Yeah they did. Interesting. I think from my prospective. how they took aspects of a radio station so seriously like the news service and the “DJs”. There are remnants today of this with Ace but nothing compared to the good old days. I could feel more money was spent. Even if listener feedback was still “70% show” , example the management would not cater for one person who wants more album heavy rock for example.
I am old enough to remember the new services these stations had in the 80s. Its something I really miss. It really faded out in the 90s.
From The Radio Vault, a montage of 4KQ jingles from the 90s (I know it says the Late 1980’s in the heading, but it mentions the 90s on many of its jingles).
2SM stopped playing the hit hits in 1988. So did Stereo 10. 3XY ended the rock in 1991.
There was no internet back then so gauging the sadness of the public was difficult.
Suffice to say that none of those stations was rating above a ten and these were the days of fewer commercial licences in each city.
From reading this thread I can see that Brisbane is going to lose something that very special to so many people in Brisbane. 4KQ seems to be an anomaly in regard to capital city radio stations.
4KQ had some fun with its playlist and the slogan “good times” was meaningful.
It seems to me that many of 4KQ’s listeners may not find another frequency, they may listen to the radio less in the future.
I wish we had this kind of “quirky” radio in Sydney. All we have is radio stations that share their music logs with other stations thousands of kilometres away.
I hope Brisbane enjoys the last 24 hours of “real radio”. I suspect the good times are coming to an end and it sounds like the weekends will never be the same.
I reckon you need to give community radio a go. SWR FM offers a reasonably consistent format, and there are probably other shows and stations that you would enjoy. And my show is certainly ‘quirky’ enough for most people’s tastes
A fairly niche milestone passed us by this weekend – 30 years since the launch of 3EE at 7.00am on 3 July 1992.
The station was meant to launch a week earlier but was postponed at the last minute due to technical equipment delays.
The station of course was the relaunch of the former 3XY licence but owner AWA had to basically build 3EE from scratch, including new studios and transmitter in Melbourne.
3EE’s initial format “The Breeze” was a hybrid talk, lifestyle, football and easy listening/jazz music format that was terribly short-lived on the back of abysmal ratings. The debut survey (7/92) scored a mere 0.7 and over the coming months it didn’t get any higher than 1.2 before AWA sold it to Wesgo (which already owned 3MP) in mid-1993.
3MP then shutdown 3EE’s programming and turned the station into a simulcast of 3MP. This was until the ABA instructed 3MP to restore a separate program on 3EE, which ultimately launched as Magic 693 in March 1994, playing music from the '40s, '50s and '60s with AFL broadcasts on weekends.
Eventually, Magic 693 cannibalised 3MP’s audience, to the point that it soon became the dominant of the 2 stations.
Southern Cross Broadcasting then bought 3MP and 3EE, but as it already owned 3AW and 3AK it decided to keep 3AW and 3EE and sell off 3MP and 3AK.
In 2006, 3EE and 3AW swapped frequencies, with 3EE becoming Magic 1278. Then it became Talking Lifestyle and Macquarie Sports Radio before re-instating the Magic brand in 2020.
The original 3XY is definitely before my time as a millennial. So I find it hard to make any connection of 3EE to the former 3XY license given they changed both the call sign and the frequency.
3TT at least maintained 1026 when it relaunched after being 3DB for decades before that.
But 3EE had no call sign or frequency heritage on 693. And now in an additional twist, 693 of course now belongs to 3AW anyway.
