Student Youth Network
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| City of license | Melbourne, Australia |
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| Broadcast area | Melbourne |
| Branding | SYN nine-oh-seven |
| Slogan | Creators not consumers |
| First air date | 28 January 2003 |
| Frequency | 90.7 MHz FM |
| Format | No formal playlist |
| Class | Community |
| Callsign meaning | 3SYN - Student Youth Network |
| Former callsigns | 3SRA/3TD |
| Owner | Student Youth Network Inc. |
| Webcast | http://www.syn.org.au/listen/syn-wm.asx |
| Website | http://www.syn.org.au/ |
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| Type | Community television channel |
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| Country | Australia |
| Availability | Melbourne |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Owner | Melbourne Community Television Consortium |
| Launch date | 1994 |
| Website | www.c31.org.au |
SYN (pronounced sin) stands for Student Youth Network. The Student Youth Network (SYN) is a not-for-profit, completely youth-driven organisation based in Melbourne, Australia which currently operates a full-time Melbourne-wide community radio station (90.7 SYN-FM), produces 10 hours a week of live television (broadcast on Channel 31), publishes a quarterly magazine (Pecado) and maintains a full-time internet presence (www.syn.org.au).
SYN provides access, participation, education and training to all students and youth aged 12-25 that are into radio, television, print and web media, providing practical hand-on experience. It is one of the only media organisations in the world run solely by people aged under 26. Everything from administration, finances, talent casting and sponsorship is organised by youth between 12-25, in an aim to provide a base for young talent in all fields of media production and journalism.
SYN membership is open to any individual for a nominal fee and all members aged under 26 have the opportunity to apply for their own show. To ensure that as many young people as possible are given the opportunity to access airtime, the program grid is completely re-formulated five times a year. All presenters exercise autonomous control over the content, style and music of their show.
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[edit] Mission Statement
The mission statement of SYN is:
• “to provide young people with opportunities, education and training in all areas of the media;
• to provide an informative and entertaining alternative to mainstream media;
• to support the interests of the youth community;
• to be youth focused and operated, fully;
• to respect local and new music, arts and ideas;
[edit] Radio
SYN 90.7 can be heard 24/7 all around the Melbourne and Geelong areas, at 90.7 on the FM dial. The music and content on-air is determined by the presenters and producers of each program. Therefore, music ranges from punk to hip-hop, from indie to dance, and everywhere in between. Content includes musical sub-cultures, sport, comedy, youth issues, satire, finance, science, food and travel
SYN-FM’s broadcast signal covers the entire Metropolitan Melbourne area and extends as far as Ballarat, Lorne, Kilmore and Warragul and can be streamed from the web from any location at www.syn.org.au.
[edit] Television
SYN produces two television programs on Melbourne Community TV Station, Channel 31, 1700 and The Sauce, a current affairs program. Interviews on SYN television have included Simple Plan, Magic Dirt, Rove Mc Manus, The Donnas, The Darkness, Steve-O & Johnny Knoxville (Jackass) and Slipknot.
SYN-TV was launched in June 2003, a joint venture between C31 and SYN. SYN-TV was a live music video program hosted by presenters under the age of 18. SYN-TV was simulcast on 90.7 SYN-FM, C31 Melbourne and www.syn.org.au (4:30 – 5:30 pm weekdays). In the period since, SYN’s C31 programming has increased to 7.5 hours a week and television production has been incorporated into the education and training program. SYN continues to explore further expansion opportunities in partnership with C31.
[edit] Print
Four times a year, SYN releases its youth magazine, Pecado (Spanish for 'sin'). Pecado is distributed to SYN’s membership base of 1500 and at live SYN outside broadcasts, in city bars and cafes, at secondary schools that SYN visits and at music gigs presented by SYN. Pecado has a total distribution of 2,500 per edition.
[edit] Events
SYNBURBIA is a vibrant series of events for young people to create, attend and participate in. The SYNBURBIA program is currently supported by FReeZA Victorian State Government funding.
