Radio History

Was also used on Star fm stations when they were owned by DMG.

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An early SEN 1116 tv commercial I have

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It appears from that commercial that SEN has more employees than listeners.

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Very similar to Macquarie Sports Radio’s tagline, “All Sport. All the Time”.

That version of their logo only lasted several years before they chose to drop the mention of, “Sports Entertainment Network”.

A nice flashback. Interesting to see which announcers have stuck around.


As for the other topic, I find C91.3FM to be one of the most wasted opportunities on Sydney radio. Sounding local is always a popular choice. But sounding different with your music will always attract greater listeners. It’s a lost cause & a real shame that their current music format is simply a mish-mash of all the other Sydney metro stations which can easily be received in C91.3FM’s listening area.

WIN Radio should leave that music format for i98FM and go completely different/niche for C91.3FM.

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I kind of agree with you in that C91.3’s music format is not that much different to the major Sydney stations. In their first few years on-air, they were sounding a bit different musically before it went a bit more towards the CHR/Hot AC path. Between 2008 & 2010, they were even sharing its playlist (& some programming) with i98FM before they thankfully went their separate ways (but still under the same ownership).

That being said, C91.3 does play a more broader variety of music than i98FM, so it’s at least sounding a bit different from its bigger sister station. :slight_smile:

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But i prefer C91.3s approach compared to CADA who have done the opposite and gone niche instead of local.

Campbelltown is too small to be both niche and local with just a 1kw signal.

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Agree, C91.3’s localism is its strength.

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They probably did back in the day! Especially those early days when they didn’t have the AFL coverage yet and had to settle for VFL. (And probably even fewer listeners in Adelaide not much later on when they took over 1323 from 5DN…)

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And the community 2MCR station probably had the “niche” factor sewn up well before C91.3 existed, too.

There’s a question, especially as Camden council booms and the Macarthur region [counting C/town, Camden and Wollondilly council sizes] is now practically the same size as the Wollongong/Shellharbour market in raw numbers (and only going to get larger as they infill all the greenfields all the way up to Bringelly), as to whether even one station is enough - but with so much overlap to Sydney, there’s no room for it to happen and thus 2MCR (or “The Sounds of Macarthur” as they brand it now :roll_eyes:) kinda ends up having to fill that complementary role.

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According to the 2021 Census, the population of the Macarthur region is around 350k, which is bigger than the Illawarra with around 315k (Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama LGAs), and about the same size as the Central Coast, where it has 3 commercial radio stations in the case of the latter, in which the 3rd (Star 104.5) went to air in March 2004.

Whilst on that, at the time when it was issued a 3rd commercial licence, the population of the Central Coast in the 2001 Census was around 285k. The story of the region getting a new commercial station was quite complex.

Here are some media releases from the old ABA via archive dot org:

17th November 2000: ABA suspends allocation of commercial radio licence for Gosford

20th November 2001: High Court finds in ABA’s favour over Gosford radio licence

There was also a push for 2BOB Taree to change their frequency from 104.5 to 104.7 in order for the new commercial station to have the same technical specs as 2GO & Sea FM.

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I do seem to remember a time back in 2006 when SEN Melbourne took the 2GB Continuous Call Team on a Sunday afternoon. It was strange hearing Ray Hadley calling NRL whilst I was on a team heading into the Melbourne CBD one Sunday afternoon. I must have been the only one in Melbourne listening, lol.

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It was rather bland radio when a sports station didn’t have any major sporting rights.

There was a stage when SEN Melbourne were just calling local VFL games.

It was a game changer when they finally got some AFL rights.

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Listening to The Team on the tram, maybe?

An interesting upload from Frankster on among this week’s first uploads for the new year.

This particular one is that of Bay FM Geelong from June 1998 (which was verified by listening to the aircheck). At that time, the station positioned themselves as a “Classic Hits” station, providing the city & its surrounding region a local version of what Gold 104.3 was providing at that time. With sister station K-Rock being pretty much a rock station back then, the two Geelong stations provided a decent alternative to the Melbourne stations, unlike what it has become today, with localism being their only strengths.

By comparison, Bay’s then-sister station in Wollongong, Wave FM, positioned themselves as “The Best Songs Of All Time” at around that same time, in which they played 60s-80s as well as newer AC music thrown in.

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Bay FM sounds pretty good at the moment but K-Rock needs to go back to being a Rock Station.

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And BayFM needs to stop broadcasting sports shows.

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Or K-Rock needs a name change.

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K-Pop :drum:

Asssuming they now can’t use any ARN names, finding a new name could be a challenge.

Fresh95.5 maybe?

At some point in the late 1990s/turn of the millennium Bay FM conducted a two-week long ‘Great Radio Experiment’ where they trialled a bunch of different formats for a day over that period. That preceded a format change to their later format of slightly easier music from all eras - from memory the tagline was ‘More Music and More Variety’.

I believe they implemented this change prior to TTFM becoming Mix 101.1 (which as the latter had a similar format to the ‘new’ Bay FM), as I can’t imagine why they’d opt to shift to a format so similar to one a Melbourne competitor had just adopted.

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