Because they’ve got their tentacles into the Liberal party in particular. The Labor party is probably wary of their influence as well.
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In my view, this only highlights the inadequacy of the current licensing structure. Some of these Christian stations arguably draw a very long bow when it comes to meeting the guidelines of a community station, yet ACMA tends to afford them the same protections as the commercials.
I strongly believe that the ‘community’ licensed radio category should be restricted to those with a broad format covering a specific geographic area (such as the sub-metro stations and the stations in regional areas covering towns and cities).
All other community licences, and narrowcast licences, should be merged into a new licence category called ‘Niche’ or ‘Genre-restricted’ (or something similar). Eligible formats under this category could include:
-Religion
-Horse Racing
-Vision impaired radio
-Sport
-Specific music genres such as dance, EDM, oldies, classical etc.
-Foreign language radio
These formats would be intended to not compete with existing commercial licensees, but would be still broader than the current ‘narrowcast’ definition to allow more choice and diversity for listeners.
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The BSA in Australia is based around protection for commercial incumbents, if i had my way id throw it out and introduce the US system. A few key points about the US system:
- simple planning model with Clear frequency reuse distances for FM.
- Anyone can submit engineering to get a new frequency allocated, with the new frequency being auctioned via public allocation.
- non commercial use 88 to 92 mhz with commercials using 93 mhz to 108 mhz
- non commercial and commercial licences can be owned by anyone (with maximum of 20% overseas ownership).
- the only programming restriction on non commercial licenses is they cant play ads, with the exception of sponsorship announcements “This hour thanks to Jims Mowing…”.
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This wouldn’t work with the sheer number of non-commercial (both community and public) stations we have in the major metro markets.
Good luck telling the ABC they can’t have 150kW on FM because we need to compact the non-comm band for… some reason?
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Hope’s FAQ states that their expenses are a tick over $7 million a year: about $4.5 million donated, and $2.5 million in sponsors, and a low six-figure number for other revenue.
They break the donation figure out as including $2.15 million in their June radiothon (obviously larger as people also want their tax breaks), close to a million in their November one, and almost a million per year in regular monthly support.
The Christian stations in other major capitals pull in similar proportionate amounts to their population - Positive Media (who runs 89.9 The Light in Melbourne) pulls in a similar number to Hope, for instance; Family Radio in Brisbane is 3 and a bit million, and so on. [Pulling numbers out of the government’s charities/non-profits site here]
There’s probably a fair question as to the main channels’ programming styles - certainly there is likely a market for those of faith for not just wall-to-wall Christian music, but clean, so-called “family friendly” media; sprinkled with Christian songs and messages along the way - and that’ll what be what keeps them listening.
They have the 100% Christian music bases covered; that’s what Hope/96five’s Inspire Digital, theLight Mix and similar DAB stations are there for. But with the main stations, they see it as a “mission” like everything else - and if you can’t get non-converts to listen, how are you going to convert them? 
As for your other examples, again as per ACNC site [but see note in next post]:
- MBS NSW (Fine Music) gets a shade under $1 million in revenue
- 2MBS gets about half that from donations
- MBS Qld probably gets the most of all MBS stations, certainly per capita, but that would be padded by revenue from their Silver Memories nostalgia service (where they sell installs for aged care centres)
- FBi (Free Broadcast Inc) is about the same, $1 million
- but notably only about $50,000 of this is donations
- 2SER… about the same (about $1.2 million), but much of its non-sponsor revenue would come from its uni sponsors in UTS and Macquarie Uni (which is why there’s a large “government grants” section listed possibly); about $100,000 or so in donations
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One word of warning I realised about the comparison examples and saying “this much are from donations” is that I don’t think this includes supporting memberships - the ACNC classifies this as “sponsors/other incomes” and not actual “donations/bequests”, as they may not be tax deductable (as they get things in return, in theory).
