coordinator explained that many Filipino families in Townsville gather together on Sunday afternoons and listen to the program while socialising and relaxing. This understanding of how listeners engage with the program has shaped how the coordinator broadcasts – from the content discussed to the music played, even the linguistic balance between Tagalog and English, so that the grandchildren of Filipino migrants can follow the discussions too.

The experiences of the language presenters explain how the concept of an affective community might apply to community radio, particularly stations that are ostensibly geographic in their target demographics. The construction of common experiences in media spaces is particularly powerful for groups who exist outside of the dominant media spaces that are focussed on mainstream music and culture – which is overwhelmingly white and English-speaking. By embracing difference and membership in multiple communities, Triple T has created a diverse affective community of both presenters and listeners, that transcends geographic and cultural categories.

Conclusion

The history of Triple T offers rich insight into the importance of regional community radio for regional communities. Far from just colourful anecdotes, these stories shed light on the relationships between community radio stations and their communities, and how community radio stations reflect and shape mediatised community identity. Regional community radio stations are an important part of the Australian community radio sector, yet they are distinctly underrepresented in the historical literature. Drawing on Townsville's Triple T as a case study, this article details an attempt to address this gap while exploring the relationship between community radio and community identity.

A microhistory of Triple T reveals the vital role that the station has played in not only crafting and supporting a mediatised community identity, but also in addressing voice poverty in the region. Townsville's airwaves in the 1970s and 1980s were dominated by white, male voices and country music. Triple T's establishment represented a grassroots push to claim space and voice within this narrow media landscape. The station faced a lengthy battle to secure a license, navigating not only bureaucratic government processes but also a clear disconnect between the priorities of decision-makers in southern centres of power, and those in North Queensland. With a history of separatist leanings and a frontier mentality, the hesitancy to grant Triple T a license was seen by the applicants as just another example of the south misdirecting the north. By leaning into popular constructions of ‘northern peculiarity’ while fluently presenting arguments according to the legal and bureaucratic languages of the institutions, Triple T successfully positioned itself as emblematic of Townsville while still subverting dominant stereotypes. A critical historiography approach, with its emancipatory agenda and flexible view of multiple temporalities – as opposed to a more traditional, linear interpretation – allows for understand the rich and complex social and cultural context that led Triple T to develop this somewhat radical approach to self-advocacy.

The identity of Triple T's community is a rich and complex construction. Far from the simplistic geographic demarcation associated with their license, by embracing an ethos of ‘diversity with tolerance’ the station has established a vibrant and diverse affective community. Interpreting Triple T's community through the lens of affect describes the power of community radio stations to establish and maintain communities in themselves, rather than simply serving pre-existing, pre-defined communities. The case of the station's language broadcasters highlights the complexity of membership in different communities and how affective communities explain the creation of communities across space and difference.

Townsville's Triple T represents an important case study in both the historical richness of regional community radio stations, and also offers insight into the role of community radio in establishing and maintaining a sense of mediatised community identity. The key limitation of this research is that it details a case study of just one station. There is a distinct need for more in-depth work with other regional community radio stations in order to expand on the arguments made here and uncover further insight into the relationship between regional community radio stations and mediatised community identity.