Francesca Winterson is a 3MGB broadcaster. This tweet has video of her interview with ABC News breakfast:
The power has gone off for 3MGB sadly, at least the diesel at the exchange is keeping on going for the landlines to be working. Thankfully, there’s no NBN HFC there.
ABC Gippsland clearly an under-resourced region, but you’d think they could fall back to Melbourne at worst.
Mim Cook presented coverage this morning, Vic Country Hour now airing with bushfires the main story as expected
Exactly, this is what frustrates me the most. Sure, there’s trained staff in other locations to broadcast, but nothing beats knowledge within a region.
Even from ABC Bega would be helpful. They have great broadcasters there, breakfast an example with Simon Lauder over from Melbourne and broadcasting for the last year or so.
Looks like the BA site at Mount Elliot (Corryong) is expected to go off air.
Presuming that the 106.5 FM signal off Mount Baranduda doesn’t cover the area - only 675 AM (ABC Riverina, Corrowa) and 720 AM (ABC Gippsland, Omeo) have been read out as alternatives
And AM isn’t good during active fire conditions as the front makes its own weather, often lightning as seen now at Mallacoota.
2EC still have normal programming… not sure about 2EAR as I can’t get their stream to work. A very poor effort given that most of the 2EC listening area is affected.
It’s also an awkward time of year given the number of staff on leave.
Up in the Albury/Wodonga region Hit and Triple M are both providing extensive coverage of the current warnings from both Vic and NSW authorities, reading them in full quite often, with no ads being played.
2AY on the other hand not so much. They have infrequent announcements which are a very summarised versions of the official warnings. The last announcement segued into the music coming up after and then went into an upbeat station promo. It sounds like it’s all being voice tracked from elsewhere and the danger to some in the broadcast area isn’t fully understood.
Tough, they’re a big network, the pipe in so many programs and music logs, how about using it for good in emergency broadcasting.
Terrible state of media when the ABC is not up to it with locally staffed or at least within the state updates and the commercials are caught napping.
Going by the ABC South East NSW Facebook page, the Batemans Bay/Moruya transmitter on 103.5 has either failed or has a problem and they are using the NewsRadio frequency of 100.5 to broadcast ABC Local in this area for the time being.
tonight bushfire coverage is broadcasting from 1233 abc Newcastle studio
Tasmania had updates around every half an hour last night throughout the night (I woke a few times and heard them but there might have been some missed) as the fires at Fingal and Pelham were at emergency levels.
Sounded like some of them could have been mainland produced though with the pronunciation of Fingal as Fingle instead of Fingall.
It appears all of the Mt Wandera transmitter is completely offline now, incl all commercial radio and TV. The Nowra ABC RN transmitter on 603 AM is now carrying ABC South East NSW.
Interesting move, considering that the transmitter, located near St Georges Basin, is within the main footprint for ABC Illawarra.
More for Batemans Bay residents who may struggle to receive 810 AM from Bega.
So here we are, more natural disasters & AM Radio saves the day again.
I even heard while listening to the ABC yesterday afternoon, them saying (paraphrasing), there are difficulties with some transmitters in the South Coast areas, due to transmitters mostly being located on top of hills in difficult to access bushland areas & power loses & bushfires are affecting them.
Funny thing is they kept mentioning that the mobile networks & internet were also down or having difficulties, but then would say if you can’t get us on the radio, you can always listen on the ABC app for emergency information.
LOL, like that’s a reliable or even available option if you’re in or near the danger zone, & I’m guessing most people would want to save their phone battery for if they need to make an emergency phone call, seeing as the power’s out & they can’t recharge it.
Almost every natural disaster we have the same issues with FM & TV.
AM is always the backup & usually gets called into use.
AM TX sites are almost always accessible during a bushfire, & in little danger of burning down, due to only a grass fire racing across the TX site. Even in a flood the AM site can be accessed using a boat, & if it’s in a known flood area the TX building & antenna (mast) base is built up high above the flood line, so the likely hood of it being damaged is low.
As most of you know I work in Broadcast TV & Radio, & we have self imposed restrictions on accessing our TX site during bushfires, storms, etc. even if they’re not enforced by emergency services.
As you probably saw in another post elsewhere in the forum, we had no access to our Kurrajong Heights (Sydney West) site for well over a week due to road closures & bushfire risk, had we have lost the site altogether, it may have been days or more than a week before we could regain access to even start looking at the rebuild.
Don’t think it’s just regional areas in danger either, Mt Dandenong wasn’t maned on Monday due to the bushfire risk, & had a bushfire occurred at Mt Dandenong & damaged the site or caused a major fault, the entire Melbourne area could be without TV & FM radio for as long as it takes to again get access to the site to make repairs. Adelaide, Perth & even Brisbane are in the same situation.
Everyone’s wanting to turn off their AM’s & convert to FM, but what are they going to do (as a business if nothing else), when a bushfire burns down their FM TX site & they can’t broadcast anything for perhaps weeks, until they can even get a low power temp setup operational?
The ABC at minimum should be forced to provide full overlapping (by minimum 2 TX sites) coverage of the countryside (within reason) & as per historical coverage, with AM transmitters of 10, 20 or 50kW power out, for specifically the reason of emergency broadcasting coverage to get information out to the masses, & as a result, all radios sold in Australia should have AM reception capabilities, unless or until DRM using the MW band & MW TX sites is implemented moving radio into the digital world.
Fully agree with you mate. How does AM go in cyclone areas? I noted during Yasi when 4TO still had their 774 transmitter they managed to stay on air all night on 774 broadcasting from one of the announcers homes in Kirwin using a internet connection down somewhere to uplink into the AM transmitter. Of course the Mt Stuart transmitters had long run out of backup juice.
I wonder why? They’d be in the same hut?
Like all of the ABC TV news coverage, disgraceful.
Happy birthday @ando9185
That will be most. Especially with the fire in between.
According to their facebook page 2EC is now temporarily broadcasting on 87.6 in Batemans Bay
Well, appears they’ve decided to have the brains for that tonight, with rolling coverage until 2:30am (coming from Mackay of all places with Meecham Philpott) on SE NSW/Illa/Riverina.
Bit disappointing given they’re only at “watch and act”, yet an emergency situation in Gippsland/Murray doesn’t deserve the same?
I mean, surely any area with an emergency situation (higher than watch and act) deserves rolling coverage, not just 30 min updates.
(And I’m not making this into a state versus state mess. Just it should be the same for everyone, and criticism deserves to be levelled.)
Full credit though. Meecham seems solid and very well versed, and a far better choice than Andrew Heslop.
But local would be much better, even Canberra. The lack of local knowledge definitely is showing.
And to really make things slightly more ridiculous, interviewing your emergency presenter (who is in another state and a cool 1500km away from the fire zone), to talk to the rest of the nation about the fire zone they’ve been broadcasting to?
Come on ABC. We know you can do better.