FBi for instance might have only got $50,000 from donations, but they also got $360,000 from memberships, which may skew things a little. I’m sure, given the similar demographic they serve, 2SER in particular is probably in the same boat - they want stuff out of them, and to have a say, and also straight donations just aren’t the big tax break they are compared to someone of a typical age for, say, an MBS station.
Hope has memberships for board stuff, but that’s unrelated to the radiothon-type donations that fund most Christian stations.
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OMG! What have 89.3 2GLF done?
They are overmodulating something severe.
Over 330kHz bandwidth…and the distortion…
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100%. the quasi-christian broadcasters who run a top 40 format with the occasional newsboys song and bible verse at the end of the news bulletin do not serve anyone.
as much hate vision gets here, it serves its audience well. I would like to see an air 1 or K-love style station here though. All Christian music.
96.5 has been drifiting away from the christian market for years. the 7 news simulcast always stuck me as odd - you’d come off the latest hillsong or Lauren Daigle song, a quick warning and " a murder suicide today…" -
couple this with things like axing the old late night praise and worship show they had (i think it used to be 9pm to 10 pm) and you start wondering if they want to serve the christians of brisbane or if its a money operation…
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Very hard to unscramble the egg.
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2CR China Radio Network now broadcasting on 107.9MHz from Sydney Tower with just 5 Watts in Cantonese language.
This is the first time I’ve heard of anyone using this frequency from this location.
2CR frequently broadcasts from this site on 91.6MHz with 200W on a short term narrowcast lic.
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Maybe a glitch with the playout, normally it’s Voice Of Islam at this time. I believe they use the same system.
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Radio Metro 105.7 Gold Coast might be operating on a standby transmitter. No RDS & no stereo pilot carrier.
Also noting that Juice FM not transmitting RT+ on its RDS, wonder if this is temporary?
2CR’s presence on 107.9 is ‘ligit’ as per ACMA records.
I think there’s been a few Arabic language groups use 107.9 from Hurstville site from
memory. Then there’s also been Show Radio from Olympic Park.
91.6 is now active again with Arabic from a licensee known as:
‘Bankstown and Surrounding Areas Community Radio Inc.’
@TheChase do you know what the ‘On Air’ name of this station is?
Broadcasting from: Governor Phillip Tower
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I believe it’s Albayan Radio, however I’ll check it against its stream/narrowband FM frequency later.
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You can hear them clear as day all the way up to 89.5 around their broadcast area… it’s been an issue for years.
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In an ideal world. Vision would merge with all the cashed-up happy clapper CHR outfits, and then run a format something that plays 100% Christian music interspersed with the fire and brimstone guff that Vision’s current 7 or 8 listeners know and love. This would free up a buttload of LPONs for use by people wanting to do something a bit more interesting with them.
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I’ve said before, if I was running the show I’d gladly give Vision an HPON AM licence in every capital city they currently serve if they in exchange gave up all their 87MHz LPONs in return. Then reallocate the LPONs on the condition that they cannot share programming with any other LPON within 50km of their location.
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ACMA will never upset the Happy Clappers, they simply make to much money off then and scared of how they will look in the public eye for upsetting them… So the status quo shall continue sadly 
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Ref 91.6MHz in Sydney
I think it might be Ahlulbait Radio (Arabic with some English)
No ID heard - confirmation needed.
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Give them 56Kb on DAB on the proviso they can’t split it - they can only use it for the main vision station. this would free up almost 30 licences in Brisbane alone.
They already have 1620 in brisbane and have all these LPONs. Dab is a win for everyone - vision would jump on this, as it solves the reception issues on AM, and frees up all the LPONs. There is also space on DAB (at least in BNE) to do this.
EDIT: it would need to made clear this would be a one off only issue and anyone who procceds to buy up LPON’s in visions numbers will not get the same treatment - perhaps set a limit of say 5 LPON’s per licensee or perhaps enforce them a bit better to stop this sort of “quasi mass broadcasting” on them
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