The religious narrowcasters relying on that born-again tax free donation cash are about the only ones I even vaguely understand how they keep the lights on.
Especially low power narrowcasting - KISS FM covers most of the frequencies I can receive, but I struggle to think how much of their audience is listening via narrowcast FM, let alone how there’d be enough of a revenue base to keep going.
Faith FM are selling 3 x LPON licences in the Bowral NSW Region, so maybe the God squad aren’t getting enough cash either?
Hi All,
Thanks for your interest in River FM 87.6. I’m the managing director of Noise FM Pty Ltd and in partnership with Hawkesbury Nepean Broadcasters Pty Ltd, we operate River FM 87.6. I have operated radio services in Australia since 1993.
In the case of River FM 87.6, We have been on air since September 2020 with a modern hot country format and are currently rolling out our network of low power fm (1 and 10 watts) transmitters across Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains. We have obtained our licences legally and operate within the law.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions and if you haven’t already, please have a listen via our online stream at www.riverfm.com.au (or on FM 87.6 if you are within our coverage area) and let us know what you think.
Kind Regards
Nathan Rose
River FM 87.6 - Western Sydney’s Hottest Country
W: http://www.riverfm.com.au
E: nathan@riverfm.com.au
A number of religious licences are not owned by the broadcaster that’s being transmitted, but by individuals or church congregations with affiliate agreements (at least in the case of 3ABN Radio and some with Faith FM).
Yes, except in this case it’s Faith FM who are selling/advertising the licenses for sale, & the licensee is the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Faith FM also have a number of redundant LPON licences in Adelaide that they don’t need to activate because they have a single 88MHz transmitter at the TV tx site on Mt Lofty covering a radius of over 20km …
… so Nathan, you haven’t …
… have you?
Thanks Cee Jay. We operate within our licence requirements. We operate a number of licences across Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains, as a result our coverage area reflects the geography of our various licences.
Cee Jay, could you please clarify your first point, are you alledging that my organisation has obtained our licences unlawfully? And if this is the case what is the basis of such a claim?
I simply quoted anonymousbroadcaster’s claim that you were operating “unlawfully” by operating a 1 watt licence at “400 watts” …
Which, in defence of Nathan, is absolute baseless nonsense.
I would like to clarify the situation regarding river. I myself have not heard the station, nor have taken any technical measurements. I’m too far out of it’s broadcast area. I was in discussion with someone else who were DXing around that area. A new station were about to make their debut FM broadcast on the adjacent frequency of 87.8. They had to cancel their broadcast, because their allotted frequency was completely flooded. So regarding my previous statement, I’ll retract all that was said, and I’ll leave it up to the concerned party to better explain what has actually happened.
But a grievance that I will express, not particularly to any one particular group or station owner, but in general; the reality that they are those who buy up multiple LPONs. There is one guy who’s just bought all the Classic Hits FM licenses, and now has about a dozen LPONs to his name. I’ve tried a few times just to buy ONE license, and wonder why (as per the ACMA registry) all the considerable populated areas have been taken up. I’ll would like to suggest to ACMA that an entity should be restricted to no more then two licenses, because honestly I feel at present, many of them are being hoarded and being used for flipping on the market. This is terribly unfair for those who wish to run a hobby radio station, that’s what these were meant for in the first place. Being honest, I don’t think anything’s gonna change.
… and this is not necessarily because the station in question is running at “400 watts” or anywhere near … many LPON operators claim that they are operating within the ACMA specs because they don’t exceed the 1.64 watt EIRP … however that is a false claim because they find a spot to transmit from that has a high elevation which allows their “1 watt” signal to exceed the “48 decibels above 1 microvolt per metre at 2km from the LPON transmitter site” that is the actual limitation of the LPON licence, not the wattage.
As for your comment about “hoarding” … that has been a joke ever since the “use it or lose it” regulation was brought in because the ACMA can’t really be bothered enforcing it unless there is a formal complaint and the regular hoarders get around it by saying “oh yes, we were just about to install that service, sorry 'bout that” and get away with it …
Thanks for the clarification gents. I agree that LPON licences are hard to come by. In the end, like most assets, money talks and narrowcast licences are no different. From experience, I can confirm that owning and operating LPONs is an expensive game, while more affordable than commercial radio, there is still a cost to owning and operating these toys. It would be good if ACMA opened up additional lpon frequencies (e.g. 88.2 and 88.4) but it will still be a limited resource. The future/now is digital, with Online Streaming, LTE, SDR and DRM the technologies that will allow a broadcaster to reach their audience in the 21st century.
No worries guys, all good, glad we got things sorted. 
