I agree. A similar sized small city in the US would have 4 stations owned by the one operator resulting in 4 distinct formats. Inatead we get 2 operators offering 2 stations similar to the other 2 stations. No diversity at all.
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Yeah Australia needs to look at moving towards the NZ model where you have multiple stations in the same market with various formats so there is always at least a format people can enjoy
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All owned by the same company and no local content?
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That’s my concern too, that a lack of competition will lead to less localism.
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They wouldn’t need to change local content rules so it shouldn’t make any difference.
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I don’t think that would necessarily happen if the local content rules stayed the same. I think it’s possible it might mean improved local content as an operator of 4 stations would have more resources to spread across the stations.
I would take more variety of formats over local content any day, personally.
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That would destroy the radio industry here, so that each market will have the same duopoly , programming and playlists.
Can you imagine for example if one of the big 3 bought one of its competitors? It would mean a worse outcome for listeners and advertising rates would probably go up.
The level of competition now is as good as it’s ever been, and there is plenty of choice of formats on DAB - which is better than NZ radio.
I completely disagree. If one of the big 3 bought another you would get more differentiation of formats across their FM stations. Eg if Nova owned SCA you wouldn’t have Hit and Nova sounding identical to each other. One would be pure CHR and the other Hot AC. The listener would benefit.
Similar if ARN and Nova merged, you wouldn’t have Gold and Smooth sounding more and more similar, you’d likely end up with.
Nova - CHR
KIIS - Hot AC
Smooth - Soft AC/AC
Gold - moving back to more rock based AC/Classic Hits.
It’s actually the level of competition that means formats become closer, not the other way round.
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Now THAT would be listenable.
ARN could really do it with the stations they currently own. As everybody has said in years gone by, PowerFM Nowra could take a younger playlist, leaving WaveFM to skew older.
I can’t see why PowerFM Nowra couldn’t share a playlist with KIIS1065/KIIS101.1?
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Or even better, something similar to Eagle / Snow fm. Grant still has a joint venture in these stations and now they ARN programming, KJO Hour of Power, and W&W.
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Sorry to quote myself, but if you look at what Global does in the UK you can see how owning multiple stations leads to more differentiation in formats. They are careful to differentiate stations like Capital and Heart for example.
Capital - pure CHR
Heart - hot AC
Smooth - soft AC
Radio X - rock/alternative
Gold - oldies
LBC - talk
Classic FM - classical
So their six stations in London provide actual variety in formats, distinct from each other. I would take this over the current 2-station rule in Australia any day.
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That all sounds wonderful in theory but there are no new FM frequencies available for another 4 or 5 commercial licenses in the metros or even larger regional cities like the Gold Coast or Newcastle.
That boat sailed 20 years ago when the remaining frequencies were given to community broadcasters, which looking back on it , was a good thing.
You can’t compare London to Sydney or Melbourne as we don’t have the BBC or the DAB capacity that they have over there. OfCom deregulated the UK radio industry in the early 2000s and the DAB rollout was so expensive at the time.
There are not just FM and AM, there’s over 100 stations on DAB catering for everything, in the UK.
Australia is not at that level due to less capacity , but I think DAB does pretty well here in that most formats are covered.
Yes but DAB isn’t a a available everywhere and it’s not perfect either.
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Yes but you can still stream them anywhere.
As I said, the DAB rollout in the UK covers most of the population , as opposed to Australia where it is only available in 10 markets, including the 6 biggest.
Try streaming outside a major centre. I can’t get reliable streaming along most of the Pacific.
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Most of these AM stations in regional QLD owned by ARN /Grants also have Christian O’Connell’s show,out of curiosity ,is he any good?I’ve never heard his show
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Who said anything about new FM frequencies?
Under a theoretical merger between Nova and SCA you would get four FM frequencies similar to Global’s London stations.
Capital = Nova
Heart = Hit
Smooth = Smooth
Radio X = Triple M
Gold (UK) and LBC are already covered by 2UE/Magic and 2GB/3AW.
We’re talking about removing the 2 station rule as a way of increasing diversity of formats, not adding new stations.
By the way I don’t share your view that DAB in Australia covers most formats well. It’s a sea of unimaginitive decades stations. There’s not even an actual mainstream or active rock station.
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Absolutely hilarious. Him and Marty Sheargold on MMM are my two just listens
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Mate, you’re dreaming. That is never going to happen. I would argue that our Smooth and Hit is better than the UK version of Smooth as well as Heart. KIIS is better than Capital IMO. Radio X is more aligned with Triple J or even Double J than Triple M.
And the UK has one ? Absolute radio is hardly an active rock station . They also do live sport and play pop / dance in their playlist. We actually have some good rock stations , even if they are not pure rock, they are still mostly rock, on DAB - MMM 2000s, Tradie radio, MMM 80s, MMM Classic Rock, Magic, Smooth Vintage and then you have WSFM 80s and classic hits stations 4BH, 2UE.