SYNBURBIA events are all ages, drug and alcohol free and are usually held in the Melbourne CBD.
The events aim to represent diverse youth interests and not be solely music focussed; but encompass various forms of art, music and culture including film, theatre, dance, art, music, discussion and comedy.
[edit] About SYN
The House of SYN (which stages the SYN offices & reception) is at 16 Cardigan Street, Carlton. The Radio Studios are located in RMIT University's City Campus.
The SYN radio transmitter is situated at Mt. Dandenong, sharing a tower with Nova 100.3 and Light FM. Reception covers much of Greater Melbourne and Geelong, and beyond.
SYN has become a dynamic, informative and entertaining media outlet providing unparalleled media-making access for young people. SYN has proved to be an innovative leader in the community broadcasting sector and many of the participation programs developed by SYN have been adopted by community broadcasters across the country. SYN’s leadership role was formally recognised in 2003 when the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia presented SYN with the Tony Staley Award for excellence in community broadcasting.
SYN is more than just a content producer; it offers a unique access point and meeting place whereby like-minded youth organisations and individuals collaborate in support of the diverse needs and interests of the youth community. As-a-result, SYN has been able to undertake numerous high-level projects encompassing a broad range of activities involving young people from across Victoria.
Young people are rarely granted a forum in the mainstream media to air their fresh and inspiring views—instead they are habitually disregarded or stereotyped as binge drinkers, drug addicts and trouble makers. SYN empowers young people as creators and not consumers of the media. Moreover, young people are given the opportunity to be innovative at every level of the organisation
[edit] Education and Training
Education and training is a major focus of the Student Youth Network. Since full-time radio broadcasting commenced in January 2003 over 100 secondary-schools from across Victoria have directly participated in SYN’s on-air programming. Secondary colleges have used SYN in curriculum areas such as Media, Music in Industry, SOSE, Oral English and ESL. SYN has also developed curriculum for the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) in the areas of Personal Development and Industry Experience through radio production and media studies.
SYN has the formal support of every major tertiary student union in Melbourne, the National Union of Students, and several TAFE colleges. Secondary colleges use SYN for curriculum initiatives such as Oral English and ESL. SYN has also developed curriculum for the Victorian Certificate of Advanced Learning (VCAL) in the areas of radio production and media studies. All SYN’s education and training programs are delivered on a peer-to-peer basis.
SYN is supported by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. In April 2005, SYN employed Adrian McMahon in the permanent role of Education and Training Manager. SYN offered the following programs and workshops in 2004-05:
• Detention: A daily radio program presented and produced by school students from right across Melbourne’s secondary school system. • SYN School Tours: 90 minute tours that allow students to learn in a hands-on environment the basics of radio and TV production. The tours also guide students around the extensive SYN FM, SYN TV and C31 facilities • Live @ Lunch: SYN trainers travel around Victoria to train students in the set-up and presentation of a live outside radio broadcast. Students then present a 1 hour broadcast before the rest of the school community • Sound editing workshops: In schools across Victoria, students are trained in the use of the free sound editing software program, Audacity, and finish the workshop with a completed radio piece
[edit] Youth Participation in SYN
Since 2003, SYN-FM has put over 3200 young people to-air on both radio and television. It has been estimated that over 4300 young people have been involved in SYN’s extensive education and training programs. For nearly three years, SYN has successfully applied media learning to young people from diverse cultural backgrounds including: • Indigenous communities • at-risk environments • the juvenile justice system • VCAL candidates
SYN is staffed entirely by young people under the age of 26.
Young people have the opportunity to be involved at every level of the organisation. Currently, SYN’s Board, paid staff and volunteers are under 26 (SYN has an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to discriminate in our employment practices on the basis of age). While many volunteers at SYN are attracted to the on-air component of the organisation, SYN actively encourages volunteers in a range of management and operational roles. SYN seeks to actively provide learning and development opportunities in the management and day-to-day operations of the organisation.
