Although we probably won’t, it’d be nice if we could listen to Show Radio on Sydney DAB+ via “Zed” this time next week…
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I think some of the tourists who come here for the event still hang around Sydney for some weeks after the event, so maybe that’s the incentive to keep JOY on for longer? Just a thought…
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And if it was on digital only and off FM.
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Although Show Radio is a good platform for AFTRS students (for some it may be their 1st real experience in broadcasting so in that regard, long may it continue to be an annual thing), I kind of agree with that too.
It’s somewhat pointless to have temporary pop-up stations on FM in major metropolitan markets in this day and age IMO.
Yes, put it on digital radio, broadcast radio, available to the full market (simply buy a digital radio).
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Here’s a question.
How are ads inserted into the broadcast? Does the music system stop every 20 minutes or so and hand over to a dedicated ad playout system, or do the people who schedule the music have to add ads to the playout system?
The reason I ask is that in Perth, The Edge DAB+ is a complete retransmission of The Edge 96.1 FM in Sydney, with irrelevant local Sydney ads and all (no, I’m not going to buy a car from Warwick Farm).
Wouldn’t it be better if they just cut away from the Sydney ads and play Perth ads, even ones from sister station 96FM? SCA manage to do this, and it’s insane that ARN are leaving money on the table like this.
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I agree, it shouldn’t be hard to have separate ads and sweepers for Sydney vs everywhere else, and they could use generic national ads for the latter.
Not sure what to do about the other Sydney content eg. weather and traffic though.
It reeks of cheapness to just run the Sydney product everywhere.
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This will vary, but ads and music are typically scheduled using different programs which are then brought together in the final playout system.
For example, with Zetta, the newest product in the market that’s used by all Nova stations, all SCA metro stations, some SCA regional stations, Capital, Talking Lifestyle as well as a few other broadcasters, Zetta is the final playout system used in studio to control what goes to air. Music is scheduled in GSelector and Ads (traffic) is scheduled in Aquira. This makes it easy to run the same music log on multiple stations, as the music and ad logs are pulled from different places.
Edge is a different case, in that it has been setup as a single station, and it’s DAB output is the same a what goes to the FM transmitter, the same as how other FM stations are simulcast on DAB. To run it in different markets with different ads, the entire process would need to change, with cues sent to notify other cities when to insert their local ads, similar to how live shows are networked. This wouldn’t be all that hard, but would requite those cues to be scheduled as well as some other adjustments to how their audio is managed.
Given that ARN haven’t monetized their other digital stations yet, and don’t seem to really care about the product, the only local ads they’d have to play are freebies given to their existing advertisers. Their thinking would be that an alteration to their systems, and time required to schedule ads for no monetary return isn’t worth their effort.
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Thus why I like “The 80s”.
Great music, no annoying DJs and best of all, no ads! They used to run one for Crimsafe every 30 mins, but they haven’t done that for quite a while now.
Only the low bit rates take the shine off it.
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Interestingly, I was told by someone from ARN a few years ago that their DAB stations were still classified as experimental (not sure if it was just their stations or DAB+ as a whole) and they therefore didn’t need to play royalties for any music played on those stations. I suspect this is a major factor in their reluctance to do anything anything substantial with digital yet.
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Lol!
How long can an “experiment” run for!?
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When they first started broadcasting The Edge, it was a unique digital station - with almost no advertising, though I think Breakfast was simulcast.
Clearly they decided the effort to make it generic wasn’t worth whatever gain from selling unique ads.
One other thing seems to be the digital stations being generally a national feed. I think SCA recently switched to local feeds as they sell ads on the digital stations as complimentary to the Hit/Triple M station.
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Smooth also has different ads in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
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Yeah, local ads, and time shifted, but still national news and weather, which is out of date as a result of being timeshifted.
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ABC services up and running in Hobart
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Does this mean the ABC and SBS multiplex is on the air with its full suite of stations and the commercial multiplex is yet to begin?
Radioinfo article collating the media releases from ABC/SBS:
Country music festival, CMC Rocks (pay TV channel CMC) was held over three days at Willowbank, west of Brisbane, concluding yesterday.
Over 20 000 attended.
Interesting that MMM Country and its predecessor The Range (which has been on air continuously via FM 91.5 The Range Toowoomba) has no part in this.
Besides the multi venue, festival format of Golden Guitars in Tamworth, this is the biggest event, very commercial and perfect for a country radio station to be involved with. The audiences are quite similar.
Shame they’re not more involved. Perhaps next year?
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they only launched MMM Country at the start of Feb.
In a previous job i worked in the sponsorship department of a niche festival and 6 weeks out from the festival we had all sponsors sown up.
At six weeks out we are figuring out who needs comp tickets, who gets meet and greets with the artists (and talking with the artists, sponsors and event management to schedule these), getting signage printed and the million other things you do for a festival.
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I have a Sangean DPR-45 which has AM FM and DAB+. It sounds pretty good and only cost me $29 when I bought it (though it’s full price is $250)
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