96.5 in Brisbane is a prime example. they play the occasional contempory Christian song (last time i listened it was 2:1 mainstream to Christian - should be the other way around) and have a bible verse at the end of each news service.
they charge $900 for the radio school (or did when i looked into it for a colleague’s son)
It’s a quasi commercial service who honestly do not meet the needs of christians in brisbane.
if i ran the station i’d do the following:
1 - dump all non Christian music
2 - Dump the news simulcast (it way out of format)
3 - Dump inspire digital (it’s programmed out of sydney) and put the FM service on DAB (at the moment it;s not)
4 - Bring in a worship music show daily. there are 2 options for this - you could do it in the old 7 news slot for drive or do a late night one at 10:00pm.
either way big changes need to be made, especilly now it’s easy to get other services via streaming. if you don’t meet the needs of your market it’s easy to stream something else
Christian stations are often the worse. Light FM in Melbourne plays mostly contemporary music and simulcasts Nine News too, with all the religious content on weekends or overnight
I wish they would be more like RadioU or Boost Radio in the US where they lean heavily into the Christian music scene and make an alternative station sound great, or even if they were to be more like Rhema Newcastle.
Do we really need religious stations though? Not trying to be controversial but I don’t see how a Christian format really qualifies for a community licence. They’ve got enough money for a proper commercial licence - preferably on AM.
But I actually don’t have a problem with community stations sounding commercial because the number of commercial FM licences in cities like Brisbane is ridiculously low. Four commercial FM stations for 2.5 million people? It’s a joke.
Community stations provide vitally needed mainstream content in places like Brisbane. For instance 99.7 is becoming my go to station if I only have access to FM.
I did 3 years as a breakfast producer on 96.5 (which makes the fall of the station more annoying for me) and i was aware of the financial status of the station. 96.5 is not owned by any churches or particular religious organization. It’s an independent organization and at times was struggling to make ends meet.
short of vision that has a national footprint there is not much money in religious broadcasting.
Going by the online programming guide, SWR FM seems to have a decent enough balance between a listenable music format during daytime hours and more alternative programming during off-peak timeslots.
Is SWR’s “70s to Now” music format too close to what commercial radio is running? That’s an interesting question. If we still had Vega 95.3 running their “40 Years of Music” format I’d probably agree, but as things stand now I don’t think any Sydney commercial music radio stations (including fringe ones like The Edge and C91.3) do a massively wide variety of music from the 70s until now - most if not all of them stick to specific niches. If SWR’s peak listening period music format was a serious threat to the viability of Sydney commercial stations, they probably would’ve complained to ACMA well before now.
As per @NDY I think for as long as SWR aren’t turning down people who want to do a specialty program, having a coherent music format during peak listening periods which fills a niche not available in the area shouldn’t be a major issue - especially if (as I suspect) it’s these hours of radio which help the station make money.
Also consider that SWR FM is filling the void for a western Sydney focused service, which has been abandoned by both WS FM and 96.1. You can’t really blame them for picking up the slack; the real failure was allowing 96.1 to pretty much abandon western Sydney entirely.
I think if SWR stayed as they are now in terms of music they could be the C91.3 for western Sydney (Blacktown to Penrith), but I should not wish for that… It would be probably sold and become just another 96.1 for another network.
Off-Topic, if ARN hadn’t bought the station & was instead sold to someone like Grant Broadcasters, chances are that it would still be focused on Western Sydney & the Blue Mountains.
I used to correspond regularly with former One FM announcer Ian Taylor back in the 90’s and I remember him telling me in 1997 around the time Mike Walsh was looking for a buyer that “an Adelaide mob are interested in buying the station”. Not sure who that Adelaide mob was but things would have been entirely different if they bought it and not ARN.
I don’t know who the Adelaide mob might have been, but, yes it could’ve been another Hit or Triple M station now, you know Austereo was originally an Adelaide company, all starting from SAFM.
I can’t remember when they bought FOX & 2DAY, I think it was after '97 when they merged with Triple M also, but that all might have been earlier around '92, it was still all run out of Adelaide though as Austereo.
Starter FM is proud to launch our new 2020 Imaging package (Saturday the 26th, 9AM) and The Hawkesbury’s first local news service (Monday the 28th, 6AM).
