The old channel 999?
Use to be a channel where they gave you instructions on how to operate your FOXTEL STB (Set Top Box).
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Vega in Sydney certainly used birdsong on launch day at least. How much they used it during the rest of the test transmission, 
.
I remember that channel.
Ironic in some ways as it wouldn’t have been particularly useful to those who were already watching it.
TTFM with Andy Grace and Cory Layton was when the station was at its peak!
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I may have posted this before but I just heard it earlier, the sign-off from 4IP just over 31 years ago (29 December 1991)
YouTube: The Radio Vault
Seems to be a fairly inglorious sign-off to a once-great radio station, just the announcer sort of going “well, that’s it, see ya later, tune into 4TAB in the morning” and then test tone. 3XY and I think even 2SM (before it became Light and Easy) did more significant send offs IIRC. Maybe they figured nobody was listening to 4IP by this stage?!
Interesting then, too, that they threw in ads for 4BC for listeners looking for a non-racing alternative. Same as what 4KQ did to 4BH before becoming SENQ?
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Nobody was listening to 4IP at that time,a sad ending for a once great radio station 
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4KQ did have the occasional ad for 4BH but their own messages (eg. in their last news bulletin) were also pushing them to ARN’s other station in 97.3.
Certainly what 2CH’s DAB+ stream (which by then was already SEN-run, unlike 4KQ) did with promoting 2UE, though.
Were 4BC contracted to run the racing coverage up to that point, though? (I’m not saying you know, just pondering.) That might also be why 4TAB were promoting them; especially if the same ads were playing on 4BC itself during racing time, and the hint of a relaunch.
(edit: the first search result on Google pointed me to very early posts in this thread, circa 2016, which suggested that yes, 4BC did cover Saturday races at the very least. So perhaps why…)
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IIRC the video indicated that 4BC had been carrying the racing coverage but it was moving over to 4TAB upon launch.
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Ta, that’d make sense then… agree with you though, surprisingly low-key. I guess it wasn’t quite like, say, the 3XY situation where it was going off the air entirely (well, at least there was a gap in-between it and 3EE starting) where the federal government put together the final hour show, and presumably the TABQ had already owned it for the “couple of months” of that late-night announcer.
Although the argument that stewed in my head that 4IP was by then far detached from its Radio/Stereo 10 heyday doesn’t sound right, as the same applied to 3XY as well at the time. 
i never understood why the Department of Communications or ABA or whoever it was, put together that last hour special for 3XY. I suppose the alternative was for them to just run a looped voice over announcement for the hour but I am just puzzled it went to the effort to make a show for that hour.
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Relevant to 4IP/4TAB, obviously behind a paywall because Fin Review (although first click in search gave me the article), but contemporary article about the purchase of 4IP:
The then-owners had defaulted on a $2.8m loan to the NSW State Bank, half the valuation it was given after it had bought 4IP (well 4IO presumably as it would’ve been Stereo 10 still?) off 2SM in 1988… the price the TABQ purchased it for was not disclosed but was rumoured to be as little as $1.5 million.
Beach [Media Pty Ltd, then 4IP holding company] bought 4IP from 2SM Pty Ltd for a reported $2.5 million, but the AM stereo station has been struggling at the bottom of the ratings on about 3 per cent and losing up to $60,000 a month.
The [QLD] TAB’s chief executive, Mr Dick McIlwain, said 4IP was technically run down and would be re-equipped and later moved to the TAB’s headquarters at Albion in Brisbane.
It will convert to a racing format after the TAB’s current contract with rival station 4BC expires in October 1992. [1]
The loss of earnings attached to the TAB contract for 4BC, understood to be several million dollars, will undermine that station’s income base.
TABs in Victoria and West Australia have previously bought radio stations. [2]
[1] Obviously they had to break the contract with 4BC if they were able to get it on almost a year “early”
[2] 3UZ the obvious one, but the WA TAB also owned 6PR at that point; it hadn’t shifted to narrowcast then… 2KY wasn’t bought by the NSW TAB (through Sky Channel) until 2001
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Certainly sad to see the trifector of 2SM, 3XY, and Radio 10 go down the shoot, but unfortunately that’s the way the cookie crumbled back then, daggy old 70s and 80s trax were not cool on radio in 1991 1992, wel that’s the impression I got anyway. One would be forgiven back then that the 70s and 80s didn’t exist until they kind of came back into fav around 1994 1995, wellin Sydney at least anyway.
But the demise of another great radio station also happened during 1992, 2KA, when they converted to ONE FM. I believe, and remember reading at the time that both Austereo (owners of 2Day FM), and the then VIllage Roadshow (owners of Triple M) were spitting chips because 2KA only paid 40 grand for the conversion,. This was due to ONE spraying signal all over Sydney with their 5Kw Transmitter on top of Wentworth Falls.
Wile talking to someone yesterday, they mentioned that Southern Cross did Challenge the owners of ONE FM at the time, and were unsuccessful, however wile googling this morning, I could not find much info on the whole shabang, so not sure if this was a actual court challenge or whether it was fought out in ACMA.
Would really appreciate if someone can point me to some articles about the situation. It seems any articles regarding the contested dispute no longer exist on the internet.
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There was a news report from Ten Eyewitness News (as it was known back then) about One FM winning the court challenge on YouTube, but it has since being taken down.
I remember @Mechsta’s post mentioning that it made the front page of The Daily Telegraph Mirror (as it was known back then).
This podcast from a local Penrith newspaper that featured a former One FM presenter from March last year also provided a great detail about the early years of One FM, including that aforementioned court challenge:
That was a great interview, many memories of the old ONE FM, didn’t realise that it still went up to 1997, last time I heard it regularly was 1994.
They did discuss much of the case how Triple M and ARN took them to court and wanted to have their signal cut out at Parramatta, but nothing much more then I had already known.
I’m just very, very curious on what technicality ONE FM won the court case with, what was their argument. If they were a station licensed to the Katoomba / Penrith area, How did they keep their legal position of being able to still broadcast all over Sydney?
Interesting to hear that Ian Taylor noted that they can still be heard in New Zealand at times.
According to a SMH article dated 24th February 1993, the Federal Court dismissed 2DAY & 2MMM’s application on the grounds that the decision to allow 2KA to convert to the FM band could not be “stigmatised as irrational”.
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I think part of ONE FM’s argument is that they similarly also have to contend with the Sydney FMs overspilling into their licence area.
Southern Cross also did try to buy ONE FM but were told they couldn’t because it would be in breach of the 2 station rule (I think that was the reason anyway).
Somehow a few years, ARN were able to buy it. Sounds like someone else at the ACMA made a different ruling. Southern Cross would have been even less happy about that!
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That’s because of a technicality where WSFM is licenced to the Western Sydney RA1 market (despite having the same broadcast specs as the Sydney FMs) so the overlap percentages worked out differently.
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3XY, certainly for its last 18 months on air after it dumped Easy Rock, was playing a dance/top 40 playlist in contrast to the classic hits variations being played on FM, but by then the demographic had bolted to FM anyway and they were not going to go back to AM even if it had a superior playlist. Instead of trying to recapture a market that was never going to come back, should XY/SM/1008 have perhaps persisted with Easy Rock/Lite’n’Easy? It’s a format that was not dissimilar to what stations like Mix or Smooth were doing in later years. Maybe it was just a bit ahead of its time and needed time to catch on.
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