SOME OF THE FOLKS AT ILR

Sean Ison (Music Director)

Sean began his career in radio some 25 years ago as a cart boy, working at various stations in the production side of commercial radio. Later he spent a number of years on air on community radio and Narrowcast broadcasting.  These days he dedicates his energies solely to successful syndicated programming and developing new technologies in radio production. He has a BA (Com. Stud.) completed in 2004 (deciding that you can teach an old dog new tricks!) and has been at the fore front of the Free Radio software Project since 2003. He is currently also the president of The Independent Australian Radio Broadcasters Association.

Keith Ashton (Senior Consultant)

Keith began his radio career over 40 years ago, working on numerous high profile stations overseas and within Australia; most notably on Capital Radio in London and 2SM in Sydney during the 1970's. Keith has worked for most major radio networks and in more recent years helped the (then) ABA develop narrowcast broadcasting in Australia. Keith presently runs a successful series of Australian internet search engines, including http://www.aussieseek.com and a telephone / radio news service for the sight impaired.

Jason Smith (Sales Consultant)

Jason helped establish ILR over a decade ago, specializing in the fields of sales and promotion. Some people may also remember Jason as a co-presenter of The Australian Real Underground Music Show during its early years before he decided to concentrate on selling full time.

OUR HISTORY

ILR was started approximately 11 years ago, by a group of friends who were either musicians or people who had worked in the radio industry in Australia. We wanted to provide airplay opportunities for independent artists outside the usual "indie subculture" - make real changes in the way radio selected music for airplay. From early on we realized that simply pushing indie music was not enough; we needed to incorporate new music into the usual type of play list radio would accept. After much research we established that the best way to do this would be to provide external programming. Also that radio programs full of only new music would make little impact, that songs needed repeat airings for listeners to accept them.

This first group was formed into a non-profit organization known as "The Newcastle Youth Radio Association" (NYRA). Later as we grew, we realized that in order to deal with commercial radio stations we needed a trading name that would make us sound a little more professional. For this purpose we selected "Ison Live Radio" (Ison being the name of the primary founder Sean Ison). At the time this was intended to be temporary, but after several years the name stuck and the website address became known.

Later the NYRA looked at its trading name: "Ison Live Radio" and became "ILR Television and Radio" to reflect our expansion into television programming.

THE NEWCASTLE YOUTH RADIO ASSOCIATION

Originally the term "Youth" tended to describe the majority of the members in the organization. These days we are all getting a bit past the "youth" tag! Due to the costs involved (and legal wrangling involved) we have no real future plans to change the name.

The association has as its primary aims:-

• The promotion of independent music from Australia.
  
• The promotion of independent music into Australia.
  
• The assistance of young artists.