Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Is this how u do the linkedin
From 2012
Flashpoint Music was an independent production house and recording studio in Surry Hills. This was my favourite role during my 30 odd years of working. Apart from running the office, it involved liaising with music artists, session musicians, songwriters, managers, music and TV producers and distributors. I was the sole contact for Flashpoint which meant I would be contacted any day, any time 24/7. This was fine with me. Additionally, I also looked after the royalty accounting. Not having any accounting software which suited our needs and not wanting to pay a large annual fee to buy the industry standard Counterpoint Suite software, I designed my own accounting software using Filemaker Pro. Filemaker is an excellent database tool which enables you to build a software application perfect for your needs. To achieve this I had to teach myself royalty accounting and database development at the same time which was quite difficult but it had to be done. This involved numerous weekends at home in development of my monster program. After a few years I was approached to be the sub-publisher for Accorder Music in London for their substantial publishing catalog for the Australia / NZ territory. This involved liaising with APRA / AMCOS to register works individually or in bulk and to collect and account royalties from various sources back to Accorder. My accounting was bullet-proof. In 2012 Flashpoint moved location and from 2013 my role expanded to include building management, which involved liaising with tenants, tradesmen and real estate agents. I dug it. My 14+ years working for that company were fulfilling, varied and enjoyable and when it came to an end it did feel like leaving home but when your time in music is over, it's over.
After taking 6 months off to re-charge I really needed to earn again but was not feeling ready to return to radio, so a temp agency suggested a campaign closer to home which involved a class action against the tobacco giant Philip Morris. I don't recall which law firm was conducting the class action but it was my role to contact the group members in the class action and make sure they had their paperwork completed. I got through my calls quite quickly and was moved on to another campaign but was then offered a better job so I resigned.
Fairly challenging role for someone not too experienced in news and who had no interest in sport or local politics. Very busy, each shift involved choosing which stories to write, which phone interviews to conduct and which voice grabs to use, all while battling with antiquated equipment. Not sure why the main radio station in the Newcastle market was still using audio carts from the 1960s but that's how it was then. My day would involve writing and reading hourly news bulletins for both 2HD and New FM, with stories for both stations being chosen and written with their different audiences in mind. After more than 2 years living out of Sydney I decided to move back and take a break from radio.
After completing the 9 month full-time radio course at AFTRS I was very pleased to land my first radio job at 2ST. I hosted the afternoon show from 1-6pm weekdays, after voicing ads in the mornings. Each week I'd either have to do an additional Saturday shift or a Sunday shift. Weekends would involve hosting the Gardening Show, hosting the Top 20 Country Countdown or hosting the Buy, Sell & Swap Show. 31 hours a week on-air was quite demanding but that's the way it was. My afternoon show was broadcast over a huge area that would take 3 hours to drive from one side of my target area to the other, across 3 frequencies. My show included, music, local and national news, interviews and competitions. Occasionally I would fill in for the newsreader which also involved writing the news and also filled in occasionally on the sister station Power FM. My favourite time in this period was when I would be asked to fill in for the breakfast announcer for months at a time. While hosting the 2ST breakfast show I would be required to be at work from 5-10am and then the days were my own. The format of the breakfast show suited me much better than the afternoon show and I am an early riser so that also worked better for me. It was always a bit disappointing when the breakfast host would eventually return and I'd go back to afternoons. Ultimately I was a bit burnt out after doing 2 years of 6-day weeks so I decided to move on. In radio it's essential to network in order to move on to bigger markets but I never bothered doing that so I had no choice but to look online for radio jobs available within 2 hours of Sydney and saw only 1 job in Newcastle, which was an immediate start.