[Rfu-station] Station Update March 25, 2008

[Andrew Ó Baoill]

I plan to provide regular updates to the station membership on an  
ongoing basis, in order to keep members informed of events across the  
board in the station, as well as areas in which they can participate.

In this update:
FINANCE - ways in which you can help us reach our goal. Farmers' market
EMERGENCY CONTACTS - we need more. Can you be one?
AUTOMATION - progress made, more to do
PROGRAMMING - how to deal with the summer? WEFT PC visit, and more
EQUIPMENT - how to deal with equipment failures, generous donation  
towards studio
OUTREACH - UPTV

Andrew

Our permanent tower project is the main challenge currently facing  
WRFU. The project requires significant fundraising, as well as  
requiring important decisions about whether to have an on-site or off- 
site tower. We have made substantial strides towards our fundraising  
goal, but need continued efforts to reach our goal.

FINANCE
We currently have a little under $7,000 that can be applied to our  
tower project. The total project is likely to cost something around  
$14,000, so we need about another $7,000. This sounds like a lot - it  
is - but it can also be seen as less than $100 for each station  
member. Obviously we aren't going to ask each individual to pay $100,  
but if we can couple a number of large donations, some fundraising  
events, and various smaller donations from members and supporters, we  
should be able to raise the needed funds in a matter of months.

If you know an organization that could provide support to the station  
- either as a donation, or as 'underwriting' for a show - please  
consider approaching them. Jennine has drafted a fantastic letter  
that can form the basis for such an approach. We should readily be  
able to gain various donations of $250-1000 from various groups  
(churches, social activist organizations, others) who support the  
programming we provide on air.

If you can provide a personal donation to the station, please  
consider doing so. You can donate online, through the website  
(wrfu.net) or by leaving your donation, in an envelope marked  
'donation for WRFU' in the drop-box at the IMC.

Donating is only one way you can help us. We need volunteers to work  
on a number of events:
- Bill Taylor has volunteered to give a presentation on Radio Lenca,  
our sister station in Honduras. It has been suggested that we couple  
this with other activities (bands, etc.) and run a fundraiser. We  
need people to work on this.
- The Farmers' Market is coming up (starts 10th May). I have an  
application form. It costs $7.50/week, for up to 27 weeks (with  
discounts if you pay for more than 5 weeks at a time). This has been  
a great fundraiser and outreach opportunity in the past. We will need  
someone to coordinate this project, as well as volunteers to staff  
the booth each week we operate - it would be great if each show could  
take 2 2-hour slots, as this would allow us to do all 27 weeks with  
each group responsible for only 4 hours in total. We should decide at  
our next meeting on our level of commitment to this project (i.e. how  
many weeks).

ADDITIONAL EMERGENCY CONTACT VOLUNTEERS SOUGHT
Noel Vivar and I have already volunteered to be listed as emergency  
station contacts. Are there others who could also volunteer?

This involves having your phone number and email address listed in  
the studio, being willing to take calls about technical and other  
difficulties when they occur, and working with other members to reach  
a solution. This is a low-impact task, as urgent problems are rare,  
but it does require a certain comfort with technical issues and an  
ability to take calls at various times of day.

PROGRESS ON AUTOMATION AND REMOTE ACCESS
We are making some progress on automation. We have a group of members  
interested in working on adding items and improving the system.

One current barrier is remote access - we hope to resolve this  
shortly. We have IP addresses for the IMC (I've sent these to the  
Tech and Automation lists) but still need some final information in  
order to get remote access working (including the internet address of  
the automation computer).

We need more station IDs, and more promos for shows currently on air.  
Please consider recording a promo for your show that can be added to  
our system.

PROGRAMMING - SCHEDULE CONTINUES TO DEVELOP, SUMMER PLANNING
The public affairs block from 4-8pm on automation continues to  
develop. We have just been granted permission to use New  
Internationalist Radio, and already broadcast shows such as War News  
Radio, Rustbelt Radio, The Progressive, UN news bulletin, Mumia Abu  
Jamal prison diaries, and much more.

Upcoming items:
Some shows are likely to end or go on hiatus as the school year comes  
to an end. We need to decide, once again, how we wish to handle such  
situations, and start necessary announcements and transitions.

WEFT's Programming Committee plans a field trip to WRFU shortly, to  
learn more about how the station operates and consider ways in which  
we can cooperate.

Our evenings are almost full (though with Noel's cancellation we now  
have 3 empty hours in weekday evenings). We have 12 early daytime  
openings (8am-2pm), 6 afternoon/early evening (4-8pm), lots of late  
night. Also Saturday afternoons are completely empty. Tell your  
friends, remind your listeners.

With the schedule continuing to fill up, now might be a good chance  
to start thinking about new approaches to scheduling, once it's not a  
case of figuring how best to fill empty slots, but rather arrange our  
content so the schedule is attractive and memorable for listeners.  
Some stations use strip programming, or blocks (e.g. Monday evening =  
electronica, or Tuesday afternoons = ecology). Not urgent, but  
something to start thinking about and discussing.

EQUIPMENT
I circulated a mail earlier today about various problems related to  
station computers. As I noted at that point, it is important that  
members inform the rest of the station about technical problems they  
encounter at the station. If we don't know about the problem we can't  
solve it.

We have recently received an anonymous offer of a substantial  
donation towards the purchase of new equipment. Because of the nature  
of this donation it cannot be devoted to our tower project, but must  
rather be spent on replacing and upgrading our studio equipment. Joe  
Futrelle is compiling a 'wish list' of equipment, and we will use  
that to frame our discussions on what to request from our donor.

OUTREACH
We've received a letter from UPTV encouraging us to submit a  
promotional piece for the station. Anyone interested in working on  
this should contact me or come to our next meeting.

Andrew Ó Baoill
Station Manager
WRFU-LP, Urbana 104.5FM
http://www.wrfu.net andrew at funferal.org
(217) 344-2536 (studio)