While I’d love to see some of that happen, I’d be really (pleasantly) surprised if River gets the chance to move to Mt Coot-tha. I just can’t see them approving that, but I guess it’s a remote possibility.
Also, if River moves to Mt Coot-tha they will have to sell Hot 91
I think they’ll initially focus on 102.9 on the GC and wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the first station to go KIIS. Then 91.9 on the SC.
I’m really not sure sure they’ll rebrand 97.3. It will depend on what they can do with River I think.
I’m also not sure they’d touch HOFM or Hot 100. Both such strong heritage brands.
I think there’s a remote chance they might look at amalgamating Brisbane and Ipswich LAP’s in the future. Especially if they proceed with reviewing the FM spectrum in SEQ.
This whole moving River to Mt Coot-tha, apart from having no regulatory framework, defeats the purpose of selling 4KQ so that three stations, River, 97.3 and Hot 91, can be kept. They might as well keep 97.3 and 4KQ and sell River and Hot91.
I think they’d rather have 2x FM’s in Brisbane than keep Hot 91, if that was possible. If it’s an AM and an FM in Brisbane they’d rather keep River and Hot 91, and sell the AM.
I think SCA, Nova and ARN would be deadset against that… it would devalue their licences by effectively giving River a 5th Brisbane FM licence for free, and they would get no compensation, other than entry into Ipswich.
Not sure why ARN would be against it, as they would be getting the 5th FM station for free.
Also SCA and Nova already have full access to Ipswich as the whole city of Ipswich is withing the Brisbane LAP. That’s why the overlap is so unfair to the Ipswich licencee, all Brisbane stations (plus DAB) have full access to the main part of their licence area.
The Ipswich LAP has never made sense to me for that reason. The lower populated areas west of Ipswich would be better served by extending the Toowoomba LAP eastwards and installing translators for the Toowoomba stations IMO
I get that, but they may not have a choice. Similar to the situation in Perth with the possible movement of all commercial stations to FM. They wouldn’t be happy about that either. These LAP’s aren’t set in stone - they shouldn’t be anyway.
The difference is in the case of Ipswich the Brisbane stations aren’t ‘unofficial’ local stations, they’re official. As Ipswich is within the official Brisbane LAP.
Richard Pascoe the Adelaide Tech Guy is a regular weekly guest on Power FM SA but is making his debut as a co host on breakfast tomorrow as a temporary replacement for Damon. Good practice for his upcoming shifts on FiveAA
Q: Conversely, do you think you could try and attract an under 25-crowd?
A: We are working on that with The Edge 96.ONE. [We will] focus on taking The Edge national. It commonly services the western suburbs of Sydney, but it can be heard through three quarters of Sydney. It’s been many things over the years, but it’s currently used as a spoiler for the demos on Nova.
[The Edge] is a dance, hip hop and R&B format, and it’s very popular with the core we’ve got. We wanted to take that offering and make it more of a national platform. And I think we’ll certainly attract younger audiences, which ARN don’t have in great numbers at the moment. That’s the plan for next year.
Hard to see how this doesn’t influence the Chilli’s, Power’s, Hot’s & Magic’s.
Proof they are not servicing the licence area that they are licensed to serve - eg. effectively competing with Nova which is in a different market, going national etc.
I hope the ACMA have taken notice of this. Though this isn’t new.
Well it also yet again forgets DAB exists, where The Edge is already “national”. I think The Edge is far too narrow for a two station commercial market - as it really limits what you can do on the second station, as you basically need to make an ‘everyone else’ station, which would please no one.
I’d have it as a program on the regional KIIS network stations, perhaps Evenings? Then you can promote “hear The Edge 24/7 on iHeartRadio”. Pushes the brand without alienating the main format.
With Grant’s stable - there’s really no station you’d try it on - Star Townsville maybe as a point of difference against Hit?
The Edge will most likely get rolled out to DAB in ARN’s new markets such as Hobart, Darwin and the Gold Coast. It won’t be on FM in any regional market.
The one half of Sam & Rach is leaving Star 101.9, with daytime announcer Scotty to replace him. They were #1 in this year’s Mackay radio ratings after being axed from Hit 100.3 breakfast by SCA in favour of a statewide breakfast show the previous year & then subsequently picked up by Star.