Future of New Horizons

Vaughn Bennison 0:00

Please note, this program has been very heavily edited for broadcast. If you'd like to hear the extended interview, please check the Blind Citizens, Australia, New Horizons podcast feed.

Program theme song 0:18

It's up to you and me to shine a guiding light and lead the way.... United by our cause, we have power to pursue what we believe... We'll achieve the realization of our dreams.

John Simpson 0:38

Hello, I'm John Simpson, and welcome to New Horizons program number 903 - and with me today is the man who's been responsible for the vast majority of those programs, either as producer or presenter. Welcome back to New Horizons, BCA President Vaugh Bennison.

Vaughn Bennison 0:57

Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

John Simpson 0:59

We talk about 900 programs of New Horizons. But of course, a weekly radio program for BCA is a lot older than that.

Vaughn Bennison 1:08

Much older than that, John. Blind Citizens Australia started supporting and developing a radio program in 1982 when Neville Kerr started presenting a 15 minute program on behalf of Blind Citizens Australia on 3RPH in Melbourne. Many of those programs did focus on the work of BCA and what was happening in and around the community, but there were programs as well that focused on issues outside of BCA. But in those days, more typically, the program was about BCA and certainly of things that were relevant to BCA members. 

And as communication strategies developed, and as transport fares went down, the program started to develop a little bit more of a national focus. And then, of course, towards the end of Neville's time, the internet was a thing, and you could do interviews with people all over the place, and you could get information from people all over Australia. So it started to become much more of a national program, probably around the mid to late '90s, which was...really interesting. And of course, Neville finished up in 2006 and the program was rebooted as New Horizons in 2007.

John Simpson 2:22

So other people were involved with the production, between Neville's involvement and your own.

Vaughn Bennison 2:26

Yeah, quite a few people, actually, John. So Robin KcKenziewho was the Executive Officer of BCA at the time, rebooted the program. Then there were a number of people. Scott Nixon did it for a while, and then he left, and it was in a bit of a schemozzle with about 10 or 12 different people involved in the production and presentation of the program. And then Ricky Chaplin took it over, but he needed to give it up when he became a staff member... and I took it over in October of 2015.

John Simpson 3:04

So thinking about your time in the chair, what would you see as your highlights?

Vaughn Bennison 3:09

One of the things that I've always really appreciated about New Horizons and the way that the program has been run during my time, is that it has been run independently from BCA. So BCA supports the program, but I've had independent editorial control. And one of the aspects of that that makes it interesting is that it is a vehicle for providing feedback from members about the work and the involvement of BCA. So there have been a couple of programs where I've taken BCA to task over certain things - one of them was about what I perceived and a couple of members perceived as a rather lacklustre response at one stage to audio description - and an approach that was taken that we thought BCA could have gone harder on. And one of my key highlights was an interview I did very early on in my New Horizons career with Ivan Molloy, who's subsequently died... and he was, had been the convener of the Overseas Engagement branch, and he, at the time that I spoke to him, was some 95 years old and had a wonderful history of BCA, and one of the problems that I've always struggled with in all of my time with doing New Horizons is that a 15 minute program just isn't long enough to get everything that you would want to get in. And some of the stories and the things that Ivan told me during that interview that I couldn't use, made it an absolute highlight for me. And... I also had a chance to interview somebody very high up in the National Disability Insurance Agency, and that was a very open and no-holds-barred interview, a very frank and open discussion. It's not specifically New Horizons related, but I've had the chance over the last few years to do the RPH broadcast programs for the BCA Conventions. And I really enjoy doing those because one of my big loves, John is, is audio editing and audio production. And in the Convention broadcast, you have a full day's worth of content. And one of the things I really enjoy doing is being able to cut that down and bridge it all together and make it into a one hour special. That's just something I particularly enjoy, so... but I've enjoyed the ability to talk to BCA members about the things that they're doing, the experiences that they're going through, and I've enjoyed, sometimes very heavily, interrogating BCA board members and staff about why things aren't happening in the way that we would expect and why decisions have been made. I think my last program as presenter was something like 892 or something like that. So I've done over 450 programs over the last nine years.

John Simpson 5:59

In recent years, the program New Horizons gets distributed in a number of other ways, so it has quite a reach, Vaughn.

Vaughn Bennison 6:08

it does. And in fact, BCA was a bit of a pioneer in Australia in terms of podcasting. New Horizons has actually been published on the BCA website, and was in those days, downloadable from the website, probably since the late 90s, I would say. And of course, since then, it's been made available through the Vision Australia Library, and it does go to community stations, although most community stations that I'm aware of take it as part of a package that is packaged up by Vision Australia, I'm not sure whether there are any community stations at this point that take New Horizons on its own.

John Simpson 6:43

And the BCA board have been giving some consideration to what the future of the program might look like.

