While a nice feature to have doesn’t the existing DAB standard incorporate some form of emergency alert? Likewise isn’t there a similar emergency alert switching feature in the RDS standard? It just seems these add on emergency alerting standards over broadcast radio never seem to find widespread adoption.
We should have long ago copied the American EAS system.
Darwin has also had KIX as a HPON on 92.3 for many a year now, predating DAB.
Grant’s would never have needed DAB on the Gold Coast to get around streaming fees for Kix, it’s been on air (even though narrowcast) for years elsewhere, so they would’ve got away with the “Broadcast” fees for that anyway.
Yes Grant’s probably wanted to stream the other Hot Tomato stations they now have on DAB, had they not sold out to ARN (who’ve put other ARN stations on Gold Coast DAB), who knows how many other stations they wanted to start & stream that haven’t eventuated as ARN have put their own stations on iHeart & DAB?
Also explains why Coles has 3 Coles Radio streams in Brisbane with Coles TAS and Coles CBD both@ 16kbit/s.
I couldn’t believe that when I first came across it. That led to the streaming royalty rate explanation as told many times here; it’s the only thing that makes sense.
I’ve never understood it with Coles - you’d think if the ads or whatever is enough is unique on those feeds for them to need a separate streaming “CBD” and “TAS” station, then what about the stations that substitute targeted ads when streaming? If those stations are genuinely needed - surely the DAB transmissions must be a 1:1 simulcast for the loophole to work?
As for Coles stores, as I’m sure the stores need to pay the unique royalties, and didn’t think there’s any cost difference between playing radio and playing CDs or whatever, I’m again not sure what the reason Coles would need each variant on DAB?
Obviously they rate well and it probably is good promotion for Coles, but those extras in Brisbane I don’t get.
The Coles stations all have unique playlists as far as I know
The Sydney Kings Cross Community Radio DAB+ Ch 8D test transmissions have resumed. I can’t see any difference other than perhaps signal level ‘appears’ to be a little lower. I’ll look again in the evening at signal levels, which when I’ve usually gazed at them in the past.
Damn, I’m down in Sydney for a few days but only bought the TEF with me (came down on the VST).
I can see the Elan building from my room in the CBD.
I have nothing to do with this transmission & haven’t been to the Kings Cross site for a few months & won’t be going probably for a few more, one of the other TXA techs usually goes to that site, so I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but remember they have 3 different antennas there, that they are testing of different polarisations, so they may be trialling a different antenna to last week?
I think they are also trialling a number of different signal configurations lower power, higher power, more error correction, less error correction, so they could be in one of the lesser configurations right now also?
Back on here too, but falling off the digital cliff.
Yes probably a different antenna / error correction which is reducing coverage.
DAB in Hobart has traditionally been a bit of a dumping ground for broadcasters also, with SCA running a significant amount of Listnr streams, that regularly change. This has been the norm since day one.
Grants / ARN ran bespoke programming from day 1, with two streams 7HO River and 7HO Classic hits pre-dating anything on Gold Coast DAB. They run their own liners and id’s but ‘generally’ take the same ad loading as 7HO.
Can’t say I know if these are now part of ARN’s greater network logs but aren’t a bad listen. KIX was on DAB from launch, and CADA was rolled out same as the rest of the country.
The community broadcasters simulcast their FM or AM services, with zero innovation at all. The community sector was the biggest winners from DAB (in my opinion) as they get the same coverage footprint as the big boys…
I have often wondered if the community boys could make better use of their DAB spectrum, maybe leasing a slice to the likes or TAB or SEN to provide additional income, or if this wasn’t allowed under their licence conditions. Seems like someone like 7RPH could slice off some bandwidth, and help subsidise their AM / core operations and affect almost zero listeners and content.
Would I be right in saying Coles Radio is produced by Nova?? If that’s the case, it makes sense that Brisbane gets Coles Tas…as Nova have no operations in Tasmania, that I am aware of.
7HO Classic was a good listen when I was down there, sounded more like a real station with news updates etc. That’s what DAB should do more of, not just automated music.
Yacht Rock was good too.
Hobart only has the two commercial players. SCA and (as it was then) Grants, so it was always awesome to see at least one of the players adding something unique to DAB.
Are River and 7HO classic commercially successfully, probably not, as they command tiny numbers at ratings time, but I 100% commend the team at 7HO for having the guts to give it a go…
I do wonder if one day we might see ARN sell some of their DAB space to other players (like I mentioned above for the community lads) to say an SEN or Pulse, and ditch the cost of running them, in favour of a rental income. I think at a commercial level it could be argued that an SEN or a Pulse style service poses no real threat commercially to the 7HO juggernaut, as they are catering to very different audiences.
Correct - the community stations don’t own the spectrum (it’s leased through the CBAA, if I recall correctly) and aren’t entitled to on-sell or sub-lease that spectrum.
Yes, that’s correct, Coles radio is produced by Nova & comes out of the Brisbane Nova studios.
8D Kings Cross very weak today off the digital cliff.
A digital jack hammer sound is all that is being received. Obviously Tropo is in the negatives today with the strong NW winds.
One bar of signal quality and errors in the 80’s.
yeah no reception on my radio today. I don’t have any fancy setups like outdoor aerial.
Seems like the parameters might have changed on SBS on the Gold Coast as all the streams were no service until a rescan.
The CBAA facilitates community radio on DAB, by centralising things such as the government funding, mux access agreements, etc. They don’t have any legal claim to the bandwidth, but manage it on behalf of their members.
The individual community stations have legal right to the DAB+ bandwidth. All incumbent metro-wide community stations have a right to share 2/9ths of the commercial mux capacity in that area.
As they aren’t shareholders in the JVCs, they have to pay access fees in order to actually use the spectrum they have a right to use.
