Mackay also had 4EL on 1026. From memory they use to call it The Easy Mix 1026.
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Though i think it’s official callsign was 4AA, since Cairns took 4EL.
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Yes, it might of been mate. I just remember them calling it The Easy Mix.
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Also went into TV interests too because they were the last owners of MTN9 before WIN took that over.
The then-ABA was looking into it in an investigation in 1998 because of the somewhat tangled relationship between AMI and what had just become DMG Radio (who had done a swap of MTN and 2RG/Star FM between them a year or two earlier), including in Mildura where they shared facilities by the looks of it.
The AMI Radio company eventually fell under Grant Broadcasters’ purview after the split-up, thus is under ARN now. The company name is still attached in the ACMA database to the licence of Zinc 96 on the Sunshine Coast/Gympie. Certainly at the time of the split described, AMI were probably most referred to as “the owners of Hot 91” in contemporary reports, so the Sunshine Coast were probably their most important market by then.
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News report of KZFM’s first radio ratings since moving to FM band. (1990)
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Interesting! So the top 4 stations in Melbourne in 1990 were music stations? Strange how things have changed nowadays with talk dominating Melbourne. I guess there are fewer talk stations these days and more music stations comparatively? What was 3AK’s format during this survey?
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Easy Listening, or Lite and Easy or something of that nature. Though there may have been some talk thrown in. IIRC Philip Adams was still being relayed at late night from 2UE (a remnant of the CBC days). Keith McGowan did overnights. They may have tried relaying John Laws from 2UE sometime around this era but like most things at 3AK at the time, i think that was delightfully short lived.
This was the logo in 1988, it may have changed by 1990.
3AK then became Radio Italia in June 1990
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When did 1503AM shift to 1116AM?
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I don’t know exactly i think it was sometime around January 2001 just as Derryn Hinch was about to start there
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The then-ABA decision to permanently move 1116 to 3AK would have taken effect at the start of 2001, with a simulcast period of two months.
But the LAP was successfully challenged in the Federal Court during the simulcast period, with one of the applicants previously having run the narrowcast licence previously on 1116, “3BM” (see comments made in this thread six years ago) - partly on grounds of not having consulted properly. (The other challenger was the group running Radio Hellas on “3XY” 1422.) I suspect the issue as much that the 1503 frequency was going to be used for community purposes and not narrowcast [the latter probably eventually got pushed to the 1593 frequency, still with Italian programming per Rete Italia and now SEN Track].
The orders on that did not come down until early April, which invalidated that part of the LAP until the ABA had fixed that up. For the time being, it was intending to offer 3AK temporary use of 1116 (they had been given 48 hours notice to determine what to do with 1116 in the meantime) until the consulting on that and on 1503 was complete.
Sounds like 3AK would have still started in January (as the challenge came during the simulcast, towards the end of January), but they were only “officially” became unequivocally confirmed as the holder of the 1116 licence in July, per ABA newsletter. Of course 1503 wound up being the indigenous 3KND eventually.
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I can’t recall posting any of my own historical radio material in this thread, so here’s a contribution to break my ‘Radio History’ contribution virginity. 
This is the rear view of a Triple J condom pack.
I have more revealing (G rated) internal & frontal pics…of the condom pack, if anyone wants to see?
I suspect triple j was the first radio broadcaster in Australia to produce these tasteful 
promotional items. For radio history buffs these date back to 1990.
Does anyone know if ‘triple j’ produced any later (or earlier) Triple j promotional condom packs or if any other Australian radio broadcasters produced similar?
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Groan.
While we probably take it for granted that commercial radio has existed in Australia since the medium launched in 1923, it only began in the UK in 1973. LBC began in London 50 years ago today.
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Yes it’s always surprising when you remember that commercial radio only started then in the UK. The government was so resistant to it, it took years of pirate radio stations off the coast for them to finally agree.
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In 1980, when I was a kid, I was at my cousin’s place when I noticed that their Hi-Fi radio had a different FM band. Instead of going from 88 to 108, it went from 75 or 76 to about 90 or 92 or thereabouts. I now know that this is the Japanese FM band.
Was it common before the introduction of FM in Australia for Hi-Fis to come with the Japanese FM band rather than the more widely used one? Did they think at one stage that we would adopt the Japanese FM band?
Also I vaguely remember in 1977 going to my parents friend’s place and they had a radio with both a conventional FM band and a second FM band which I think was UHF, but I didn’t look at the numbers. I know that at one stage, Australia considered setting up its FM band on UHF, but was a frequency range actually decided on? Were there actually radios with a UHF FM band?
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I reckon your cousins radio might have been a Japanese import? (ie. bought in Japan and privately imported). Did it have any Japanese labelling on it?
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I didn’t think the proposal for UHF FM progressed far enough to confirm frequency range or get receivers made?
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