The following is an abridged transcription of the above interview with Andy Lynch, SYN's Online Manager for 2012.
Could you tell us a little bit about the role of Online Manager and what it covers?
SYN is a youth-run completely voluntary organisation. It really started from broadcasting as a radio station and then moved into TV, and then over the last few years, developed a website. There has been a role since the website was built, since the start of 2010, for someone to manage that content and to make sure that what happens on there maintains and upholds SYN’s values as a non-commercial broadcaster. It runs itself, really, according to these values, and so tying that together through whatever’s happening on the website is predominately the aim of the Online Manager, just to make sure that this website is representing what SYN is all about. At the moment, the role of the website really is to sit alongside the other broadcasting arms, to show off what’s happening there. I wouldn’t say it’s alone as a standalone website. It’s very much entwined with the broadcasting nature of the organisation.
There was a shift at SYN when it stopped being SYN FM and became SYN: Click, Switch, Watch: did you want to talk a bit about that?
It was about trying to break the organisation down from being split along content creation lines and more along genre and interest lines. The whole purpose of this organisation is to encourage more participation and control. It’s about young people creating media and so any way to make that more accessible and increase participation is a really good thing. I think by breaking down that barrier, it means that online becomes a stream that is viable for more people – really almost limitless in terms of the number of people we can involve with the organisation. The number of hours that we’re allocated for radio and television broadcasting time is so limited. That’s probably one of the most exciting things about the online aspect of SYN, because it is an organisation that is about encouraging content creation and participation, and here we’ve got this platform where potentially we can let everyone who wants to make content have a space to express it. In reality, actually being able to make that happen and turn the wheels here has been a bit harder than what we expected but it’s been interesting nonetheless.
So why do you think it’s been so difficult?
Well, really - it’s all about resources. This organisation is completely voluntary, so I think time is the biggest limitation on all of us here. This year we’ve established the Online Team. This is the first time we’ve used an online team, to try and get some clarity and momentum around making online it’s own flourishing space – but getting everyone together, and making the time to actually put those steps forward has been really, really tough.
The other limitation of course is funding. To build and maintain a website costs money, especially transforming the website from what it was as an annex to broadcasting to its own virtual space is a really big operation and to get the developers and the designers in…there is no money allocated to that this year so that’s a limitation that we have to work within, so we’re really trying to make the existing site as good as it can be this year so that we can roll it out into 2013. A brand new website would be great.
So what is actually on the website at the moment? What are the features of it?
Right now the major features are related to the existing broadcasting arm. There’s the Radio Grid, which sort details what’s happening on Radio each week and each hour – and that gives every person who’s making a radio show a webspace where they can upload their podcasts or any extra links, or photos, or even videos from what they’re doing inside the studio. It also hosts the direct links with the studio itself – you can text and contact people in the studio who are on air at the time, and also streaming online is another major feature – probably the most used feature of the website. As well as that it hosts some of the other content that isn’t available in the other arms – particularly reviews and other such content that you can’t really access on radio or on television so the website sits as a space for that. Also part of the job as Online Manager is really figuring out where we integrate social media with the website and with the other arms. Social media spreads itself across all the other broadcasting arms, but we’re looking at it as a way to connect people from what they’re listening to on the radio to our website where they can find more depth of content. Social media acts as a really nice conduit for that.
There has been some discussion – I know internal discussion at SYN as well – over whether there is still a need for a sort of integrated website or show pages when we’ve actually got Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites.
I think considering SYN’s values it’s not appropriate for us to be existing on a completely commercial space such as Facebook. Facebook would really be the only other option where we could have our own page and use it as our hub. With Facebook being such a huge organisation, we have no control or really a say in what would happen to our site, and what we need here to ensure that the site meets our values is a space where we can control how it operates and how it serves what we need. This organisation isn’t about getting the most number of people listening or a huge audience share or anything like that – it’s really about making it the safest and best space where people can be involved and have a go at making media. Social media is great as a support mechanism for maybe bringing a few more people in and sharing content beyond our walls, but as a host for what we’d like to do it’s just not appropriate.
