ABC Local Radio

Myf could always do her show on RN as it’s like a music and arty show for an hour every day

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While they’re at it, making PM an hour-long program again would be good…

She could always go back to Double J

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She’d slot well in 12-2pm between Zan and Karen Leng

Good. Media outlets were hopeful this was coming today and they’ve had two months and two weeks to prepare content to be released as soon as the suppression order was lifted.

This was a unique piece of news akin to an elongated budget lockup where coverage could be prepared over months and polished for release as soon as they were able to.

Agree, however, run the softer afternoon content from 1 - 4, I like their drive beginning at 4 and running to 6:30pm.

What should be developed is an alternative pool of content for the three hour afternoon shift, instead of soft content, try hyper local content or panels on topics or extended interviews with news makers in a behind the story style focus, more on the people than a particular news story.

Back to JJ an even better idea.

On news days such as this, the half hour PM or World Today is found in desperate need of more time for coverage. 25 or 30 minutes is simply not good enough.

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A couple of farewells later this morning on ABC Radio Tasmania. Chris Wisbey is having a farewell show from 10 - 12 today after announcing his retirement after 38 years. He hasn’t been on since last year that I’ve heard and I’ve been wondering where he was. Weekends won’t be the same now.

He’ll also be with Peter Cundall who has also retired from his ABC Radio gig with Chris where they did the gardening talkback every Saturday morning.

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Hi Guys,

What happen with the Change of Sandra Moon and Joesph Thomson on ABC Goulburn Murray? Has Joesph got a new position? Love listening to him only get him a hour now.

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From Radioinfo:

ABC Radio has commenced a roll out of updated branding of its 44 Regional bureaux.

The refreshed branding can be heard across broadcast platforms as well as seen across social media, apps, websites and third-party platforms.

As part of this week’s roll out, ten regional stations are dropping call signs from their names and two stations are undergoing a significant name change to better identify their local region with ABC Western Victoria now ABC Wimmera, and ABC North West WA becomes ABC Pilbara.

Read more, which includes the list of new station names, at: https://www.radioinfo.com.au/news/abc-continues-rebranding

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Very sad. More homogenising of the ABC.

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Can’t say I’m surprised

The rot started with the dropping of domestic shortwave (SW) in the NT & cessation of Radio Australia on SW.

In my mind it does seam a little premature to drop the main or only AM or FM frequency channel as part of the re-branding. One might be under the impression that most people are now listening to ABC Local Radio via smartphones or streaming from home internet etc, which I doubt. And DAB+ (another transmission platform) hasn’t even started or even planned for most of those areas. That said some simplification of coverage area in re-branding is probably a good idea.

I’d love to see some recent survey figures of what kind of media/medium people listen to their local ABC on in the regional areas.

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Something odd is that most regional areas aren’t being called ABC Radio (region), they are just being called ABC (region)
image

I know that when the format was (frequency) ABC (region), the frequency was removed in areas where the station operated on more than one frequency.

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Dropping the frequency from it’s overall branding won’t encourage new listeners to sample it. They need to know where to find it.

ABC Newcastle on its own for instance is a bit vague.

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The theme music for The Country Hour has been updated.

Compare this week’s to last:

Hopefully someone has a copy of the old music.

Updated version sounds more insipid than the long running theme, less guitar, less 80’s influence instrumentals. Elements aren’t as strong.

Enjoy:
https://xtrainsights.com/regional-radio-audience-measurement/results

Remember that these ‘straw polls’ rely on recall, a phone call with a question of what station did you listen most to at x,y,z times.

ABC does next to no external marketing, so their good results are likely all the more better.

If you wish to reach over 40’s, hire a PR who has friends in the ABC, would be more effective than the local SCA station in many cases.

Is it? Or is it just professional consistent branding?

I think it looks great and it is well overdue. Should have happened when the metro stations were updated.

Aren’t we forgetting that the current (or soon to be old) branding for ABC Local Radio in regional markets was also a corporate/network-wide thing? I’d also imagine there would’ve been some complaints about the end of legacy ABC callsigns about 20 years ago, but we all adjusted to that.

Still a bit slack how it’s taken over two years for the regional stations to adopt the new logo style, but at least it’s finally happening I suppose.

Nah, I still call it 2BL :older_man:.

What I would like to see from Auntie is an intelligent adult music station. I would simply take all the music that’s played on ABC Local Radio and create a station from that. The result, I think, would be somewhere between commercial radio and Double J, eclectic like Rage but with a softer edge.

It’s not going to happen unless the ABC drops one of its other music channels like Unearthed or ABC Country, though.

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Indeed.

Thanks

True. I was surprised at how well ABC (Mt Gambier) rated throughout the various demographics compared to ABC Riverina in Wagga Wagga Griffith markets.

I think the main point I was driving at was the dropping of the frequencies from the station’s rebranding seemed to indicate that the ABC gurus were thinking the ABC local radio audience was now considerably multi-platform based or at the least the ABC was taking very early steps with forward thinking that in future listeners would be listening via Apps, Streaming, AM or FM or DAB or satellite. I doubt AM/FM terrestrial radio has been relegated to a minor delivery system in terms of audience listener-ship base for a long while yet. Especially when you look at their main (older) listenership demographic as per Crankmedia’s audience measurement results. All seams a little premature.

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Isn’t that exactly what Double J is? Over time, I hope we see the local radio playlist to mirror Double J

Double J is 75% new music, most of it fairly obscure. ABC Local Radio plays plenty of well known tracks together with some newer alternative releases. The two would sound quite different.

I guess the closest analog would be BBC Radio 6 in the UK, but it has way too much talk programming for my liking.

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@ozbark, the Wagga/Griffith markets have an ABC that covers a much greater region. If the ABC is based in the town and serves that town primarily, it usually does better.

Toowoomba ABC does ok but would do better if it wasn’t serving towns far to the west and south.

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