SYN has grown substantially and significantly from our original aim of establishing a youth radio station. Over the past three years SYN has evolved to reflect the changing needs of Melbourne’s youth community.
[edit] Key Programs
[edit] The Hoist for Breakfast 7am Daily
The Hoist for Breakfast was a new initiative launched in 2005 to provide listeners with an alternative breakfast radio program focused on local music and emerging artists. All hosts are under the age of 25 and the program has hosted a variety of acts including Shihad, TZU, The Vasco Era, Mia Dyson and The Pictures.. The Hoist Top 10 allows the listeners to vote for their favourite Australian track which is counted down each week live-to-air.
[edit] Panorama - Current Affairs and News 9am Daily
Panorama is a nationally-syndicated youth current affairs program, and part of Syn's flagship program schedule. Topics covered include Politics (Monday), Health and Relationships (Tuesday), Art, Culture & Education (Wednesday), Science, Environment and Technology (Thursday) and the Media & Weekly Wrap-Up (Friday). The program features interviews with guests such as Democrats Leader Lyn Allison, News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt, Senator Barnaby Joyce and Mark 'Chopper' Read, as well as news packages and vox pops.
[edit] The Sunday Sessions - Live Music Program
The Sunday Sessions is SYN's very own live music show. The team records live sets at clubs and pubs across Melbourne and beams them direct into listener’s living rooms. We have recorded the best in Australasian music across all genres including Regurgitator, Evermore, Shihad, Clare Bowditch, Downsyde, Lior and After The Fall.
[edit] New and Approved, Weekdays at 6pm
New and Approved is SYN’s new nightly music show playing the latest release tracks from all major music genres. Presented and produced entirely by under 18s, New and Approved provides an opportunity for young people to show off their new music knowledge. The show features such a nightly gig guide, ‘first-plays’ of tracks and interviews with current artists. All hosts of the show are under 18.
[edit] Pathways Training Program
The Pathways Project aims to establish a unique media outlet for young people (aged 12–25) with physical disabilities. Participants will learn how to create their own media and get their voices heard on Melbourne radio while working towards a formal qualification (Certificate II in Broadcasting [Radio]). The project will involve young people from across the Melbourne metropolitan region and regional areas depending on transport availability.
SYN wants to see more people with disabilities hosting television programs, writing news columns and producing talk-back radio because we believe that those who control media content are in the best position to shape and influence public opinion. We want disabled people to be empowered to help shape Victoria’s cultural, political and social agendas. This project will help young people to take those first difficult steps into the media and is generously supported by the Department of Human Services and Foundation for Young Australians.
[edit] LIP Radio
Radio is traditionally a male-dominated medium. The LIP Radio project has two central benefits: giving young women the real opportunity to become involved in radio and raising the community profile of issues relevant to young women. The project is directly supported by the Alfred Benson Bequest.
The result has been Lip Radio a new weekly radio program co-produced by SYN and LIP Magazine. The program has already broken new ground by creating an environment in which feminism is made accessible to a new generation of young women and also young men.
Lip Radio has also provided a non-threatening, easy-going forum for women to discus issues including body image, femininity, mother/daughter relationships, dating and empowerment. In a short space of time, Lip has interviewed Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, Killing Heidi's Ella Hooper, John Safran, Helen Razer, Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, and conducted vox pops with numerous young adults from schools and universities across Melbourne.
[edit] Asian Pop Night
A night of seven hours of extended programming run by local and international students, SEA Pop has introduced the broader SYN listenership to a wide variety of south-east Asian issues. The night provides a significant space for international students to become a stronger part of their local Australian communities, opening up new connections and dismantling cultural barriers to engagement.
The project will promote dialogue among young people around diverse communities, help young people in Melbourne appreciate multiculturalism and ultimately increase Australian’s awareness and knowledge of regional issues.
Asian Pop Night broadcasts every Tuesday night from 7pm to 2am on SYN 90.7fm. Within this time there is an English (which plays Asian music), mandarin, Japanese, Korean and cantonese show.