In terms of the website, you do need a login if you wish to add content – how is that all organized?
In order for people to make content for the site (and I guess this is another limitation, not necessarily a bad one) people need to be a member of the organisation first. People need to be a member of SYN, which really means that firstly they’re under 25 (which is a core part of the organization) and secondly at least they’ve undergone the training and understood the values of what SYN’s really all about. Before anyone’s allowed to make content at SYN, everyone has to go through that process, so having the login step in some ways is a bit of a limitation because it means that we can’t just let everyone come and filter up the best content, but it means that we’ve got a space that is really just for our members to share their content.
You mentioned how podcasts can be on the website - are there currently any options to subscribe to or automatically download podcasts like on iTunes?
We’re not connected with iTunes at the moment. It’s something we’re looking into. There isn’t really a formal mechanism – you can subscribe to certain shows on the site and ask to receive updates from a radio show or a page. You can subscribe, but it really requires someone to go in and find it there and then subscribe from there, so there’s no external entrance into that at the moment which is, again, another limitation. Just like Facebook, the way that we deal with external organisations such as Itunes becomes a bit tougher because we’ve got to match that against the values of the organisation, which really is a check to make sure that what we’re doing is for this organisation, not for our own satisfaction that we’ve got slightly more listeners or something like that – that’s not really what we’re about. It changes the nature of what we’re trying to do as opposed to a commercial website where you’re just trying to increase your traffic just for the sake of that. There’s only a minimal amount of advertising on the site, really only on the front page, and they’re closer to community announcements than commercial advertising – it’s not a big revenue stream for the organisation at all.
There’s actually been some discussion in the commercial sector, mainly overseas, about having your listeners register online where they pop their email address in or log in just so you can have a few basic details about them: birthday, location, etc – so you can have a better record of who’s listening online. Now that’s mainly being listed as more appropriate for advertising purposes, but for a community station, such as SYN, is that something that you would want to direct yourselves to?
We certainly wouldn’t want to be doing it in order to collect data on people to sell or to sell to advertisers. Any use of something like that would only be used to really figure out who was listening and how we can reach these people better – really to figure out who we’re not reaching would be a better way to put it. But to be honest, it doesn’t really serve that much of a useful function for us here. What we’re looking at is trying to build more content creators rather than huge audiences, and through our membership system we’ve got a pretty good idea of who our members are, so I don’t think that would be really something we’d be looking to anywhere in the near future.
You spoke about how the Reviews were on the website as something that couldn’t really be communicated through TV or Radio but had its own place online – are there any other shows that are putting up additional material to the site that perhaps they don’t include in their regular show? Or is it just archives and podcasts?
No, there are a few shows that do – I know that Artsmitten, for example, have a really comprehensive – Artsmitten and Reviews sort of work together to have a really comprehensive set of sometimes photographs, but really often written reviews. Also, the breakfast team are great at putting up really good videos of things that happen in studio, and a few other people are getting more confident at putting up more than just the podcasts and maybe a track listing. That was sort of the core functionality built into it – when the site was built they imagined that all people would want to be doing is putting up their podcasts and the songs that were played in the show. Part of our role this year is to start bringing people beyond those pretty simple content streams to really try and create something that is going to be good for a web audience, and that really helps flesh out their content that they couldn’t do in the studio.
Why do you think these attitudes have changed? What’s the purpose of the web audience?
I think it’s pretty safe to say that our audience, SYN’s primary audience, spends more time online than any other demographic. As such, it would be silly to not pay attention to the space where they’re spending most of their time. The corollary of that is that people within our demographic are much more comfortable at putting up small bits of content online – it’s sort of practiced through the way people work on Facebook and Youtube. People are much more comfortable at sharing snippets of content from all different parts of their lives and so I think that’s starting to show out in the way that people are using the SYN website. The current website really wasn’t designed with that kind of sharing so much in mind, but there’s enough functionality in there for people to do it if they want to. It’s a part of our job at the online team to push people along, to say, “Hey, use this as a place where you can express yourself that way”.
