Being structured far from its traditional functions,
and correspondingly, providing mostly music and entertainment-based content to
its listeners, current radio broadcasting content has been frequently
criticized by academic circles. Especially in Turkey, the majority of radios
keep broadcasting popular music, entertainment, and daily comedy programs while
ignoring informational fields such as news, education, culture, and arts. Even
university radios, each of which should be structured as an alternative
broadcasting practice, often broadcast with a style similar to popular/common
radio formats. This necessitates to question the reasons underlying this
situation and the approaches of university radios to instructive and
informative broadcasting.
Within the study, university radios in Australia which
have a powerful educational and community broadcasting tradition, and those in
Turkey which are rapidly increasing in number and most of which are seeking its
direction, were examined in terms of their perspectives on informative
broadcasting practices. In this context, face-to-face in-depth interviews were
carried out with 2SER of Macquarie University and University of Technology
Sydney, 2NUR of Newcastle University, 3RRR which received its first license in
Royal Melbourne Technology Institute, CURTIN Radio of Curtin University, and
SURG of The University of Sydney. Also, face-to-face in-depth interviews with
official executives of selected state and foundation universities in Turkey
including Anadolu University, Istanbul University, Ankara University,
Bahçeşehir University, and Koç University were conducted. Data analyzed with a
descriptive approach showed that radios in Australia having flexible and rich
facilities in terms of financial and human resources as well as strong
community support are able to produce more instructive and informative content.
While university radios in Turkey display different trends from each other regarding
content structuring, the ones in Australia have adopted principles of community
broadcasting described as a third model. University radios in Turkey do not
have a holistic approach to alternative broadcasting practices