100%. we need a full national restack of stations. we need to look at the UK system where all the BBC stations are within 1 band of frequency, community in another and commerical another.
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Agree. They keep saying itās too hard but Iām not buying that. Get it done.
Also worth noting 0.4 spacing on FM is ok for London so why not here? Magic on 105.4, GHR on 105.8 and Heart on 106.2. No problemo.
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That would mean Newcastle / Wollongong and Central Coast 200 kilohertz from the high powered Sydney fmās I donāt know if that would work?
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Probably wouldnāt, but then if youāre reducing the spacing, youād re-stack the entire band & itād be compressed, so youād put the Sydney stations at one end of the band & the adjacent markets at the other.
I havenāt worked it out, but you could probably put Newcastle/Gosford at the bottom of the band, Sydney in the middle of the band & Illawarra at the top of the band, so thatād end the ducting interference between Illawarra & Gosford/Newcastle too.
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I wonder where you put suburban community stations? Maybe mixed in the Gong and Central Coast.
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Thatās what they do in London. They have to cater for surrounding markets too. Not every station is 0.4 spacing but there is a bunch of high-powered London commercial stations grouped together with 0.4 spacing near the top of the dial. The BBC stations towards the bottom. And a lot of the gaps in the middle with local suburban and surrounding market stations.
It would only work in congested areas like SEQ and Newcastle - Sydney - Wollongong with a full re-stack.
For reference hereās what it looks like. The greyed out ones are generally neighbouring areas. There is even some 0.3 spacing with neighbouring local stations.
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You could actually slot them in anywhere, at 800kHz spacing you can fit 25 stations in the FM Band (single market), if you reduce that by half to 400kHz spacing you can fit 51 stations in the FM band (single market).
A lot of the suburban community stations arenāt 800kHz or even 400kHz from another station, so you could slot them in anywhere, Illawarra, Gosford & Newcastle are currently 400kHz spaced from the Sydney high power stations, so reducing the spacing across the entire band you can separate them even further apart (in frequency) or put them at the same spacing in a line, then have a big chunk of the band free for the suburban community stations & others further afield regionally.
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Personally Iām not a fan of this approach, simply because it would make it harder to identify which transmission you are getting when long distance reception occurs.
But that affects maybe 0.00001% of the population (me, @dxnerd and a few other hardy souls).
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very useful when traveling though
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Yes, DXers are roughly 1 in a million. Bathurst is the exception with three hard core DXers in its measly ~44000 population!
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I think we need a decision on digital broadcasting and what that means for analog beforehand - commit to digital and move the majority of services across (leaving more critical ones on both) or decide that digital isnāt the future and restack accordingly.
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I feel we could get more capacity out of the FM band by using the even numbered frequencies as well, especially in markets where there is no direct overlap but potential for fortuitous reception. A good example would be 102.9 in Newcastle and Bowral, moving one by 0.1 to 102.8 or 103.0 would reduce the likelihood of significant interference on the fringes of the licence area during tropo.
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Lots of opportunity for a restack, the USA FM planning model is pretty good and packs a lot more in, 200 khz spacing for adjacent markets would work fine, more stations which would be better for listeners, more choice, more local services and better for competition, so why dont we have it here in Australia, simpleā¦ Incumbent commercials dont want competitionā¦ Analog FM is still top dog, at least in Australia, Digital Radio may always be a pipe dream.
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Yes agree. But I donāt understand why AM operators arenāt pushing for coversions to FM in metro areas - which of course would need a re-stack and rethink of the spacing, but would be possible. It seems they think they can survive long term with either/both DAB and streaming, but in reality can they? AM is going to go at some point, partucularly as receivers disappear. Itās surely a risk to bet on DAB and streaming maintaining their current audiences in the long term. They would at least maintain what they have and even grow if they were on FM. I canāt believe Nine arenāt pushing for it. Especially if ABC do something radical like put their local metro stations on ABC Classic FM frequencies - that could really hurt them if 3AW for example is stuck on AM with not enough listeners on DAB and streaming.
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Apparently though if you paid for an FM conversion 40 years ago that entitles you to infinite protection from competition.
My view is that we should just convert some AM stations using multiple lower power repeaters, rather than a central high power site, opening up a lot more options without dramatic restacks. Having two or three frequencies to cover a major city is enough of a disadvantage if we still need one.
Iād say as well, open up AM as a free for all after that - being on AM is narrow. End FM HPONs to help with finding frequencies for FM converts, but allow AM ones to be any format and fully commercial.
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I canāt understand how moving around the existing FM stations with 400 kHz spacing in each area will make anything but a small change. If for example you took all the main Brisbane FMs and clustered them in one part of the band with 400 spacing, all the current stations that are on the 400 spacings would have to be moved to another part of the band so not freeing up any spare channels. There might be an opportunity for a small gain of one or two extra channels but essentially almost all channels 400 apart are occupied now. Perhaps Iām missing something?
The only ways that significant gains could be made would be to make more radical changes like, as suggested even channels to effectively double the band - so stations in a market could be 400 apart but instead of just one spare frequency between each there would be three. Or, ACMA could consider allowing stations to co-channel that are closer together than now like now SEQ canāt use some frequencies for Coffs Harbour - you have to go up to Rockhampton to get the same channel used.
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Amortisation is clearly not an accounting concept that management at these stations has a grasp on.
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It certainly wouldnāt be easy in SEQ, but take a look at the list of FM stations in greater London in the link above. There are 38 FM stations on that list. Not all high powered but that number would cover whatās needed for Brisbane - Gold Coast - Sunshine Coast if it was stacked properly. Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast stations wouldnāt need to be 0.4 apart, they could be 0.3 or even 0.2. In fact 0.2 already works with Mix 92.7 and 92.5 Triple M GC.
The real problem with SEQ is they put the Gold Coast stations on the Brisbane 0.8 frequencies. That was madness.
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Amortisation is only used where the asset has a limited useful life. Assets which last indefinitely such as perpetual licences arenāt amortised.
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I get what you mean, and this is where it can get tricky and technical (and I can understand both arguments on this)- but I would argue that the one-off FM conversion fees stations paid for in the 80s and 90s (as distinct from the value of the licence itself) is something that has a limited useful life and should have been amortised (even if over a long period of say 20-25 years).
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