It’s Blog Action Day tomorrow and while that’s about all bloggers around the world posting on a topic they want to generate action on, I figured it’s a good excuse as any for me to create some action on my blog again! Last post January 09? Hopefully I don’t leave it for that long again!

There is so much I could write about, so much I’ve had the privilege of learning this year, and so many people who have been a part of it. But the biggest thing that has happened to me this year is meeting the beautiful Lillian Yau from Melbourne – and we’ve now decided that I’ll be moving to Melbourne soon so that we can be a little bit closer to each other!

This will mean leaving my job at 1WAY FM and searching for new work – hopefully within media or Christian ministry – in Melbourne. There’s a lot I can share about this so I will be doing so through this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and on air at 1WAY FM over the next month or so.

I look forward to conversing with you and sharing with you some of what I’ve learnt this year.

Tim

Well what a, uh, three and a half months! I’m a bit of a workaholic so I need to be rather careful. When there’s enough work to literally keep me busy 72 hours a day, prioritising (something I’m not very good at) is important, to get that down to 8 hours. It usually ends up at 9 or 10, but sometimes more. And that’s not taking into account the fact that that 72 hours a day is based on a week of 21 days. I’m seriously not exaggerating.

It’s only that much because I’m passionate about what I do. Because I’ve so many great ideas about new ventures and new and better ways to do what we do, that I want to implement them all at once.

Now if you don’t know me, or you haven’t read far into this blog before, I’m the manager of 1WAY FM, Canberra’s Christian radio station. At the moment we’re planning for Share-a-thon – it’s our annual appeal for funds to our listener base. It runs over three days, and last year we received $55,555 from our listeners. This year, we’re going beyond $55,555, and asking our friends to partner with us for a stronger reach. We haven’t set a ceiling, because we want to see how far we can go. We want to reach out to Canberra in a bigger and better way than we are at the moment, and there is so much that needs to happen for that to happen.

Planning a Share-a-thon is a big job. Being new in this job, I knew very little, and have been learning as I go. I’ve learnt now that to plan an intensive three-day campaign, you need alot of time. More time than I gave myself and my team! But we are going to make it. We just need to ask our God to bless us and the weekend and move in the ways that only he can for us to receive the financial help we need.

We have recently dropped our advertising rate for new sponsors, to help attract those new sponsors, and we’re spending some time out visiting local businesses to outline the benefits of getting themselves on air. Once this new income comes in, oh boy are there plans to spend it (and to use it to make more as well). We need to grow to a size where everyone in Canberra actually knows we exist, and there’s a lot of changes to make to get there!

Suddenly moving to the helm of a radio station – especially at this time of year when a plan is needed for the year ahead, when a new board has recently been appointed that has only really had one meeting so far, and when you really haven’t got any experience managing a radio station yet – isn’t easy. I knew that. But when God decides to answer prayer instantly, it makes it so much easier – easier knowing that he really is in control of it all.

We were considering some program changes. The sort of changes that some people would appreciate, and that others would be ticked off by. But the sort of change that I, at least, thought was where we needed to head.

I started rethinking it when I was reminded that alot more thought needs to be put into these sort of things (I should mention there were time-related reasons why, if it was going to be done soon’ish, it should be done now) so that they can be more well thought through and that other people, if needed, can be consulted.

Then we were praying this morning. That God would show us how to move the radio station forward this year, and that we would remember to ‘check’ things with him first – rather than doing what we believed was right. And the phone rang. While we were praying. We took the call and told the caller we’d call them back afterwards – when that was done, they made a $1,100 donation. Now that on it’s own is huge. We don’t usually get donations of that size outside of our annual Shareathon appeal.

Then he said that he’d donate an extra $1,100 if we kept on air the program that we were thinking of dropping… just like that. No prompting – it just so happened that this listener enjoyed the program, and that he realised something was missing from his life while he was up in Sydney out of the reach of our broadcast. For some reason, he felt the need to let us know his appreciation!

How’s that for answered prayer? It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear – because I thought I was right to go the other way – but it was an answer that showed, without any possible doubt, that God had things in his control. And that’s reassuring.

On the morning of New Year’s Eve James Scott and I presented the Inaugural 1WAY FM Breakfast Show New Year’s Eve Spectacular Extravaganza 2007. It was a look back at the news, sport, movies, technology and deaths of 2007 – here are some of the highlights (apologies for the quality!).

[See post to listen to audio]
(download file – 16.1 MB, 17:40)

So this happened last Thursday night, but I’ve been pretty much flat out so I hadn’t got around to posting it yet!

At a special board meeting on Thursday I was appointed as the Acting Station Manager of 1WAY FM, beginning from 1st January (or rather, from when I return on the 7th January from my break).

I’m looking forward to it. Really. It’s going to be an immense challenge – I haven’t done anything like it before. I know that I’m going to learn a lot about managing people, especially volunteers , and I’m looking forward to getting more aquainted with the Australian radio industry. I think I’ve finally crossed the line – I’m no longer interested in IT. I still know what I knew, but I’m no longer interested in keeping up to date with things. I’m now a media nut.

There are a lot of things that 1WAY FM can do this year. We’re not that well known in Canberra, and compared to commercial stations we have a long way to go with our on air sound. Our logo could do with a facelift. Our website needs a redesign! I could go on forever but it would be boring to anyone who isn’t into radio. The first couple of weeks of 2008 will be spent putting everything in order, deciding (and praying about!) what’s more important and what we can afford, and then going full steam ahead.

I have a busy year ahead of me.