It’ll happen. It’s a publicly listed company. Anything can and will be squeezed to ensure a return to shareholders. They’re legally obligated to.
If you know me and my background, you’ll get it.
Or, if you can’t be arsed to do that, it’s called an example.
So your argument is it worked 50 years ago, it can work now? Ok.
Boundaries can be found here. CRA has also defined the market area here.
Ipswich is not a suburb, it’s its own city with its own local government. River949 is licenced to serve that market, and has previously been reprimanded for featuring too much Brisbane content (back when first launched). It would be a mistake to rebrand to Gold and skew the station younger (even by 5 years) because Ipswich has an older demographic. River launched with a CHR format and it didn’t work.
This is the Sydney/Paramatta thing all over again.
Having a local council is completely irrelevant. Blacktown, Waverley and Randwick are separate local council areas in Sydney, to name just a few. It just so happens the Brisbane LGA is larger than any other in Australia. By your logic Randwick isn’t “part of Sydney”.
Ipswich is part of the official metropolitan area of Brisbane, in the same way as Logan and Redlands are.
Operators of the QFM licence have long argued they are barely viable, due to the fact that their official licence area has a couple of hundred thousand people, but has to compete with all of the Brisbane stations, both DAB and AM/FM. Ipswich City is completely covered by the Brisbane LAP, and that’s where 90% of River 949’s audience resides.
What Ipswich actually needs is a community station licenced to it, similar to Logan, Redlands and Caboolture.
Also your statement that Ipswich has an older demographic is incorrect. Ipswich’s median age is 33, Brisbane is 36. (Source 2021 Census data).
Its there own fault. they are not on DAB (which for ARN would be easy to do) so until they are all the moaning means nothing. Smooth is on DAB in brisbane and going gangbusters. no reason why river can’t be on DAB
Agree, and that’s what I’m proposing.
The arguments that QFM isn’t really viable came long before ARN took over though. A previous owner even took the unprecedented action of providing ACMA their books.
Having a quick look at the Annual Report, they seem to be leaving the regionals out for now.
Interestingly, there are also a couple of references that allude to leaving Cruise in Adelaide as-is, due to it being on AM. That seems really strange to me. If they’re planning a DAB-only Gold station in Adelaide, why wouldn’t you leverage the AM frequency as well as the DAB station? Unless they plan to sell it of course. I would have thought an AM/DAB combo would be better than a DAB only station.
Unless they think the new direction for Gold is too young for the current Cruise audience and they’re worried about losing them. Not that that seems to have bothered ARN previously. Also, where else would the Cruise audience go, the Gold format would still be the oldest commercial FM/AM music station in the market.
I agree with the AM/DAB combo would be stronger. Having an AM/FM licence gives more credibility, especially since DAB only stations have a history of being more temporary.
Yes agree. Even though the Cruise audience would largely be older than they’re going for, there would definitely be some of the audience in their target age range. Why not at least keep those and then gradually try to move them over to DAB over time if they wanted. As you say, there’s nowhere else for the older Cruise listeners to go really, apart from community or 5AA/ABC stations. I suspect they’ll sell off Cruise once the Gold DAB station is established.
Probably not 5AA/ABC. The listeners are on Cruise because they want music, which 5AA and ABC won’t give them.
It would seem silly to sell a station in a market where they’re allowed to own 2 licences, but maybe they’d sell to SEN (assuming SEN would be keen to get a full power licence - deja vu much!) and the run Adelaide with a virtually identical setup to what they have in Brisbane.
I wonder what a “fully fledged” Gold station in Brisbane and Perth would look like.
Local breakfast shows? Please don’t let this mean the return of Laurel, Gary and Mark. Would be nice for something different.
I doubt it. Too expensive for a DAB only station. And I’m sure their goal is to network Christian O’Connell eventually.
Hopefully doesn’t mean a KIIS version of Mix Adelaide, if national networks is the plan.
Mix and 96fm would both align better with Gold - especially with the shift down in demos lower. It’s hard to imagine creating a genuine “Gold” in those markets without also adjusting the positioning of the KIIS side of things.
Yep, Christian is definitely the longer term plan for 5x Gold stations. The main reason for digital only stations in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth would be to get him on air in those cities.
The only thing that might delay that would be if they want to wait until next year when they can include Sydney as well. It’s widely suspected that this will be Jonesy & Amanda’s last year at WSFM/Gold. (And could quite possibly return to Triple M).
I still have concerns about Christian going national. Yes, it’s what he wants, but his show in Melbourne is so local. AFL players during the season, various other promotions around the city, broadcasting to an audience who love him because despite being a foreigner he worked really hard to become a Melbournian. For a show that’s a constant contender for and frequently is #1 FM breakfast in probably the most competitive market in the country, so much of the show’s DNA would have to be cut going national. Nova and Fox would be the clear winners if this were to happen.
I agree it’s a big risk to the Melbourne audience to take his show national, because as you say it would have to be far less Melbourne. ARN seem to not have grasped these risks with K&J. Their renewed focus on Melbourne will bite their Sydney audience eventually.
They might have learned one lesson though and rather than go all in by putting Christian on FM in Sydney, they might put him on DAB in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth first to build a national show, then only put him on FM after it bedded in. That’s what they should have done with K&J, national on DAB first, before 101.1
Its Totally 80s on Gold from 9am today and all across the weekend.
And its Ugly Phil’s last day on Gold 1017
Why? Why limit the playlist to one decade ALL weekend? And why start at 9am on a Friday? Do they want people in workplaces to switch to something else?
Yep agree. The 80s is my favourite decade but even I have no interest in hearing all 80s all weekend.
The 80s used to be my favourite decade until radio started flogging the crap out of the 80s. Don’t get me wrong, I still do like the 80s, but playing the 80s non stop for the full day or all weekend is a big turnoff for me.