If a different frequency is being flooded, wouldn’t it be that the transmitter is over-modulating, not necessarily over-powered? As far as I know, to stay within the bandwidth allocated for a specific frequency, the transmitter should at least have a modulation limiter set at 75%. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Most likely, but not necessarily.
You should aim to modulate the (FM) transmitter at 100% most of the time, in the commercial & community radio world, we modulate the transmitters at 105 - 120% maximum modulation, generally speaking, (though some stations do go well over that), which doesn’t interfere with adjacent channels spaced 800kHz apart.
What I think you’re getting confused with is, that at 100% modulation, the transmitter should not deviate more than 75kHz +/- from the carrier frequency, thus allowing for the channel bandwidth to be 150kHz wide, with a guard space of 25kHz each side of the channel, in the licensed 200kHz wide channel.
Unfortunately the FM narrowcast channels are 200kHz wide, but the spacing between stations is often only 200kHz, & often in close proximity of each other, so yes, if they are over modulating too much, the channel bandwidth will encroach, or overlap an adjacent channel causing interference.
… don’t think I really agree with you that it’s “expensive” … yes, there are costs, but when I was operating an LPON in a coastal village many years ago and the question of cost was raised, I compared it to the person’s own hobby - fishing … by the time he had bought a beachside shack, a boat and trailer, fishing gear and the rest, his “hobby” cost a good deal more than mine … and I was actually earning some income from it! Like anything, you can get carried away and spend too much, but the basic costs of establishing and running an LPON are not “expensive”.
These two posts illustrate the problem well, those who say they are “costs”, and others that say they are “costs”, which is open to much interpretation and opinion.
Going off topic for a moment for an analogy, one can be a serious gamer and buy a powerful computer system with the top specs (hi power graphic cards / large monitors / power CPU processors and so forth) a computer like such would set you back about three to four grand.
Then they are the casual hobby gamers who would buy a $200 Sony playstation and have a dozen games which they’d play an hour here or there. All up the Sony Playstation with the game discs in total would be around $600 to about $800, wile a serious gamer would have already invested about $3,000 to $4,000 on the computer, and have subscriptions on Steam and other gaming platforms.
My beef is how this is no longer the case with radio, yeah sure, commercial radio costs millions, but where once upon a time obtaining a LPON would cost a few hundred dollars, the current owners of the LPONs have manufactured an eBay environment where getting a LPON is no longer $295, but now several thousand to tens of thousands. It’s now simply the highest bidder. Not really viable for someone to do as a hobby whose only income is a disability support pension.
When I came back on the board here back in March, I was kind of looking into some different broadcast options that I hadn’t come across yet. The community station I became involved with had a good vibe, and it was playing similar music to what I liked, and in the aspect of presenting a show, the music format would mix well. Problem with past community stations I was involved with that they’d either be a Spanish / multilingual program before my show with a heavy metal or religious reading afterwards, not exactly the environment to build a consistent listener ship.
I thought at least being involved in a community station that played similar music that when getting licensed, keeping listeners would have been a more sustainable goal, or failing that get an LPON of my own, and have my playlist of 15,000 tracks on 24 hour rotation. The community station in question has been trying to get access to the FM band now for the last nine months without much luck (I don’t blame them, it is an extremely difficult place to break into).
In the end, I thought with looking at all the different options, that one could at least get an LPON in a reasonably populated area, but with the recent xmas / new years break, one has come to some contemplation and the making of some decisions. Though I haven’t told the community station I’m involved with yet (who are still unlicensed, (just broadcasting over the internet) I have come to the decision to get out. I’ve become too disillusioned with the whole “radio” thing, and in the end it’s always the same embittering eye opener, where at every level of the industry, they are a few people who hold all the cards, and trying to do such as a hobby is nothing more than an exercise in futility. I wasn’t in this to make any money, but at the same time one wasn’t keen either to murder the credit card, and being lumped with thousands of dollars of debt.
In 2001, the ACMA introduced a price based allocation model for LPONs, auctioning a licence where there is more than 1 applicant for a lot. The entry fee (or application fee) per licence is $394, If you are lucky to be the only applicant, you can pick up the licence for the reserve price of $250 (low density), $1000 (medium density) or $2000 (high density). In addition to this, you have transmitter site rental fees, APRA AMCOS fees, ongoing ACMA licence fees, equipment costs, electricity and internet costs. While not fair, LPONs like many other assets are a first in, best dressed arrangement - my first LPON licence cost $34, my most recent lpon licence acquisition cost thousands of times this amount. Do i wish i had a time machine, you bet!