Could you get them reliably with that? Would have been good to have Channel 8 at least, in addition to the Brisbane stations. I recall a lot of people on the Gold Coast used to receive Lismore TV as well.
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Yes on the Gold Coast 8 was a stronger station that Brisbane in many areas.
It was good enough to use to watch TV rather than just DXing. 6/8 from Wide Bay was the biggest issue; even though vertical polarised it would cause some banding when there was troppo.
I also had another antenna that I used for Ch 10 - both Darling Downs and Nambour - there a bigger issue with co-channeling there. Hereâs an example.
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I loved that. I grew up in Maryborough and was still there in '85. Moved to Brisbane in '86. So I remember Sunshine Television very well. Melissa Davis, the newsreader, is a local treasure and a lovely (and funny!) lady. I did work experience at the station. Anyway sorry to hijack the Radio History thread but I enjoyed that.
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Yes that video is so 80âs look at the fashion and the big hair!!!
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I once stayed at the Islander in Surfers Paradise on a family holiday in 1985 and it had excellent reception on 7, 8 and 9. That was before the UHF relays on Mt Tamborine were established. Channel 0 wasnât very good though, donât remember what 2 or 6 were like.
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Reception of O should have been theoretically OK - perhaps they never upgraded their antenna from before O when on air which wasnât uncommon. 7 and 9 suffered the further south you went because of signal degradation and proximity to 6 and 8. O and 2âs signals went a lot further into NSW.
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Was this before or after SBS began transmission in the Gold Coast?
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Another feature of reception along the coast was that because people had high gain antennas pointed north they could get a grainy picture of Channel 10 from Nabour that would be watchable during troppo events. Conversely people in Caloundra would get a passable picture from Lismore on 6 and 8.
Once local UHF came in, they could use the redundant VHF antennas for FM radio.
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Not sure when SBS TV started on the Gold Coast, people generally tended to wait until ABC/commercials started broadcasting before installing a UHF antenna, SBS alone wasnât enough to entice people back then.
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SBS began transmission on the Gold Coast on 18 February 1985 on UHF-61.
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almost, it was 30 June 1985. I thought the ABC and commercial channels were a year or so before then but I may be corrected.
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There is actually a âlong distance televisionâ thread in the TV section of the forum, the only thread from there I occasionally read.
I remember New FMâs rebooted rock format in 2001/2002. As in the 80s they played songs which Triple M ignored. In about 2003 they briefly experimented with a Nova format, with the slogan âSomething Differentâ or similar.
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âSounds Betterâ.
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In the early 90âs when Austereo was in the process of purchasing NX, or had just completed the purchase, New fm ran a very successful blocker.
They had the voice of the late Ray McGregor. From memory they even temporarily used the positioner âBetter Music and More of Itâ New fm Thunders. You would have thought New fm was the Austereo station in Newcastle. NX fm was always Great Rock n Roll.
@RFBurns would be able to fact check this as I only got snippets from dx catches.
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IIRC, NEW FM always had Black Thunders, they may have run a âBetter Music & More Of Itâ positioner, I actually think theyâve used that on & off over the years a number of times, that was kind of from a positioner of 2NX back in the late 70âs early 80âs also when they had the 2NX More Music positioner.
I donât think Austereo purchased NXFM & KOFM until '96?
I donât remember much of NEW FM around the '90âs time period, I was listening to 2NX during their Classic Hits period, then on & off (along with 2KO/KOFM) during their X13/X107 period, & I did work experience & my panel operator training at NXFM late '94 & though '95, which I started just after they became NXFM & moved to the Charlestown Studios, at this point I was mostly listening to NXFM with a bit of KOFM.
I was in the NXFM studio when the shipment of âAlways Great Rock N Rollâ promotional material arrived at the station, & along with other staff, I got an NXFM T-Shirt & piles of stickers (still have the shirt & some stickers), I also went out with Don Dawkins on promotions, handing out stickers to people to put on their cars as the promotion was, if we saw you with a sticker on your car, weâd call out your rego number over the air, get you to pull over & give you promotional material, cold Cokeâs, etc. & a free petrol voucher.
I didnât start listening to NEW FM again until maybe late '98 or '99 or whenever it was after Austereo dropped the NXFM Always Great Rock n Roll positioner & they started to rate again with a new format.
