We are like the USA in that respect. However, for some reason we have a few stations on even numbered frequencies, e.g. 2CBA 103.2 Sydney, Rebel FM 99.4 and The Breeze 100.6 Mount Tambourine (near the Gold Coast). I always wondered they were put on even frequencies rather than the usual odd ones.
Also, why are the 1W stations on 87.6, 87.8 and 88.0 rather than 87.5, 87.7 or 87.9?
You’re kind-of right. Thai stations are on x.25, x.5, x.75 and x.0 frequencies.
It has been mentioned before.
The Gold Coast duo are because of lack of spectrum in SEQ.
The Sydney one has been reported to avoid interference occurring on analogue TV signal ATN7 in the past.
I always find it jarring when I see NZ or UK stations with ‘even’ number decimals (especially .0!) because I’m so used to just having the ‘odd’ decimals as the rule here (with some exceptions, as noted in above posts)
I liked the idea of having Odd and Even frequencies in NZ… What is annoying is when sometimes they have adjacent markets only 0.1 away, and you drive on the fridge of both… For example ZM 89.4 Tauranga and 89.5 Flava Rotorua, when your around Te Puke you get Flava interfering with ZM… and i would hate to see that sort of thing happen here in Australia
Agree we wouldn’t want that, but I’d be happy with a middle ground where we accept a bit more congestion with frequencies in neighbouring markets a bit closer in order to accomodate more commercial and ABC stations in particular. 0.4 spacing between Brisbane and the Gold Coast for example. It’s the only way to overcome the ridiculous situation of Brisbane, a city of 2.6 million people having only 4 commercial FM stations. They do it in greater LA for example, it’s the only way for extended metro areas like SEQ.
0.4 MHz seperation is realistically the minimum anywhere should run with. Any less just results in a mess.
Even Sydney and Melbourne with over 5 million people each have only 6 commercial FM stations. It’s way less than smaller cities in other countries.
I guess it doesn’t matter as much these days as we have DAB+, but still only 11 commercial stations in each major city.
Yes in theory DAB+ should have helped, except the execution of it has been extremely poor. The existing stations didn’t promote it so it really hasn’t reached any sort of uptake. If they had allowed new players to have DAB+ spectrum it would have been different. And yes even 6 commercial FM stations in Sydney and Melbourne is a joke. The 2 station rule has made it worse, and IMHO too many community stations (I know some will disagree on that one).
Well more community stations then FM stations for sure (at least here in Perth, we have 4x commercial high-power stations, but 6x wide community stations), not really balanced out by having 2x commercial AM stations versus 1x wide community AM station.
And specifically too many that don’t serve a useful purpose and therefore take up valuable spectrum for no benefit. Like the Christian stations pretending to be commercial and simulating a CHR format, or the stations with poor management or disputes which end up locking people out and not actually serving the community.
Write to ACMA about an Idea to expand the FM Band to around 80 MHz to allow more AM Stations migrate to FM and Plan the Expanded Band for use by ABC and SBS as well as Narrowcasters.
And all of the VHF MidBand land mobile services will have to move as well which use 70 - 85 MHz… in QLD this would be Qld Ambulance, Qld National Parks, Rural Fire, Councils etc… and in bush fires the old Midband holds it’s own
And who would listen? Virtually zero comparability with radios already in the market. You’d need a lot of very exciting new stations (like what DAB+ was supposed to be) to get people to buy new radios these days, and even then reach would still be very limited for potentially decades.
ABC would never agree to move off the current FM band.
Buckleys chance of that happening, first off not really any radios in the market are supporting it, and as others have stated, tonnes of Land Mobile in the 80MHz band that ain’t going to move in a hurry not to mention what a friggin nightmare it would be to reallocate and reprogram associated radios.
ABC sure as hell ain’t going to move to band where they will get less potential listenership given they are an emergency broadcaster.
So overall great idea you might have, but never going to happen in a hurry