Yeah I agree. Classic hits can include easy music. 4bh should go classic hits right away.
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I had a brief listen to 4BH. Trevor Sinclair is referring to it as Classic Hits, but their produced imaging still refers to it as Easy Music.
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Classic Hits sweepers coming through now.
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It’s highly unlikely any name changes will be made voluntarily to the DAB during breakfast, or anytime before 10am, the DAB network is so technical & fragile, a simple mistake of the keypad can take an entire multiplex down.
Even what you think is a simple station name change, can lock up one of the multiplexers & take every station on that ensemble off air, or a mistyped keystroke can tell one of the DAB computer systems to do something you didn’t want or expect it to do, taking every station off air.
If a network makes a change & take themselves off air that’s one thing, but when they take everyone off air, creates a lot of problems for a lot of people. SCA did just that a few years ago when changing something, obviously accidentally.
With DAB each network has a multiplex encoder at the studio for their own stations, that then gets sent to the transmission sites, where every networks data then goes through another 2 multiplexers (main & alternate), which puts everyone into the same ensemble on each channel.
While both transmitter site multiplexers should mirror each other, sometimes a change can lock one or both up, so a simple change might have one multiplexer putting out all stations correctly & the other mightn’t update, so will have different channels or incorect data, this will normally throw up alarms, but if the system decides to change over to transmit one multiplexer over the other, you could have stations missing at best, or no stations at all on an ensemble.
Due to networks changing things & causing issues with the DAB transmission network, recently new rules were put in place for making changes & TXA must be notified prior to any changes being made, so techs can be assigned to actively monitor, (sitting watching) & fix issues immediately if needed.
Some networks seem to abide by these rules, others don’t seem to bother, one network recently arranged a time in the afternoon to make changes, so techs were moved from other work to monitor at that time, but they changed things much earlier in the day while no techs were on active standby, luckily nothing went wrong.
Generally outside of emergency changes, DTV, AM, FM or DAB won’t make any changes to anything transmission related between 5am-10am & 3pm-7pm, too big of a chance something will go wrong & too many viewers/listeners it’ll affect & too much potential money lost from advertising revenue.
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If I was 4BH I would find a middle ground between the current easy listening and 4KQ’s classic hits format, skewed a little towards 4KQ. I would soften it just slightly. Then both 4BH and 4KQ listeners will be catered for. Remembering that Brisbane has no Smooth on FM and 97.3 is being KIISed, the new 4BH has the older market to themselves, they can be quite broad. Even throw in a few newer artists like Adele. It’s a real opportunity for them, but they will actually have to promote the station. A lot of people don’t know it’s there anymore since the Talking Infomercial and Macquarie Sports debacles. Oh and they need to lose the AFL calls immediately.
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How many people realise 4BH is now at 1116?
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My guess is not many at all. There’s been zero promotion of the station.
Here’s the thing I don’t understand about radio operators these days. They seem to think people will just “find” brand new stations magically, without actually advertising them. It’s bizarre and I don’t get it. People don’t just find stations like this.
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Yeah… 3 main reasons I can think of.
- Complacency
- Money is not there for advertising.
- There are different measures of success. Like BOG it doesn’t matter 2SM doesn’t rate (not even in the ratings). Keep it no frills. Stations like this have different KPIs. Why bother as 2GB will out rate us anyway not worth the effort & money? SEN/Sky is looking just at gambling dollars related to sport. They serve a “different market”.
I would say for ACE it is more the second category, hard to get the money to do widespread advertising for 4BH.
Going back to last century it was a different ball game especially in the 80s and earlier, there was a lot more fierce competition.
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I forgot the other day when I was going to tune in after the KQ news, and I literally listened to/recorded the frequency swap 
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Let’s not forget, 4BH isn’t a new brand. I’m sure a lot of the 60+ market probably already know that 4BH plays mainly older music - and once 4KQ wraps up, they’ll likely already have 1116AM on their presets.
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Lets hope so. It would be good to see a station come * ratings to near number one on the AM band.
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In the most recent ratings survey, 4BH scored 2.2%, up 0.3 from the previous survey.
Problem is the last time many would have listened to music on 4BH it was on 882.
Then 882 got trashed by Talking Lifestyle and Sports. So they moved to 4KQ.
I maintain that the vast majority of people;
A. Don’t know 4BH is even back
B. Don’t know it’s on 1116
1116 has been associated with talk for many decades.
Hence a marketing campaign is needed.
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4BH had a rough time between 2014 and 2020, the rot set in when it became Magic 882.
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Yep that’s when it all started.
After such a long time in the wilderness it won’t be easy to bring it back.
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This is where the affiliation with the Nine Network would pay off. Heaps of advertising on QTQ telling people that your new home of classic hits is 4BH 1116 AM. Start the campaign just before 4KQ flips to sports.
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That’s if free or discounted advertising is included in the lease agreement that Ace has with Nine. Otherwise Ace would still have to cough up dollars to advertise, even on QTQ.
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Would ace rebrand 4bh as Magic 1116 when 4bh fully goes Classic hits? 10 songs in a row here we come on Brisbane home of Classic Hits Magic 1116
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Noooooo! Magic was an epic fail when they tried it before on 882. It kind of defeats the purpose of leveraging the heritage brand.
This afternoon my DAB in the car had changed from Easy Music 4BH to Classic Hits 4BH. I still think they need to find a middle ground between the two playlists to maximize their appeal, even if it is branded Classic Hits.