[edit] Kicking Behinds
Part of the Melbourne culture is Australian Rules football and SYN embraces it with its football program, Kicking Behinds. Kicking Behinds gives young footy fans a chance to have a say about the wonderful world of Footy and has interviewed some of the biggest names in football including Andrew Demetriou, Jeff Kennett, Kevin Sheedy, Dermott Brereton, Kevin Bartlett and James Hird just to name a few. As well as vox pop interviews from events such as the Brownlow Medal and the annual Grand Final Parade. Kicking Behinds has also seen SYN acknoledged by the AFL has a legitimate media organisation covering the game. SYN even put in a bid to broadcast AFL matches for the 2007-2009 period. SYN presenters Tim Brown and Dylan Leach host kicking Behinds along with a panel of various SYN presenters each week talking about the game theylove.
Kicking Behinds airs Saturday Mornings from 10am -12midday during Football Season.
[edit] The Naughty Rude Show
The Naughty Rude Show is a forum dealing with sex, sexual issues, drugs, alcohol, and relationships in general. Constant listener interaction is encouraged (listeners are allowed to SMS text in their questions live) which results in a fluid, anything-goes format that addresses issues which may not get a lot of airplay in the mainstream media. The Naughty Rude Show has been a point of some controversy in the past because of the way in which the program may sometimes challenge and confront listeners who are ignorant towards the subject matter.
Currently the show airs from 7pm until 9pm every Monday night.
[edit] Current Key Personnel
[edit] Bryce Ives, General Manager
Bryce Ives, 22, has been involved in community broadcasting for over nine years. He served as a SYN Board Member form 2003, until gaining employment at SYN in 2004. Bryce has a huge range of experience at both community and government broadcasters and has also been a Drama Teacher. He has demonstrated a significant capacity for community media promotion, funding and support. His enthusiasm for the organisation and his considerable vision for its potential have made him an ideal representative of the station. Before being employed at SYN, Bryce was employed by the Melbourne Community Television Consortium Ltd to oversee it’s youth programming. Bryce is a current director of the CBAA (Community Broadcasting Association of Australia) and former Chairman of the NYMN (National Youth Media Network.
[edit] Shannon Ley, President
Shannon Ley, 24, steps into the position of President, after serving on the SYN Board of Management for the past three years. During this time Shannon has filled various roles including Treasurer and Vice-President, and has been a valuable contributor to the organisation.
Outside of SYN, Shannon served as the Vice-President of the RMIT Union (2003-04) and was incredibly active in student life at RMIT University. Currently a Project Engineer at GM Holden, Shannon holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Aerospace) from RMIT University.
[edit] Craig Twitt, Assistant Manager
Craig Twitt , 27, has been involved in community broadcasting since 2000, after becoming inspired to volunteer at 3RRR. Since then, Craig has served on the Board of SYN for three years, two as President. During his time on the board the organisation grew from an aspirant licensee to one of the most exciting youth media organisation in Australia.
Craig is a director of the CBAA (Community Broadcasting Association of Australia) and for the past eighteen months, has been employed by 3MBS – Classically Melbourne as the Administration Manager.
His experience is varied and includes office administration, CD production and project management. Craig holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne.
[edit] History of SYN
SRA (RMIT University Student Radio Assiciation) and 3TD (Thornbury Darebin Secondary College's radio station) merged together to apply for a full-time community radio licence in 2001, to service Melbourne's youth under the new moniker of SYN: the Student Youth Network. They were successfully awarded one of the four community licenses made available (the others granted to 3TLC, Light FM and 3KND) by the Australian Communications and Media Authority on the 19 December 2001.
