James Valentine has a cold and almost called Dom Knight to fill in for him this morning. Will see if he’s presenting tomorrow or not.
Meanwhile Richard Glover has COVID (for the first time) and Dom Knight is filling in for him.
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Really enjoying how 91.7 ABC Local Radio Gold Coast has stereo music even during the state wide night programs.
It makes it so much more listenable. And much better than even the 64 kbps that DAB uses in Brisbane.
Wish it was something they could roll out across the nation to all markets where Local radio is on FM.
But I know…$$$$$
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Simon Marnie filling in for James this morning.
Another name the ABC can send off to Centrelink. Well, two actually, if you count Mr Valentine.
Probably a relic of the old “ABC Coast FM” days when 91.7 wasn’t an “ABC Local” station per se, but a music station, I’m guessing one of the inspirations for the format of DiG Music when that started up [especially as it was the first “local” station to stream online, from memory]. Still a nice bonus to have regardless.
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I still miss the ABC Coast FM days. Why does the ABC just ruin anything good?
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Even before that when it was 4SO at 50w on AM
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In re-reading about Coast FM I did see a mention of the 4SO “Gold Coast Rock” days - the archived “about” page of Coast FM mentions what seemed like an odd existence - rock by day, Doublejays at night, schools programs - a lot of that presumably before they expanded JJJ to the Gold Coast.
I guess it’s not like, back when the Gold Coast was a lot smaller in population in the 80s (though that was certainly about to change), they felt they needed a separate talk service from 4QR/612 or the Tweed stations. So considering that I can see why they thought it a decent idea at the time.
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4SO goes back much further than that. It was a normal ABC regional radio station ABC3 network for the town of Southport on 1590. AFAIK it started in 1952. (well before 4GG in 1967).
Later, it got its some of its own programming that included a “smooth jazz” music format copied from WAVE FM (LA).
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4SO’s transmitter was located at the Telecom lines depot at Broadbeach and was a fairly low power of about 400W. Because of the sandy soil there the groundplane didn’t work very well so it didn’t have very good coverage. The 4SO studio was actually in one of the towers at Toowong in Brisbane and probably ended up there because they ABC had no presence on The Coast back then.
The ABC Tweed Service was from a studio in Lismore and the 50Kw transmitter was at Lawrence on the Clarence River next to the ferry. A low power infill AM service was at Terranora on the ridge and was again a low power service of about 500W because of the long distance down to Lawrence.
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And interestingly on a fairly adjacent frequency… 720 at Terranora vs 738 at Lawrence… its a bit surprising that they weren’t spaced further apart.
I can recall that Bill Gates was an instigator in setting up the separate feed from Brisbane for 4SO and the music format. He later went on to be the inaugural program director for ABC Coast FM GC and Sunshine Coast.
Opening of 4SO
25 year anniversary for 91.7/Coast FM
https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/gold-coast/abc-coast-fm-celebrates-twenty-five-years-on-gold-coast-airwaves/news-story/b0e27af804db5d9d1cefcf7211346d54
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ABC Gold Coast FM is a bit of an oddity today too - the ABC’s Gold Coast FM transmitters are at Lower Beechmont not Mt Tamborine like the commercial FM’s. The ABC would have needed FM coverage into NSW more than overspill into Brisbane like the commercials wanted at Tamborine.
Only the commercial FM’s are on DAB+ at Tamborine and the ABC has stayed out of DAB+ on the Gold Coast so far. Possibly a sign of things to come for DAB+ from ABC.
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Though the ABC could operate their own DAB site at Lower Beechmont if they wanted to, they wouldn’t HAVE to be at Tamborine… and as they’d need their own channel like 8C anyway.
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Terranora hadn’t had much love last time I was there - the transmitter was a locally made one from a bloke that used to build them on the Central Coast NSW. It was just sitting on a wooden office table.
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4SO was always a challenge to get decent reception in Brisbane. There was some chance at night since it was on one of those low power channels so there wasn’t a lot of competition. Plus not much adjacent to cause a lot of worry. 3NE was above it on 1600 and below was another low power channel.
ABC 720 aka 2ML Murwillumbah can be received in Brisbane now (as can “2NR” Grafton 738).
It didn’t ever seem to be much of an issue on AM. 4WK and 4GR used to be similarly spaced in the past 880 (now 4BC) and 860. 2LM was close at 900.
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True, though 738 is one of those 50kw blowtorches that has great coverage.
2NR Lawrence had a lot of history associated with it: the original transmitter building was sitting empty and was going to be let to a community group(not sure if it ever happened?). The transmitters were a containerised pre-fab kit built by the then Wesgo for the old NTA. From memory it may have had 2 Harris DX25’s in parallel in it or perhaps a single DX50. There were others I had seen that had Nautel’s in them. Wesgo was a contracting business associated with the old 2WS AM station in Sydney.
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Josh Szeps will now be filling for James Valentine from tomorrow and James O’Laughlin will do Afternoons.
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Stay in bed folks.
Szeps is boring AF. No wonder 702’s ratings are tanking.