There has been a lot of media interest in radio personalities, talk show hosts, anyone who’s a celebrity, and the personal comments they make on Facebook or Twitter. How do you think that sort of thing affects SYN members, who are members of an organization that’s producing media but they’re also young people who do have a tendency to overshare?
There’s a really tricky line between your individual identity and that of the organisation. I think when people are creating media for SYN, it has to be with the organisation’s values really in mind. It’s an organisation that doesn’t shut anyone out, and anything that could be construed as exclusion is not something that we can really facilitate. This organisation is designed to be almost eternal in the sense that it’s always pitching at this under-25 group of people, and so the people that are creating content now and making the comments now, in 10 years aren’t going to be here to really take account for that. So that’s why it’s so, so vital that any comment made, even in the online space, if it’s made in regards to SYN or could be seen as coming from this organisation, has got to reflect that. It’s really hard, as people are so familiar and so comfortable with saying whatever they like online that to make them conscious of that can seem a little harsh, but I think it’s probably essential, and it’s probably a useful lead that SYN’s taking here with online media to really try to say what is the right thing and what is a fair thing to be saying online. It’s not a personal space. It’s actually got a few really interesting similarities to the broadcasting nature – you don’t necessarily get to pick your audience on Facebook and online. Even though it can feel like a safe and intimate space, you’re sending out your ideas to the world and if that’s reflecting incorrectly on this organisation then it’s really something that we have to limit.
In the future, are there any sort of ‘social media advisors’ or people to oversee any problems when it comes to that? Does that come under your department?
What we’re really trying to do from the Online Department is take the lead and show really what is an example of great social media and what’s an example of great online content, rather than saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t be doing this” - because obviously there are thousands of examples of what you shouldn’t be doing. What we’re trying to do is set the standard. That’s where these kind of discussions come in, saying ‘What does great content look like when it’s being spread through Facebook? How does it end up looking?’ and really trying to shape that image as opposed to really getting down on people, because we don’t want to be limiting whatever people can be doing. That’s not what this organisation is about. We want to be making people feel comfortable in expressing themselves in a thoughtful way.
You were speaking about great online content – is there now a bare minimum for shows to have online content?
When people sign up for a radio show, they come in here with the idea of doing a radio show in mind and so a few people come in and just do that as their minimum. This doesn’t help us, the Online Team, because we would love to see people sharing their content online, but it’s not something you can really force on people: if they’re coming here to do a certain type of media and they’re not comfortable or willing to do an online component, we can’t force them to do it. It is something we’re trying – it’s put into the training and they’re all given access to the website. A lot of people do it just because they really recognise that if they’re doing a radio show as a way to get into the media, it’s a great experience to actually have a site that you can point out to someone in the future and say, “This is my work, I’ve developed all this content” Other people just do it because it’s a way of sharing your content, especially later in time with other people if you can direct them to that website.
There’s the SYN awards each year that recognizes outstanding SYN content – in terms of moving into the digital age, are there any categories that are online-only?
There is Web Innovation as a category for one of the SYN awards – I’m not really sure what the criteria for that is but I think there’s definitely a lot of potential for online –specific content to have more of a platform as a point of celebration at SYN. As I was saying, I think it really opens up this organisation a lot, because it takes us outside the confines of spectrum limitations and time limitations that we have with television and radio broadcasting. Theoretically we could have people and members in regional Victoria uploading content to the site and using it. I think it really sits as a point for SYN to truly become a youth network across Melbourne and Victoria. How that actually moves forward, and whether the organization is willing to take that leap is not necessarily my decision, but I think certainly moving into the digital age that that has got to form part of consideration of where this organisation is going.
