Digital Radio

To anyone here that’s still looking for a good classic rock station after classic rock digital shut down have a look at q107 Classic rock it’s a station out of USA just listening to it now it’s Really good and had a scroll through their playlist it’s a good classic rock playlist

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@Jack Not bad, but no better than Melbourne’s Classic Rock Radio (the old 3MP) which plays rock from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

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I still need a Modern/Alternative Rock Station like The Rock in New Zealand which is Amazing and The Alt Project in the US.

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Got an answer from ACMA. “Basically it may be in the radio station’s best commercial interest to maintain the technical standard which is most accessible to the audience. However as it is not part of the broadcast license condition, it is outside of ACMA’s remit which encoding technology a station choose to broadcast on.”

Interesting eh? I wonder if it should be like this. When the radio does not work people tend to blame digital radio rather than the broadcaster. Happy they responded though. :slight_smile:

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I think that would be more for the likes of Commercials Radio Australia to dictate. For example they could dictate that all their members uses a particular technical standard. The ACMA isn’t concerned if a particular technology is succesful, their job is just to facilitate it being available for broadcasters to use.

Maybe I should email them instead. See if I get a chance.

Absolute is also pretty good.

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For those interested.

http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Licence%20Issue%20and%20Allocation/Publication/pdf/TVRadio_Handbook_geninfo%20pdf.pdf

Interesting.

"Modulation schemes
The Australian digital radio service is planned to reference modulation parameters of
Transmission Mode I and Protection Level 3 using differentially encoded Quadrature Phase
Shift Keying (D-QPSK), as defined in the ETSI standard ETSI EN 300 401 V1.4.1. A DRMT
licensee may elect to operate with other modulation parameters to improve coverage or
capacity. However, the licensee will not be entitled to protection greater than that afforded by
the reference modulation. "

From

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Seems like a digital-only commercial radio station won’t work as a profitable entity.

Today’s Melbourne Herald-Sun states that EON Sports Radio is in financial trouble. Mentions on-air personnel not being paid for months, and none of the promised commentary of various soccer matches. Only live programming is between 7 and 7 Monday to Friday.

Not looking good!

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How does that bode for 2CH, isn’t it the same owners?

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2CH and the two Sunshine Coast stations are majority owned by Oceania Capital Partners with Wheatley having a 5% interest, while EON Sports Radio is majority owned by John Wall of troubled education outfit Acquire Learning with Wheatley having a minority interest. The companies are not linked, but Wheatley is the public face of both.

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Jeez that’s not a fantastic background anyway for business stability.

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EON should have opened the lines ~ like Radio Sport. If there’s one thing sports fans love as much as watching sport or listening to it - it’s talking about it.

But if there aren’t any listeners…!

Back in 2000, internet station bigfatradio.com launched with big names, but went bust within three months. It seems nothing much has changed since then for single business digital only stations. They don’t have deep enough pockets to absorb the losses.
http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?page=1&sy=nstore&kw=bigfatradio&pb=smh&dt=selectRange&dr=entire&so=relevance&sf=text&sf=headline&rc=200&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=news001013_0089_5194

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and this is the problem. they rely too much on talksport. why would i listen to talksport (even as a hardcore EPL fan?) probably 20% of the content has no relevence to me (traffic reports, adverts, etc)

i can’t call in and have my say so i’m left talking to the radio.

I tuned in this afternoon for about half an hour and what I heard sounded ‘somewhat’ professional. I presume it was Cam Luke and Richie Callandar… Cam was good… he has very much a Radio Sport style… fast paced talking and plenty of opinion and enthusiasm though he certainly is ‘geeky’ at times… Richie was sounding quite professional as well… more of the Big Marn type style… they spent about five minutes talking about the second test (must have watched it at home or at the pub cos Foxtel have apparently cancelled the EON subscription due to non-payment… haha)… the talk about the cricket was fairly insightful (and inciteful)… almost Radio Sport standard… but then they spent 25 minutes talking about dating and girls and tinder and read about 4 or 5 emails from blokes seeking dating advice.

I doubt whether the emails were real.

Maybe they should seriously consider EON Sports 1170?

It’s not that much different to why SEN Adelaide failed - sport talk isn’t a huge audience. Even worse was that it’s a national station - at least Adelaide shares a football code with Melbourne.

The times I’ve tuned past I’ve either heard TalkSport, local “banter” that talked about almost anything but sport, and occasionally EPL coverage. The latter is probably the most valuable, but people have to know it exists first.

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Sport talk is very niche and outside of Melbourne I doubt it has enough appeal.