That’s not surprising as RAW is only low power and doesn’t have the same reach as other Canberra wide stations.
You could try their webstream?
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I get Raw quite well on my car radio throughout Canberra when down there, it normally comes in around Lake George. Not so good around Sutton.
To Belconnen where the UC fm causes interference.
Is the RAW Canberra network the only one broadcasting in stereo with RDS?
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Mix 106.3’s playlist seems to have been similar to the regional Triple M stations for a while (I last properly checked not long after SCA’s regional Triple M rebranding), so a rebrand to Triple M wouldn’t change much; I suppose it’d remove some confusion when Triple M branding occasionally slips through in networked programmes such as Raiders NRL games.
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Funnily enough, I just heard a couple of Triple M references slip through on Kennedy/Molloy. Two within the space of about 30 seconds.
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I only ever listen to radio in the car but never have any problems with Raw. It’s just UCFM that seems fairly patchy - I suspect it has a smaller broadcast footprint, but does it also share a frequency with tourist radio?
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Yeah I get Raw just fine in my car too, have trouble getting it when I’m indoors
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The tourist radio was coming from Red Hill according to UCFM on Facebook a couple of years ago, but that licence is now Raw FM it seems according to the ACMA database.
What are people’s thoughts on when Canberra Radio was at it’s best??
For me it would have been 1990-1992 when there was Kix 106 and Fm104.7.
Fm 104.7 was AC with a rock skew and Kix 106 was CHR with an All New All Hits positioner. Fm104.7 would have triple play weekends and would even play Led Zeppelin.
Kix 106 was my station of choice when in Canberra and it was quite an easy dx catch with tropo into Sydney, this was before Mix 106.5 launched.
I remember the dj’s spoke very fast, and the music was very up tempo dance / pop / modern rock, there was nothing like it broadcasting in Sydney which made it so great. It obviously did not rate against fm104.7 and for me Canberra radio lost it for me when Kix 106 became Canberra fm / Mix
106.3.
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Mid to late 90s when they had a local Hot 30 hosted by Nigel Johnson and Melanie Ross. I often listened to the whole show every night.
104 had a very repetitive playlist back then though. It improved exponentially when they stopped being a rock station.
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When Kix 106 & FM104.7 competed with each other, I would agree with you that it was an interesting time for Canberra commercial radio.
At the same time, over on the AM band, there was a bit of rivalry between 2CC & 2CA, which of course were sister stations of Kix 106 & FM104.7 respectively. 2CC had a “Classic Hits” format similar to that of 2UW, whilst 2CA had an “Oldies” format that played music from the 50s to the 70s.
This TV ad from 1992 clearly tells viewers on what kind of music/artists 2CA played:
And so is this one from 1994:
Credit for both vids go to Marc McCreadie, who now presents 9am-2pm weekdays on 2CA.
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@Ant5476 your mention of the stations going downhill when direct competition ended due to merger is the same experienced in all of the 80’s FM markets, Geraldton, Geelong, Wollongong, Gosford and the Gold Coast.
Great competition between Hoyts and Sea FM Ltd on the Gold Coast, ended when Sea acquired 92.5.
I was not sad personally to see the end of Gold 92.5 as it was the name that wiped out KROQ and direct competition that the Gold Coast didn’t have restored until 2003 with Hot Tomato.
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My only real experience with Canberra radio around those years was early 1994 when the station ID on 106.3 had been changed slightly to “106 KIX FM” and had adopted the “Always Great Rock n Roll” slogan / format that was common around that era.
Both FMers sounded great, but they also sounded a bit similar. The competition between them was good. Also liked the complete absence of networked programming,
Canberra also didn’t have any FM community radio at the time, this was in between 2SSS FM going off in the early 90s and the conversion of 2XX / arrival of 1CMS, 1WAY and Artsound.
I did also like MIX106.3 in the mid 2000s when more 80s music came back on the radio again. 104.7 not so much though!
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Yes Kix went through a few changes.
Rock its original form when it launched, CHR, and then back to rock again to compete with Fm104.7. AC as Canberra fm, and then to what mix106.3 is today.
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Wollongong is the only remaining market where two commercial FM stations are directly competing with each other.
2SSS actually went off-air in 2002.
Which was made possible after ABC TV changed its frequency from VHF-3 to VHF-9 in 1995.
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Thanks, I don’t recall receiving anything on 103.9 when I was down there then.
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I remember ABC3 Canberra, once received it by extreme inland tropo at Oatley, completely overrode the permanent NBN3.
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Which would have been all the more remarkable since ABC3 would have been vertical polarity I think.
Yes, it was on Vertical polarity.
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I too remember ABC3 on 91.74. I also remember Classic FM was on 101.9. Even with just those 2 on air, the overload on my boombox when traveling through Canberra in 1984 was unbelievable! Harmonics all over the dial.
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What is it with the Canberra area and harmonics? Now it’s Goulburn and Cooma markets who suffer.