Could you tell us a little bit about the role of Online Manager and what it covers?
SYN is a youth-run completely voluntary organisation. It really started from broadcasting as a radio station and then moved into TV, and then over the last few years, developed a website. There has been a role since the website was built, since the start of 2010, for someone to manage that content and to make sure that what happens on there maintains and upholds SYN’s values as a non-commercial broadcaster. It runs itself, really, according to these values, and so tying that together through whatever’s happening on the website is predominately the aim of the Online Manager, just to make sure that this website is representing what SYN is all about. At the moment, the role of the website really is to sit alongside the other broadcasting arms, to show off what’s happening there. I wouldn’t say it’s alone as a standalone website. It’s very much entwined with the broadcasting nature of the organisation.
There was a shift at SYN when it stopped being SYN FM and became SYN: Click, Switch, Watch: did you want to talk a bit about that?
It was about trying to break the organisation down from being split along content creation lines and more along genre and interest lines. The whole purpose of this organisation is to encourage more participation and control. It’s about young people creating media and so any way to make that more accessible and increase participation is a really good thing. I think by breaking down that barrier, it means that online becomes a stream that is viable for more people – really almost limitless in terms of the number of people we can involve with the organisation. The number of hours that we’re allocated for radio and television broadcasting time is so limited. That’s probably one of the most exciting things about the online aspect of SYN, because it is an organisation that is about encouraging content creation and participation, and here we’ve got this platform where potentially we can let everyone who wants to make content have a space to express it. In reality, actually being able to make that happen and turn the wheels here has been a bit harder than what we expected but it’s been interesting nonetheless.
So why do you think it’s been so difficult?
Well, really - it’s all about resources. This organisation is completely voluntary, so I think time is the biggest limitation on all of us here. This year we’ve established the Online Team. This is the first time we’ve used an online team, to try and get some clarity and momentum around making online it’s own flourishing space – but getting everyone together, and making the time to actually put those steps forward has been really, really tough.
The other limitation of course is funding. To build and maintain a website costs money, especially transforming the website from what it was as an annex to broadcasting to its own virtual space is a really big operation and to get the developers and the designers in…there is no money allocated to that this year so that’s a limitation that we have to work within, so we’re really trying to make the existing site as good as it can be this year so that we can roll it out into 2013. A brand new website would be great.
So what is actually on the website at the moment? What are the features of it?
Right now the major features are related to the existing broadcasting arm. There’s the Radio Grid, which sort details what’s happening on Radio each week and each hour – and that gives every person who’s making a radio show a webspace where they can upload their podcasts or any extra links, or photos, or even videos from what they’re doing inside the studio. It also hosts the direct links with the studio itself – you can text and contact people in the studio who are on air at the time, and also streaming online is another major feature – probably the most used feature of the website. As well as that it hosts some of the other content that isn’t available in the other arms – particularly reviews and other such content that you can’t really access on radio or on television so the website sits as a space for that. Also part of the job as Online Manager is really figuring out where we integrate social media with the website and with the other arms. Social media spreads itself across all the other broadcasting arms, but we’re looking at it as a way to connect people from what they’re listening to on the radio to our website where they can find more depth of content. Social media acts as a really nice conduit for that.
There has been some discussion – I know internal discussion at SYN as well – over whether there is still a need for a sort of integrated website or show pages when we’ve actually got Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites.
I think considering SYN’s values it’s not appropriate for us to be existing on a completely commercial space such as Facebook. Facebook would really be the only other option where we could have our own page and use it as our hub. With Facebook being such a huge organisation, we have no control or really a say in what would happen to our site, and what we need here to ensure that the site meets our values is a space where we can control how it operates and how it serves what we need. This organisation isn’t about getting the most number of people listening or a huge audience share or anything like that – it’s really about making it the safest and best space where people can be involved and have a go at making media. Social media is great as a support mechanism for maybe bringing a few more people in and sharing content beyond our walls, but as a host for what we’d like to do it’s just not appropriate.
