I noticed recently BAI had a heap of jobs advertised including the modules shop at Bald Hills - it seemed to coincide with BAI international splitting off their 5G business so perhaps the radio and TV was subsidising their 5G division.
As you pointed out, the RMA system has made the CRO and soldering iron people obsolete almost everywhere now.
They always have lots of jobs advertised & no one applies so they re-advertise & repeat, it’s got nothing to do with the split, all the techs are leaving BAI, mostly overworked & under-payed, I’ve heard some of the teams don’t get on well together & lack of management support, as more techs leave & no one comes in to replace, that workload for those left gets greater & so does the other problems.
Good to hear nothing much has changed there (I better be careful otherwise I will give away my identity too). BAI ran the 700Mhz restack project as you probably know and that was it for me and broadcasting(after 30 years) - never again.
TVNZ(A) as it originally was had some good tech’s but the Kiwi managers had a spacial problem in Australia compared to home in NZ. They flew everywhere on QantasLink instead of driving and never got a feel for where you needed to have staff located.
It was better in 1984. Stations seemed to have more thoughtful playlists generally.
That is correct at half power 1KW locals in the Southern Highlands such as @Dani-Chan would not notice any difference in reception.
The main towns in the Highlands have pretty good LOS to the GiB, and the only remaining community station 2WKT is at 320W so 1KW would have covered the main population areas at ease. For us in the deep fringes Campbelltown north this is where we noticed the difference.
What is interesting there is not much difference in reception on the car radio in my local area, but massive on the dx setup going from no signal to noisy stereo.
The AM personality Top 40s (and NOT in just breakfast) like 2SM or 4IP would have had a chance against Norman the Computer. 10 songs in a row, over lengthy stopsets and liner card jocks do not.
A well thought out and curated playlist on radio can still beat the computer.
I still prefer the playlists on Rebel and Breeze to anything churned out on Spotify. The low key announcers add to it.
As some folks have already mentioned, driving around has been about the same in signal strength but via my DXing set up I have gotten a better signal. and when I listen it seems to have a bit more punch in its sound.
As found in the sleeve of the Wild Nights 2 CD circa 2003, did anyone ever listen to a Wild Nights Live Clubcast using that new “ISDN technology to transmit the biggest festivals, best clubs, wildest raves, the most sought after DJ’s and live acts” on River 94.9?
Yeah I used to listen to Wild Nights on River 949. It was 7 nights a week up until 2004. Great show in its day.
you bet… sounded great in 128k mpeg2 with the 50,000 watts of music power
Unfortunately it wasn’t just OB’s that used ISDN back then: some stations had 128k ISDN as their only STL to the transmitter site. One that comes to mind was Zinc FM at Wolvi Mountain near Gympie. Apparently it used to drop out regularly and was the only program source. I wonder how many STL’s out there are still running on an ADSL or consumer grade NBN without a backup of any type??
Was River 949 brought in by the ACMA or predecessors to replace the effective loss of the 4IP comm licence?
Began in 1990 as 106.9 QFM, one of the last via the ABT beauty parade process rather than by auction as the ABA administered via the 1992 Act.
Some people might even remember Switch doing clubcast using POTS codecs (Comrex hotline)
and a certain person from another TSBL calling up and as they didnt turn off call waiting it would drop the modem out and the next caller would go live to air… which they did… with all sorts of vulgarity and abuse
I had a recording of it… but I seem to have lost it
The old Comrex POTS 56Kb/s codec live from an advertisers premises on a Saturday morning was plenty of peoples start to getting a shift on commercial radio. They also had low latency so you could use off-air as foldback. Sadly not the case for anything IP based.
River94.9 was much better back then … with the “Riverlution”.
Nowadays, it’s all over the shop.
Most POTS codecs didnt support 56 k (v.90, kflex) because it required ISDN with digital modem capabilities on one end
Most codecs did 33.6k max (v.34) because of this, the Hotline only did 31.2 and I never seen it handshake at that speed… 28.8k mostly
Looking at Lava, the ARN Regional’s Hot AC stations (Wave, Power, Hot Tomato etc) are going ‘all 90s’ this Easter long weekend.
Meanwhile, over the same period, its “Classic Hits” stations (2ST, 2EC, 2NM, Zinc etc) are going ‘all 80s’, although that’s only during the day.
WSFM is all 80s too (but playing a very safe log sadly).
5-10 years ago it used to be much better.
I don’t think they’re calling it the “Eggcellent 80s” anymore either.
