96.5 seems set on the modern contemporary-type music they play
96.5 need to keep focusing on moden contemporary - the only reason they have a licence is to serve the christian community of brisbane and one of the ways they do this is by playing christian contempory music. it would be a shock to play CCM than Smooth style. it does not fit the main reason they are licenced.
the problem is that no one wants to try untested formats. all stations have thir market and if that works why rock the boat? you could end up like TS and bombing badly,
I see what you’re suggesting but I don’t agree there was an overlap. I think if 4BH listeners were flicking between talkback and music then a lot more would have just stayed with TL. Judging by the near * ratings that hasn’t happened. I haven’t seen much of a bump in 4BC’s ratings, but there has been a big bump in 4KQ’s.
Yeah sadly that’s true. I can’t see anyone stepping up. I’m surprised 99.7 wouldn’t try it. I’ve tuned to them lately and they just sound like 4KQ with a hint of Triple M.
I’ve often wondered if River 94.9 have ever considered it.
Exactly right, and each of the city-wide community stations has a licence obligation to serve a particular community of interest like ethnic, university students, religious etc so could likely be found to be in breach of their licence if they had a Smooth-FM format. (2NUR is different because its licence is for the community interest of the Newcastle RA2 licence area.)
As an outsider looking in, to me it seems like MRN and commercial FM broadcasters in Brisbane should be catering to their market better.
Does Brisbane really need two predominantly talk stations from the same broadcaster? Does Brisbane (and Adelaide/Perth for that matter) really need three out of it’s four commercial FM stations aligned with the Hit, Nova and KIIS Networks when they target a reasonably similar audience to each other?
Although they’re not a primary listening choice for me personally, I do think city-wide community stations are right to cover particular areas of the market that the commercial/national broadcasters aren’t interested in. I’d question whether it’s necessary for some national stations to be broadcast on FM in metro markets if we have community stations doing localised versions of the same format, but that’s a long debate for another time/thread.
Don’t disagree with the points above, and agree 96.5 are doing what Christian broadcasters do all around the country and probably shouldn’t change. I don’t think River should try it, they’d just turn away their local audience to chase a few Brisbane listeners, which is not what their station is licenced for
I think it all comes back to Brisbane being one music station short of its needs. We’re missing a station something between a Smooth and a 94.1 on the Gold Coast. 882 could do it if they were smart and I’m sure it would rate (better than TL at least), but in reality it would have a lot more impact on the FM band
I agree. Brisbane is a music station short, particularly on FM. It all stems back to when 4BH failed to convert to FM back in the early 90s. They bid too much then couldn’t come up with the cash. It was then offered to the second bidder 4KQ whose owners took a “strategic” decision not to pay to convert. The broadcasting authority then completely failed in their duty by not offering it to the 3rd and 4th bidder. Both 4IP and even 4BC put in bids. I believe if one of these stations had converted then would have still offered 2 new licences when 97.3 and Nova won theirs. Brisbane would have ended up with 5 commercial FM stations instead of 4 and everyone would be happy. Either KQFM or Smooth would be on FM.
I’m not sure whether they didn’t meet a reserve price, but yes possibly. Actually I wasn’t aware they had a reserve. At the time they had already effectively made 4IP a Brisbane station so it wasn’t an Ipswich station as such any longer. The situation today with River is a bit different because it is only licenced to Ipswich and some parts of Brisbane’s metro area to the west and south.
I agree, this is the point why Fairfax/MRN have failed with what they’ve done.
Motty, David McDonald and PD Geoff Harrison all knew that BH and BC had/have separate audiences, the cross over is minimal. Audiences are quite polarised, the music loving audience dislike talkback and vice versa.
Probably. They’re rating #1, so no need to consider it. PD Drew Chapman’s big problem is working out how to maintain and consolidate the great result (nice problem to have).
The only time we’ll see vision of proper target market pursued on 4BH is if the licence is sold. Get rid of the radio wannabes who currently mismanage it and install commonsense.
possiblly, but i bet the authorites have an extremely close eye on 96.5 after all the issues they have had. i can also gurantee that if they moved away from serving the christian commuity i would be putting a complaint in and i will not be the only one.
it already feels toekenistic now the way they do it - i’d almost prefer vision take over the frequency. they do a much better job serving the christian community
No it wasn’t rectified as Brisbane has always has more commercial radio stations than Adelaide and Perth. The reason they allocated two (97.3 and Nova) was population vs number of licences, regardless of AM vs FM. If 4BH had already converted they would still have allocated two, just like they did in Sydney and Melbourne at the time. Brisbane is almost twice the size of Adelaide these days (2.4M vs 1.3M). There’s a case for Perth to have an extra station these days as it has also pulled well away from Adelaide in population.
But if upwards of 70% of people claim to be Christian it’s hardly a niche market, which is supposedly the purpose of community radio. I don’t think it meets the requirements for community radio in that sense.