Vaughn Bennison 6:50

Yeah, there's been some... difficulty in producing the program for some time now, because it doesn't need to serve the same need within the community that it did even ten years ago, because... as people have sort of grown up into the use of technology, they get information from a lot of different sources. It's become more and more difficult to get information on the program, because one of the things that social media has has meant is that people find out about events and happenings much closer to when they actually happen than they used to, because the amount of time needed to prepare and get ready to do something or be a part of something is less particularly with a lot of things happening online, so you don't have to organise transport and all that sort of thing. So there's a whole lot of things that we can't cover because we simply don't have time for it... there's a whole lot of things that we can't cover because I'm only one person, and I've had significant assistance throughout my time in the program from people like you, John, and Graham of course... Steve Richardson's done a couple of a couple of programs, and there have been a couple of other guest presenters and people who... many, many, many people who have submitted story ideas to the program. But whilst it wasn't difficult to get people to come on the program - I mean, I don't think anybody ever refused to come on the program in the whole time that I was running it - but it was getting more and more difficult to identify people to approach. And as my workload was increasing, I was struggling to find time to do all of that background work that's required to produce a radio program on a weekly basis. The other thing that was becoming increasingly obvious to me was that what New Horizons was particularly useful for was in-depth discussions about events and happenings. So whenever we would get something on, or somebody on, we were going much more in depth than used to happen, because that very brief, shallow look was what was obtained through other forms of communications. And what New Horizons was particularly useful for was a really in-depth discussion. And as we only have 15 minutes, there's not really time to do those in-depth discussions. So we started to see that there was a need to change the program and to make it more relevant, particularly to BCA members, but more broadly to the blind and vision impaired community. And so we needed to build a team, and we started work on that last year. And the idea was that I would work with those people to... ensure that they have the skills to continue broadcasting the program. Because my view was that I would finish up at the end of 2025 after having done 10 years of producing the program... and that at the same time, we would use their ideas and we would use their skills, the skills that those people come with innately, as well as discussions with BCA members, to work out what the future of the program would look like. That kind of got derailed when I became President of BCA at the end of 2025. And it wasn't appropriate for me, because of my strong belief in the independence of New Horizons, and that the program that I wanted to do and I wanted to be involved in was to maintain its independence. So it wasn't appropriate for me to continue in that role. Ahead of that, though, we held a member forum in October of last year, and what they told us really was that the episodes they liked the most were the human interest sort of stories... the stories about people's lives, their journey as they gain their blindness, their journey living as a blind person or a vision impaired person, talking about employment tips and tricks, life hacks, they wanted to hear about things that they could use to empower their own lives... and that really The stories about current events, the discussions about policy, the talks that we had with with government people, or about art exhibitions that were coming up, or with the NDIA, weren't as relevant as some of those human interest sort of stories. So the Board of BCA has decided that they want to take a greater level of control of New Horizons and make it about the members, and... you know, that member communication system, or part of the member communication system that that BCA has - and hopefully, if we can manage it, make it a little bit more bi-directional with input from members. We've had a number of BCA members who been involved as I said, in doing the program, there's probably about seven or eight people that I hear from quite regularly... and I really appreciate their involvement, but we don't hear from a broad cross section of the membership - despite asking repeatedly on programs for story ideas or for feedback on the program, we very rarely get any. We want to provide a small member feedback session in the program so that other members can hear what what BCA members have to say.

John Simpson 12:16

So Vaughn, this is, of course, going to take some time to put all this together, so what's happening in the immediate future?

Vaughn Bennison 12:25

Well, this will be the final episode of New Horizons, I guess you could say, in this series. we'll be finding a team leader, which will be, I guess you could say the producer of the program, or presenter, producer-presenter of the program, and they will work with the Communications Coordinator and, by extension, the staff and Board of BCA, to make sure that the new program fits with the philosophy of BCA - and really works, as I said, as that member communication platform. We're hoping that it won't take too long to put all of that together, but we don't know for sure, because a lot of it's going to depend on whether we get people who are interested in being a part of the team and build rebuilding that program... and it will depend on what skills they bring to the table and how much extra training they need. We're really hoping, John, that we'll be able to revive the program around the time of Convention, or maybe soon after, and the first few episodes will likely focus on some of the sessions from the Convention. We obviously think that within our membership, we have the skills to manage this - but those people need to come forward, and we need that input from... the members as well. We think this is a workable solution, and that it will be a way for members to really engage with the organisation and with each other.

John Simpson 13:52

Well, Vaughn, I've thoroughly enjoyed my involvement over many years with the program, and most recently throughout this last summer series that we did, and a few programs around that. And I think it is time that we signed off - and no better way to do that than ask you to, as the outgoing host, producer, presenter of New Horizons, to sign off the program in the usual way.

Vaughn Bennison 14:21

If you'd like to get in touch with Blind Citizens Australia, you can call 1800 033 660... 1800 033 660. You can also email bca@bca.org.au - BCA at BCA dot org dot AU.

Program theme song 14:40

We'll achieve the realisation of our dreams... of our dreams.