2DRY FM won the Community Engagement Award at the 2023 South Australian Community Broadcasters Association (SACBA) Bibly Awards earlier this month, symbolising the local radio station’s impact on the people of Broken Hill and surrounding region.
“The Community Engagement award represents all the work 2DRY has done over last few years to encourage the community to participate,” said 2DRY FM President, Dion Woodman.
“The media landscape has evolved significantly duirng the past decade. Whilst we have more access to more information, the quantity of local content has reduced. Community broadcasters are uniquely positioned to engage the community at a grassroots level and tell the stories that matter to us.
“I’m proud of all our volunteers and our Station Manager, Megan Williams. It’s a team effort and we’ve shown that despite our isolation and limited resources, Broken Hill can deliver high quality content that is just as good as anything coming out of a capital city.”
2DRY FM won the 2018 Bibly for Small Station of the Year, so to win the Community Engagement Award five years later has shown the gains the radio station has made, according to Mx Williams.
“To build upon that [2018 award] to winning the overall Community Engagement award is a huge achievement for the station,” they said.
“We’ve worked hard to be out and about in the community as much as possible, growing our volunteers base by offering trainings, expanding the variety of programming we offer. To have that hard work recognised is a huge honour.
“Community radio is a place for everybody, and during the past 18 months the number of people, the diversity of conversations, of interests and ideas that we’ve had on air has skyrocketed. For example, for International Women’s Day this year, we had 34 people on air.
“In the awards period we did 14 outside broadcasts sharing everything from live music, sport, youth events, and art awards. And we’re still growing. During the radiothon this past month we’ve done 10 special events. It’s all been happening here at the station, it’s almost hard to keep up with how much is going on!”
