Radio History

Here’s another from earlier from the same uploader:

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I always thought they were based in Ayr when known as 4AY and was also on 936am, but I believe there was a loophole that allowed then to move to Townsville in the mid-late 80s? Which resulted in a frequency change to 891 and a change in callsign to 4RR.

Happy to be corrected.

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4AY had a studio here in Townsville in the mid to late 70s .”Barbecue “ Bob Gallagher,Now on Classic hits 4BH of course,and more recently on 97.3 and 4KQ ,and I think he also worked in Sydney for a while?was on air here back then,
I think they had a name change to 4RR some time in the 80s ,not sure when by then my family and myself had moved to Brisbane.
I remember back in the 70s the frequently was 940 AM

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various stuff from 6NA Narrogin. from some of facebook comments i found, it could be implied that 6NA Narrogin was “sold” from 6KY and was integrated into 6TZ-CI Network, which became GWN Radio after being bought by owners of BTW-3/South West Telecasters (*). 6NA Narrogin was officially integrated into 6TZ-CI Network on 1st October 1976, and judging from this aircheck, 6NA provided many separate programming to 6TZ, while 6CI was/is straight relay of 6TZ.

The “aircheck” part also include cross-promotion to GWN TV, of which the DJ mentioned some transmission problems that caused some transmitters to knock off the air, but were restored by the afternoon, followed by Tonight on TV lineup. GWN TV closes at half past 11 PM on that day, and DJ further “integrate” the relationship between the two by promoting GWN TV viewers after closedown to switch to GWN Radio for programming overnight targeting farmers.

(*) just checked - BTW-3 bought 6TZ-CI in 1974, then bought 6NA in 1975. 6NA was sold to 6IX in 1972, and a year later - to STW9 in 1973, before became a part of 6TZ-CI Network.

GWN Radio was sold in 1988 (the name after sale was unknown). By 1995, when Rural Press merged Southern WA stations into RadioWest Network, 6NA had became completely vanished in all but callsign, with the three station 6TZ-CI-NA was combined to what was known as “RadioWest South West”. Rural Press then sold RadioWest to DMG (as part of the former’s withdrawal from radio business), then to Macquarie Bank (who integrated all of DMG Regional stations to a blanket network known as LocalWorks). It would latterly be swallowed up by Triple M.

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How did “You can’t stop the rock” go against the new 2MMM? I’d imagine this was their last ditch effort as a Top 40 station?

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During 1986, the ratings for the two stations went like this:

Survey2MMM2SM
1/198612.56.5
2/198613.35.7
3/198612.67.0
4/198612.85.8

Then in 1987:

Survey2MMM2SM
1/198711.06.2
2/198712.04.9
3/198713.64.7
4/198712.95.8
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Interesting to read it didn’t get far into Bendigo. As an outsider, I always envisaged it as more aligned to Bendigo, as it studios in the 1980s were on Hargreaves Mall, Bendigo. But if they had to install an FM translator there, it mustn’t been as strong a presence there as I thought.

Years ago though, I used to be able to listen to 1071 east of Bendigo in the Goulburn Valley. It used to come through quite well, maybe not as strong as the local option, 3SR, but it had better music, too. More Top 40/current hits instead of 3SR which was a bit of everything IIRC.

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Happy 92nd birthday today to Brisbane’s oldest commercial radio station 4BC.

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Happy 97th birthday to Queensland’s oldest commercial radio station 4GR. Also began on 16 August. As did 4BC as @TV.Cynic mentioned and QTQ 9 in 1959.

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What do the GR letters stand for, there’s no obvious connection to Toowoomba or the Darling Downs that I can see.

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GR stands for Gold Radio. Edward Gold was the original licence owner.

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A lot of tidbits relating to callsigns etc. can be found in Bruce Carty’s tome, now available for free online:

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Thanks for that. I’d always wondered about 4GR. The closest I could get was GRanite Belt which is a region of the Darling Downs although centred well south of Toowoomba around Stanthorpe. My logic was that other Darling Downs stations were centred in different parts of the region eg. 4AK (oAKey) and 4WK (WarwicK).

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Gold Radio Service remains the licensee company for the station and sister station 4RGD (purchased at auction).

The granddaughter of Edward Gold is Sally Quayle was was the B105 breakfast newsreader when it was at its ratings peak.

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And the 4RGD doesn’t have any naming connection to 4GR even though the same letters are in use… RGD is Reg Grundy Darling Downs ( as RG Capital owned 4GR at the time and they got the FM license for Toowoomba).

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Spot on @Radiohead. Callsigns of RG and a letter for the region was used for RG Capital’s successful auction bids.

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4RGD, now Hit South Queensland, first launched in 2000 as C FM and was affiliated with the Sea FM brand.

YouTube: Toowoomba TV and Radio History

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An aircheck of FM 93.9 Young (later Star FM, now Roccy FM) from 1997-98**, back when it was owned by DMG. This was recorded in Canberra by ‘dxer22000’.

Credit: @dxnerd

** - Whilst it does say 1997, it probably was actually from early-mid 1998, as “The Impression That I Get” by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (heard on that above aircheck) was a hit single at that time.

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How was it that Toowoomba got a commercial station years before Brisbane?

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Love this, are there any more from the regional DMG’s around this time pre StarFm?

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