In 2000, the Australian Communications and Media Authority invited applications for one new commercial FM station [$70m] and four community licences in Melbourne. There were twenty contenders for the community licences. The Student Youth Network or SYN was an aspirant youth radio station that brought together secondary students at Thornbury-Darebin Secondary College and several university radio stations in the long established Student Radio Association (SRA) and Youthworx which was at the time a concept under trial. It was this tri-partite collaboration that was successful in winning of a full-power community licence late in 2001. SYN was not the longest running youth radio project in contention but from the outset it was substantially youth driven. The unique features of the SYN bid were firstly, the involvement of all sections of youth – university students, school students and marginalised young people outside of education - in an organic way ie. the way SYN was structured and functioned facilitated inclusion and cooperation although these features also required active attention. Youth projects are rarely so inherently inclusive. More common are projects specifically targeted to ‘at risk’ youth that operate separately or programs for mainstream young people with low participation of marginalised youth. Secondly, SYN adopted a learning pathways approach for young people with an explicit statement of purposes that emphasised a commitment to ‘access, participation, diversity, education and training’. On the day of the ABA public hearing (August 2001), the commissioners headed by Professor David Flint presided and an ABA lawyer interrogated the team of young people arguing for SYN. The room was filled with young people sporting red tee-shirts emblazoned with the SYN bulls-eye emblem.
The ABA auctioned a new licence for a commercial FM broadcaster to serve the Melbourne market. The winning bid was $70 million. In December 2001, the ABA granted SYN a Melbourne-wide FM community radio broadcasting licence to transmit at the same signal power. After a twelve-month period (2002) mainly concerned with raising nearly $1 million to implement the necessary broadcasting infrastructure, SYN-FM 90.7 commenced permanent broadcasting on 28 January 2003. In this period the station forged key partnerships with RMIT (University, Union and Student Union), the Office for Youth Affairs, Youthworx and The Department of Education & Training and many other community groups. Ironically, the new youth station broadcasts from the same radio tower as the new commercial station Nova and has the same power and reach.
About half of its broadcast time is allocated to tertiary student programs and the other half to secondary students and other youth programs, such as those produced through YouthWorx. Every twelve weeks, the grid of programs spills over to allow for new programs and new presenters. Tertiary students are supported financially and organisationally by a consortium of student associations from all of the metropolitan universities in Melbourne. Secondary students and their teachers in schools are currently supported by two teachers seconded by the Education Department to develop curriculum and support secondary student broadcasting on SYN-FM. YouthWorx is the key support mechanism to link extremely marginalised and disadvantaged young people and youth at risk into SYN-FM. SYN has become a dynamic radio station providing unparalleled access for young people to participate in creating their own media. Its cross media development strategies into television, print and CD production have also given SYN a high profile in the community broadcasting sector and many of the youth-based participation programs developed by SYN have been utilised by community broadcasters across the country. This was recognised in 2003 when the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia presented SYN with the Tony Staley Award for excellence in community broadcasting.
SYN has received various awards during its existence, the most notable of which are from the annual CBAA Awards for Community Broadcasting in Australia. These include:
- Television Producer of the Year (The Sauce, Natasha Duckett, Laura Kelly & Alison Murphy, 2005)
- Television Producer of the Year (SYNTV, Bryce Ives, 2004)
- Can't Get Out of the Car Award (The Naughty Rude Show, 2004)
- Value For Money Award for 'Strategic Planning, Volunteer, Recruitment and Training' (2004)
- The Tony Staley Award for 'Providing Outstanding Opportunities for Youth Access to the Airwaves' (2003)
- Innovative Station/Program Promotion Award (SYNTV, 2003)
[edit] External links
Station/Frequency: Melbourne LPONs | 3PVF 88.6 | 3MGR 89.9 | 3SYN 90.7 | Vega 91.5 | 3ZZZ 92.3 | 3SBS 93.1 | Bay FM 93.9 | 3JOY 94.9 | K-Rock 95.5 | 3INR 96.5 | 3WSC 97.4 | 3NRG 99.3 | Nova 100.3 | 3TTT 101.1 | 3FOX 101.9 | 3RRR 102.7 | 3MBS 103.5 | 3KKZ 104.3 | 3MMM 105.1 | 3ABC 105.9 | 3PBS 106.7 | 3JJJ 107.5
