It might have been a bit of Milton Mango inspired madness 
My point still stands, in the quest to limit radio waves from travelling beyond pre-determined lines on a map ACMA are letting down the end consumer of the product, and mucking up spectrum planning in the process. God help them if they ever decide to do an FM band restack in the greater Sydney area with all these additional translators on the air - there’d be dozens of stations that would have to retune
I must admit I’ve never heard of that idiom until today.
I don’t think these restacks will happen; they may tinker around the edges by reallocating some services- such as Coast FM Wyong- but it would cause a whole lot of disruption as you say. SW WA is meant to be a test case for spectrum reallocation, but the exercise there is simple compared to the ‘subtropical empire’ (NE NSW/SE QLD)*** and ‘N.S.W’ (Newcastle/Sydney/Wollongong).
***My own term for the Lismore-Gympie conurbation.
Am I missing something here? Why can’t 2ST simply diplex into Power’s antenna and run the same 50 kW ERP with the same pattern? (Yes I understand the politics with overspill. But ACMA should simply duplicate the incumbent FM station’s coverage).
And why was a “translator” ever allowed to broadcast separate programming from the feed station? It’s basically operating a second station by stealth. That should come to an end.
I like it!
I am feeling a bit more generous then you. I would allow 2ST to keep their Southern Highlands frequency, but give the Nowra service similar specs to Power fm at 50KW from Knights Hill. Same restrictions to the north and a additional 5KW restriction towards the highlands to protect 102.9.
No need for 88.5 for Kiama and more efficient use of spectrum. If ACMA wish to restrict the overflow of 2ST to the north, change the frequency of Coast fm to 91.7. This will make the frequency a mess between Wollongong and the Central Coast.
On the subject of 88.5, whilst travelling along the Kiama Bends heading north this afternoon, 2RRR Ryde could be heard quite clearly on the aforementioned frequency. Given that Saddleback Mountain is being shaded there (ie. no line-of-sight), this could potentially cause some interference with 2ST’s future translator in that location.
Indeed, there’s been reports where the local 94.9 Power FM gets interfered or even swamped by Rhema FM from the Central Coast on the same frequency at around that same location.
Seems like from this updated coverage info from KIX Country, Grant Broadcasters do indeed appear to have taken the option of putting a narrowcast service on a commercial licence (95.3) in Queenstown, TAS.
I would have thought that expanding SEA FM to Queenstown would have been the outcome here, though I know the KIX option has been mentioned in this thread before.
Not sure how that meets local content requirements however.
Only one way to find out.
Perhaps they’ll argue that country, as a narrowcast format should be exempt (as racing radio services are)
This is the smallest broadcast region by population in the country with only 4970 people according to the latest ACMA determination. The are only required to have 30 mins of local content, which can easily be made up with advertising for local businesses (maximum of 25% of quote - ie. 7.5 mins), news & weather, community service announcements etc. They’d have to be running local playout of the station rather than taking the network feed that most of the narrowcast transmitters take.
Well spotted!
I wonder if anyone can confirm that this has indeed happened.
ACMA records still showing as a commercial service, so if KIX Country (Narrowcaster) is on air on 95.3 I too wonder how long they’ll escape ACMAs scrutiny…
Yes- there is a small market exemption from the full local content requirements as outlined above. Still, I don’t think they should be using a commercial licence for narrowcasting (this view applies to stations like 1161 Maryborough and 1314 Ballarat too). The exemption would apply if they went the Sea FM route as well; they wouldn’t need to employ extra staff e.g. for a local breakfast show.
There’s also 1260 Shepparton.
I can’t see what Grant have done wrong. They are broadcasting a country music format on a commercial station. How is that any different to 2SM, 2KY and 4BC in previous decades when they had country formats? If there was any such restriction as implied that a narrowcast format couldn’t be on a commercial station then the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane racing stations would have been forced to change their formats years ago.
The major markets have a much greater choice of stations, so a niche country format on a commercial station is more suited there, though noting none of them were successful.
But in a small market of only 2 commercial stations, I don’t think Grant are providing a meaningful service. I know as long as they meet the local content rules, they haven’t done anything “wrong”.
But I reckon a SEA formatted station would be more meaningful in that it would be listened to by more people than a country format.
There isn’t, but imo there should be. 2KY/3UZ/4TAB should be recategorised as narrowcast services in the cap city markets. The frequencies could then only be used for narrowcasting in the unlikely event that they sell. In the case of Ballarat, Shepparton, and Maryborough, I would make another AM frequency available for a commercial service and recategorise the existing racing services as narrowcasting services. I think a commercial service should imply a level of service to the public above and beyond what a narrowcast service can deliver.
There’s actually less regulatory burden on narrowcast services e.g with local content requirements so there’s actually an incentive on the operator’s side to do this.
That won’t fly. They paid for the licence as a commercial service, and restricting it to a narrowcast format would devalue the licence.
I would love to see any of those stations drop the racing and be reborn as a talk or music format, that couldn’t happen if they were a narrowcast licence.
If the commercial racing stations in the major metropolitan markets were to become narrowcasts, I suspect they would lose their allocation of DAB+ bandwidth. Not sure if Sky Sports Radio, RSN and RadioTAB would want that to happen.
Also if anything, I think we’re actually likely to see (or more to the point, hear) more commercial AM stations essentially becoming narrowcast stations in the coming years aside from the top rating talk station + maybe 4KQ/Cruise.
I can’t see any viable narrowcast format that they could move to. Country hasn’t really worked in the past, religion - nope, I can’t see dance working on AM, foreign language? perhaps… but I reckon it wouldn’t be any more successful than what they’re doing now.
I just think narrowcast and broad appeal commercial services should be distinct, but I agree that commercial licences won’t be surrendered. As you say it is difficult to recategorise legacy commercial stations such as 2KY and 3UZ.
We are getting away from the topic of this thread, so I’ll end this post by saying that there’s no movement with 2GN on 107.7. I’m not sure about 2EC, but the bushfires didn’t impact the Mumbulla Mountain tx site. The general state of emergency that lingered all through January may have had an indirect impact on logistics, though.
I just checked 107.7 and I can confirm that 2GN is not even at the testing stage yet with their FM Conversion. It will probably be a few weeks before we do get to the test transmission part of the conversion.