In terms of the website, you do need a login if you wish to add content – how is that all organized?
In order for people to make content for the site (and I guess this is another limitation, not necessarily a bad one) people need to be a member of the organisation first. People need to be a member of SYN, which really means that firstly they’re under 25 (which is a core part of the organization) and secondly at least they’ve undergone the training and understood the values of what SYN’s really all about. Before anyone’s allowed to make content at SYN, everyone has to go through that process, so having the login step in some ways is a bit of a limitation because it means that we can’t just let everyone come and filter up the best content, but it means that we’ve got a space that is really just for our members to share their content.
You mentioned how podcasts can be on the website - are there currently any options to subscribe to or automatically download podcasts like on iTunes?
We’re not connected with iTunes at the moment. It’s something we’re looking into. There isn’t really a formal mechanism – you can subscribe to certain shows on the site and ask to receive updates from a radio show or a page. You can subscribe, but it really requires someone to go in and find it there and then subscribe from there, so there’s no external entrance into that at the moment which is, again, another limitation. Just like Facebook, the way that we deal with external organisations such as Itunes becomes a bit tougher because we’ve got to match that against the values of the organisation, which really is a check to make sure that what we’re doing is for this organisation, not for our own satisfaction that we’ve got slightly more listeners or something like that – that’s not really what we’re about. It changes the nature of what we’re trying to do as opposed to a commercial website where you’re just trying to increase your traffic just for the sake of that. There’s only a minimal amount of advertising on the site, really only on the front page, and they’re closer to community announcements than commercial advertising – it’s not a big revenue stream for the organisation at all.
There’s actually been some discussion in the commercial sector, mainly overseas, about having your listeners register online where they pop their email address in or log in just so you can have a few basic details about them: birthday, location, etc – so you can have a better record of who’s listening online. Now that’s mainly being listed as more appropriate for advertising purposes, but for a community station, such as SYN, is that something that you would want to direct yourselves to?
We certainly wouldn’t want to be doing it in order to collect data on people to sell or to sell to advertisers. Any use of something like that would only be used to really figure out who was listening and how we can reach these people better – really to figure out who we’re not reaching would be a better way to put it. But to be honest, it doesn’t really serve that much of a useful function for us here. What we’re looking at is trying to build more content creators rather than huge audiences, and through our membership system we’ve got a pretty good idea of who our members are, so I don’t think that would be really something we’d be looking to anywhere in the near future.
You spoke about how the Reviews were on the website as something that couldn’t really be communicated through TV or Radio but had its own place online – are there any other shows that are putting up additional material to the site that perhaps they don’t include in their regular show? Or is it just archives and podcasts?
No, there are a few shows that do – I know that Artsmitten, for example, have a really comprehensive – Artsmitten and Reviews sort of work together to have a really comprehensive set of sometimes photographs, but really often written reviews. Also, the breakfast team are great at putting up really good videos of things that happen in studio, and a few other people are getting more confident at putting up more than just the podcasts and maybe a track listing. That was sort of the core functionality built into it – when the site was built they imagined that all people would want to be doing is putting up their podcasts and the songs that were played in the show. Part of our role this year is to start bringing people beyond those pretty simple content streams to really try and create something that is going to be good for a web audience, and that really helps flesh out their content that they couldn’t do in the studio.
Why do you think these attitudes have changed? What’s the purpose of the web audience?
I think it’s pretty safe to say that our audience, SYN’s primary audience, spends more time online than any other demographic. As such, it would be silly to not pay attention to the space where they’re spending most of their time. The corollary of that is that people within our demographic are much more comfortable at putting up small bits of content online – it’s sort of practiced through the way people work on Facebook and Youtube. People are much more comfortable at sharing snippets of content from all different parts of their lives and so I think that’s starting to show out in the way that people are using the SYN website. The current website really wasn’t designed with that kind of sharing so much in mind, but there’s enough functionality in there for people to do it if they want to. It’s a part of our job at the online team to push people along, to say, “Hey, use this as a place where you can express yourself that way”.