I canât explain why, but I seem to like the stations that donât rate in Newcastle? In the '70âs & '80âs I listened to 2KO & 2NX when they were at the top, but from the '90âs Iâve only really listened to the stations when theyâve been at or near the bottom of the Newcastle ratings? I listened to the first week of NEW FM test transmissions & probably for the rest of "89, early '90, then I moved back to 2NX after they went Classic Hits (logo & format the same as 2UW at the time), from there on my listening has been as I mentioned earlier in this post.
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NEW FM definitely did have the âBetter Music and More Of Itâ positioner around 1992 voiced by Ray McGregor.
And Austereo didnât buy NX and KO until 1996. They gradually softened the music on NX as Austereo told the Newcastle Herald that they thought the music was a bit too âgrungyâ.
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Thanks for clearing that up,
Yes in 1992 New fm sounded very Austereo, I actually think they turned down the rock a bit with the grungy sound of Nxfm. New fm did not sound to difrent to 2day fm who played more rock back then.
I do remember when Austereo took over NX fm, they got rid of the rock and installed a very tight repetitive CHR playlist. They quickly broadened the playlist and got all the top rating Austereo shows. That was the end of New fmâs reign as the #1 station, and when BOG / SRN purchased the station it was the start of the race to the bottom.
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The music landscape in Vietnam is quite different that often I have different feeling with radio too.
Rock was never a mainstream (or if it did, never on par of being mainstream-ish with pop but still have a loyal following) type of Vietnamese music - the only one that is famous throughout the history is âBức TÆ°á»ngâ (The Wall - sounds like a unique name for a rock radio station)
In contrast, easy listening (with songwriters like Trá»nh CĂŽng SÆĄn or NgĂŽ ThỄy MiĂȘn) reigned the mainstream music industry until late 1990s, when 99.9 FM of Saigon launched âLĂ n SĂłng Xanhâ (The Green Wave), a top-40 chart music program, the first of its kind in Vietnam. This resulted in the official entrance of modern pop music into Vietnam, and successfully launching first-generation of pop artists that now would be considered âadult contemporaryâ.
Rock, while itâs not quite big in Vietnam, thereâs still Bức TÆ°á»ng with some great legendary songs.
In radio, VOV-3 used to have an 1-hour mainstream rock program weekly. That was prior to the Xone era. After that VOV-3 was fractioned, with the âactualâ VOV-3 being just the shells of their former self, with a very Classic-FM-ish format, but with strong focus on nostalgia music of 1950s - 70s, but in a rather bland presentationâŠ
âŠand the other side is the hybrid JJJ/early Nova format, Xone FM.
Of course at least there was Quick and Snow on the âactualâ VOV-3. Their show was very popular, akin to Kyle and Jackie O in AUS. But by the end of the 2000s they went into hiatus, then moved to newly-founded Mix-FM-ish 91fm, and VOV-3 became nothing more than a farm for folk/classical purists (other than, of course, Xone, which moved out of VOV-3 in 2018)
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Quite intriguing reading on Vietnamese radio.
Is there much in the way of English language programming or music over there?
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104FM Radio English (from VOV) or VOV5 on shortwave, choose one.
In the heyday of Xone FM you could hear a lot of English during presentation pieces (like promos or jingles - from what I heard before but donât know where to cite, Xone FM was used to be controlled by Malaysian/Australian interests (?)) - but otherwise itâs Vietnamese. The original proportion of music types were: 50% Vietnamese, 40% international (that is, not just English, remember that they used to embrace a lot of Asian CHR hits back then), and the rest is advertising.
Radios in Vietnam do play some English language music at some point of time, but they would always prioritize Vietnamese music. In most cases their choice of playing English language music would akin to something like âHits and Memoriesâ positioning, but yeah, it may depends a lot, as the choice of music are in hands of presenters and/or programming staff, not consultants.
In the case of 91fm, they would occasionally throw in some English music, but yeah, itâs âHits and Memoriesâ, except itâs more Memories than Hits. Take an evening program (âThe Love Connectionâ) as an example: if they do throw English music, chances that you may heard 1970s - 1990s hits. But at some nights they throw recurrents too. Again, this is the presenters or callersâ personal choice, not consultants or computers.
Extra note: VOV-3 do have a program that specifically aired movie soundtracks⊠for kids. Certain programs of VOV-3, especially since the programming reform early this year, do incorporate significant amount of somewhat contemporary English music. The 9:05 - 10AM timeslot everyday is home for an international beautiful music program called âA Green Worldâ
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