Jim Priebe presenting Saving the Station at the Regina Fringe Festival. Photo: Supplied by Jim Priebe.
What is it like opening a community radio station? Jim Priebe recounts his experience doing this in Saving the Station, a one-man play about his experience starting a volunteer-staffed radio station in small-town Ontario.
“Saving the station is a 45-minute storytelling piece,” Priebe said.
“It’s a solo presentation prepared for a Fringe audience.”
The play will be presented in narrative format. It recounts the difficulties Priebe experienced running a community radio station while relying on volunteers and balancing the different interests of contributors, eventually leading to a “mutiny” by contributors who had a different vision of what the station should be.
The show will run as part of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival after having premiered at the Regina Fringe Festival earlier in the month.
Priebe worked as a teacher in Northern Ontario and a principal in Nunavut before moving to Winnipeg five years ago.
Priebe said he had been trying to write his memoir before deciding that Fringe theatre was a better way to tell the story after encouragement from his physiotherapist.
“The Fringe Fest is very popular here, so if you can get a Fringe Fest play going, that makes sense.”
Priebe said it was a long-held dream of his to found a community radio station that was borne of a desire to bring local voices to air.
“A community radio station is actually a special type of licence from the CRTC, which is a branch of the federal government that regulates this,” Priebe said.
“It’s not a commercial station, and it’s not like the CBC.”
Priebe said that what sets community radio apart from larger media organizations is the attention it gives to local people and local issues.
“Community radio will be reflective of the community that it’s in. And so, you do that, there are different ways of doing it, the way I took to it was to get volunteers to pitch shows.”
“We played local music, because there are a number of local musicians in town, but their work wouldn’t necessarily, you know, ever make it to the CBC or commercial radio.”
“We had a local historian,” Priebe said, “and he’d always come in with some interesting story.”
“So, the idea is, the community shapes the programming, and you find a way to do that.”
Priebe said that community radio is as relevant today as it ever has been.
“I think radio, in a way, matters more than ever, because a lot of media has become very polarized.”
“It’s predominated more and more by major players, who tend to live with predictable viewpoints, and often they can be far away.”
Priebe compared the decline of local media to a frog in slow-boiling water, arguing people often don’t notice what’s disappearing until it’s gone.
“Then it starts to come back through, whether it’s a local blog or a local newspaper, or whatever it is,” Priebe said.
Priebe added that the most mundane things can tip people off to the local issues large media organizations sometimes miss.
“You see some of those posts on a Facebook feed, or wherever,” Priebe said, “wow, there’s a lot going on right here in Winnipeg. How come I didn’t know more about that?”
Priebe said that the response to the show he received in Regina was positive, with many people able to relate to the difficulties he faced.
“Some of the comments I get back, people have had similar experiences, but in a completely different context,” Priebe said.
“You know, sometimes it’s literally a not-for-profit board. Sometimes it’s just having been betrayed. Sometimes it’s just being able to talk about a difficult experience without having a happy ending. So, I hope that people find some way to resonate.”
Saving the Station is showing from July 16 to July 25 at 104-211 Bannatyne Street as part of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.
Graham McDonald, U Multicultural Journalism and Media Arts Centre