Radio History

Yes it’s an absolutely pathetic effort by most AM stations in their lack of promotion of DAB. It’s them who have the most to gain so why are they so pathetic? Contrast it with the UK where DAB is pushed to the max even by FM stations.

4KQ mention “digital” occasionally but instead push iHeart radio to the max and almost beg their audience to go and create their own custom station on iHeart…so, they umm don’t need 4KQ anymore?? It’s just bizarre!

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Yes & then you have the added choice once your on iHeartRadio to look in stations from USA, NZ & Choose the Genre of the Station etc then no need to go on 4KQ.

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Exactly. I don’t get it at all.

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Yes, ToH and elsewhere within the hour as a promo. Need to lift more than that, actively give receivers away, sustained, all year, increase awareness.

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The recent discussion of the 40th anniversary of the change of channel spacing for AM radio prompted the following upload. It’s a selection of station idents, jingles and in some cases end of day messages that mention the old channel spacing frequencies from the couple of years before that time. Also included is 4WK and 4BH’s larger frequency changes of the time and also 4IP’s first transmission from St Helena Island. Also from 4IP is their frequency change from 1010 to 1008 in their own unique style - certainly not used by other stations. Also a news report from the day. These are cassette recordings off air from NSW, Vic, Qld and SA plus a couple from NZ mostly received at night in Brisbane. Not are large number of stations as the list was restricted to idents I had that included the frequency.

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Remember when Bert Newton launched 3DB The New Beginning, he had Matthew King & Shane Bourne doing an early breakfast show between 5 and 7am, with Bert going from 7 to 9am.

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Love the 3LO aka 774 Melbourne aka ABC Radio Melbourne jingles at around 7:44 in.

Sounded very uptempo and professional. And no daggy ancient ABC News theme. Seems like no one cared about that in those days.

Sounds like community radio for the most part these days by comparison! No jingles. no themes and that news theme from the ark every hour.

Wonder who the PD was in those days?

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Even in the 80s 3LO used to have its own news theme for on-the-hour bulletins although I vaguely recall that they may have still kept the traditional majestic fanfare for the main news at 7.45am.

I don’t know when they reverted to having the fanfare intro across all news bulletins.

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3LO had an entire jingle package as far as I could tell including for the “Graham Kennedy Drive Home Show”.

The unique news theme was also used across Radio Australia’s programs at the time. RA of course with studios in Melbourne also had a sort of jingle package.

PS - regarding bigger frequency changes at the time 4GY had a major move from 1330 to 560 (then 558) and 4QR moved from 580 to 612.

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Apologies if this was covered already but what was the reason behind 4BH’s huge shift from 1390 to 880?

I would only be guessing, but I think it was so they would be located in the middle of the dial rather than the end. 4WK had just moved from 880 to 960 which made it possible.

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I didn’t know that… did it work or did they revert to standard breakfast hours pretty quickly?

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I don’t recall but given DB soon disappeared and became 3TT I guess it wasn’t a hit :wink:

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I’m fairly certain that continued until the late 1990s at least for bulletins from Melbourne not when they took national bulletins late at night. A variation can still be heard during JJJ breakfast on the bottom of the hour news updates.

Come to th8nk of it, MF may have been used for the major bulletins which were 10 mins long.

I think that’s correct. But how much better and more professional ABC Radio Melbourne (what a ridiculous mouthful) used to sound back then. Like a real radio station!

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I seem to recall 2BL in the early 1990’s had their own news theme too that sounded up tempo.

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I love it when the interweb throws up something that you just love. Here is 3XY in Melbourne around 1986 pumping out Top 40 music, hot hit jingles that cut through the air and an energy that radio lost years ago. The person who taped this loved the jingles and so do I.

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They were great jingles… I don’t think anyone does it like that anymore… and they should, that would make an awesome retro format for the over 40s.

And who doesn’t like a 12 inch? :sunglasses:

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The under 40s are missing out. Only people over 40 know that 12 inches relates to more than an order at Subway or something you need to delete from your internet history.

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This was during the final months of being an AM station, in which their transmitter was located in Prospect, right on 2WS’s heartland of Western Sydney. This was only 2 months before it converted to FM.

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