Juice Media is a faith-based community radio station situated on the Gold Coast, Queensland. They exist “to provide a positive radio environment with plenty of great music, lots of support, and practical advice to help every local Gold Coast family”.
Early in the morning on 19 December last year, the station became aware that normal programming was being interrupted intermittently with bursts of static.
A temporary fix was installed using borrowed, second-hand equipment. However, despite the repair, the broadcast was still being regularly interrupted with bursts of static. As a work around, they reduced the power from 1.8kw to 300W, one-sixth of their broadcast capacity, significantly impeding the Juice FM broadcast range.
Station Manager Susie Holt tells the story: “We knew our transmitter was nearing the end of its life, and we had budgeted to replace it, but the timing was terrible for us. As a station, we are re-strengthening our governance and our finances after some challenges in the last few years, and we just weren’t in a position to immediately replace the transmitter.”
On the evening of 20 December, the CBF received an application from Juice Media for a Quick Response Grant to replace the transmitter.
Dean Linguey, Grants Support Team member sprang into action on the morning of 21 December. He prepared briefing notes for our Development & Operations Advisory Grants Committee and CBF Board, who all responded quickly and decisively, and by 22 December was able to share the good news.
“Without the CBF it felt like we were holding our transmitter together with sticky tape and paper cups! We’d called in favours from friends and used borrowed repair parts but were still getting intermittent static! It was such a relief to receive approval for the Quick Response Grant right before Christmas.
“The CBF grant sures up our broadcasting for the future and means we can stop holding our breath that it will go down! It means we can continue to provide a solid service to our full community,”
Asked if she’d like to share anything else, Susie said, “Actually, I was absolutely blown away by the CBF. The professionalism and support of Dean – his professionalism particularly, was next level. The speed of the response, I mean we were just incredibly impressed and we’re incredibly grateful.”