There has been a lot of media interest in radio personalities, talk show hosts, anyone who’s a celebrity, and the personal comments they make on Facebook or Twitter. How do you think that sort of thing affects SYN members, who are members of an organization that’s producing media but they’re also young people who do have a tendency to overshare?
There’s a really tricky line between your individual identity and that of the organisation. I think when people are creating media for SYN, it has to be with the organisation’s values really in mind. It’s an organisation that doesn’t shut anyone out, and anything that could be construed as exclusion is not something that we can really facilitate. This organisation is designed to be almost eternal in the sense that it’s always pitching at this under-25 group of people, and so the people that are creating content now and making the comments now, in 10 years aren’t going to be here to really take account for that. So that’s why it’s so, so vital that any comment made, even in the online space, if it’s made in regards to SYN or could be seen as coming from this organisation, has got to reflect that. It’s really hard, as people are so familiar and so comfortable with saying whatever they like online that to make them conscious of that can seem a little harsh, but I think it’s probably essential, and it’s probably a useful lead that SYN’s taking here with online media to really try to say what is the right thing and what is a fair thing to be saying online. It’s not a personal space. It’s actually got a few really interesting similarities to the broadcasting nature – you don’t necessarily get to pick your audience on Facebook and online. Even though it can feel like a safe and intimate space, you’re sending out your ideas to the world and if that’s reflecting incorrectly on this organisation then it’s really something that we have to limit.
In the future, are there any sort of ‘social media advisors’ or people to oversee any problems when it comes to that? Does that come under your department?
What we’re really trying to do from the Online Department is take the lead and show really what is an example of great social media and what’s an example of great online content, rather than saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t be doing this” - because obviously there are thousands of examples of what you shouldn’t be doing. What we’re trying to do is set the standard. That’s where these kind of discussions come in, saying ‘What does great content look like when it’s being spread through Facebook? How does it end up looking?’ and really trying to shape that image as opposed to really getting down on people, because we don’t want to be limiting whatever people can be doing. That’s not what this organisation is about. We want to be making people feel comfortable in expressing themselves in a thoughtful way.
You were speaking about great online content – is there now a bare minimum for shows to have online content?
When people sign up for a radio show, they come in here with the idea of doing a radio show in mind and so a few people come in and just do that as their minimum. This doesn’t help us, the Online Team, because we would love to see people sharing their content online, but it’s not something you can really force on people: if they’re coming here to do a certain type of media and they’re not comfortable or willing to do an online component, we can’t force them to do it. It is something we’re trying – it’s put into the training and they’re all given access to the website. A lot of people do it just because they really recognise that if they’re doing a radio show as a way to get into the media, it’s a great experience to actually have a site that you can point out to someone in the future and say, “This is my work, I’ve developed all this content” Other people just do it because it’s a way of sharing your content, especially later in time with other people if you can direct them to that website.
There’s the SYN awards each year that recognizes outstanding SYN content – in terms of moving into the digital age, are there any categories that are online-only?
There is Web Innovation as a category for one of the SYN awards – I’m not really sure what the criteria for that is but I think there’s definitely a lot of potential for online –specific content to have more of a platform as a point of celebration at SYN. As I was saying, I think it really opens up this organisation a lot, because it takes us outside the confines of spectrum limitations and time limitations that we have with television and radio broadcasting. Theoretically we could have people and members in regional Victoria uploading content to the site and using it. I think it really sits as a point for SYN to truly become a youth network across Melbourne and Victoria. How that actually moves forward, and whether the organization is willing to take that leap is not necessarily my decision, but I think certainly moving into the digital age that that has got to form part of consideration of where this organisation is going.