SURG

SURG, previously styled as SURG FM, is the campus radio station of the University of Sydney. The station is run as a club within the University of Sydney Union, and broadcasts online through the iHeartRadio platform. SURG stands for the 'Sydney University Radio Group'.

SURG
CitySydney
Broadcast areaUniversity of Sydney
Sloganstudent. radio.
Programming
FormatOnline broadcast
AffiliationsCommunity Broadcasting Association of Australia
Ownership
OwnerUniversity of Sydney Union
History
First air dateAugust 23, 2011 (2011-08-23)
Former call signs2SUX, 2USU
Former frequencies90.9FM
Links
Websitesurgfm.com

History

Student radio groups have existed on the University of Sydney campus since the 1920s.

In 1924 Major E. H. Booth, then President of the Sydney University Union, founded the Radio Club, with Professor J. P. V. Madsen as President. Holding lectures on subjects such as ‘The Fundamentals of Broadcasting’, ‘The Nature of Wireless Waves & Methods of Broadcasting’, ‘Broadcasting & Reception’, and ‘Commercial Wireless’, the club had 30 members and averaged 4 members at their weekly events.

Madsen proposed in 1926 that their studies should continue under a ‘Radio Research Board’ within the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR – now the CSIRO), which was founded the same year. The CSIR would build the first National Standards Laboratory in Australia – what is now the Madsen Building.

In the late 1970s, University Broadcasting Services, running from the Wentworth building, created content and recorded lectures for 2SER. When further community radio licenses were made available to Sydney stations, the USU Society, ‘Sydney University Friends of the Radio Station’, was formed to conduct test broadcasts and lobby for a campus station, under the name 2SUX. After a General Meeting of the USU attracted 30 people – 21 voting for and 9 against the bid, the USU withdraw its support of the society’s bid as it was believed not an economically feasible investment at the time.

Radio Skid Row-Radio Redfern took over the Wentworth studio until being kicked out in June 1984. University Broadcasting Services, now FBi Radio, was granted a lease to use the space under the Footbridge Theatre in the mid-90s, and moved briefly to the Wentworth studio before leaving for a Pitt St Mall shopfront, and then finally moving to their current home in Waterloo in the early 2000s.

At the same time, William Balfour created the Sydney University Radio Group. When FBi left campus, SURG applied for a Temporary Community Broadcast License, broadcasting twice a year from Manning House or a caravan in front of the Quadrangle: for a week during O-Week, and for two weeks during Verge Festival in October. The license was owned by the USU and thus the station was formally ‘USUFM’, used interchangeably with ‘SURG FM’.

In late 2010, after renovations to the Holme Building radio studio, SURG began to use that space for its broadcast periods, broadcasting from the University’s own FM transmitter on top of Fisher Library.

In Semester 2 2012, SURG launched its online broadcast, broadcasting on weekdays for 10 weeks of each semester. This coincided with a Memorandum of Understanding with the USU, noting that SURG provides a service outside the scope of most clubs and societies, and thus receives special funding. This was resigned in following years, culminating in the current 2015 MOU which terminates December 31, 2017.

In Semester 1 2017, SURG launched in iHeartRadio, ‘Australia’s leading online entertainment platform’, appearing next to radio stations from Australian Radio Network (ARN) and national broadcasters.[1]

Current structure

SURG is run as a club within the University of Sydney Union. This means it is independent but relies on funding from the Union's Clubs & Societies Program, of up to $6000 per annum.[2]

SURG is run by a student executive, elected in October of each year. The current executive consists of Andrew Rickert (President), Jake Landa (Vice President), Haydn Hickson (Secretary), Jack Foster (Treasurer), Abbey Lenton (Publicity Officer), Beckett McNeil (Technical Officer), Deepa Alam (Music Director), Jasper Bruce (General Executive) and Bronte Coles (General Executive).[3]

gollark: Wondrous.
gollark: Although HTTP tries its best to alienate you from the people you interact with via the stateless request/response model, at least with unencrypted HTTP I am still aware that I am interacting with another server. TLS and so on seek to undermine this further, by forcing you to treat everyone as a faceless certificate surrounded by attackers trying to eavesdrop at all times. It thus depersonalizes and alienates you from the people you are interacting with even further.
gollark: Whoever designed this should rotate at 2519285 mrad/s!
gollark: And the only protection against it is... that your bank might refund you later?
gollark: I mean, with that, you give someone details for payments, and then they can extract arbitrary amounts of money?

References
  1. "SURG Makes It To iHeartRadio". Media Info. Media Info. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
  2. "Forms". C&S Orion. University of Sydney Union. Retrieved 2017-09-01.
  3. "About". surgfm.com. SURG. Retrieved 2017-09-01.

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