Durban Youth Radio makes waves in Florida Road

DURBAN Youth Radio has been broadcasting from the BAT Centre since 2012, and its move to Florida Road this Friday symbolically marks the beginning of a new era for this tenacious, cutting edge youth-focused station.

One of the fastest-growing community radio stations, DYR was founded in 1995 at the then University of Natal as a purely campus radio station. In 2000 it became a self standing non-profit community platform and can be heard on 105.1FM.

Durban Youth Radio has gone through a seismic shift in the last 20 months. Now known as DYR105.1FM, the proudly Durban brand has gone from strength to strength, quickly finding its feet as a deliberately anti-format, slightly eclectic but already immensely popular local radio station.

Two years ago it grew quickly with an endless stream of great music aimed at the city’s youth. Much of its success can be attributed to Kevin Minter-Brown and Cameron Claassens, both experienced radio professionals, who joined the station to help turn it around, and more importantly to comply with the community license regulations which, among other things, stipulated that the station should have presenters, local news and community information.

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Kevin Minter-Brown presents DYR Breakfast every weekday from 6am to 9am and has been instrumental in developing the DYR brand and orchestrating the station’s imminent move to brand new premises in Florida Road. Cameron Claassens has championed the technical challenges of DYR and built sales systems and almost single-handedly wired up the brand new studios.

Tebogo Mashego, with over 15 years experience in community radio, has worked countless hours to draft a constitution and do all the administrative work and recruiting and fundamentals that have kept the station running as it begins to find its feet.

“We are thrilled to be making this move! We enjoyed our time at the BAT Centre and are hugely grateful for their years of support. While we have enjoyed every minute of being based in the picturesque harbour, we have outgrown our premises and the need for new studios became an urgent matter Our move to Florida Road coincides with a considerable upgrade process and improved technical infrastructure within Durban Youth Radio. We can’t wait to be operational in our new studios with our new state of the art broadcast technology” said Minter-Brown.

He said as part of the migration from one studio to the other, the good news is that the station is installing a new state-of-the art transmitter which will vastly improve signal clarity, and ability to reach far and wide throughout the city.

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