I see them on ebay every so often, takes me back to 1982 
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Thanks for those, and welcome!
I do have fond memories of listening to 3KZ via night skip in Newcastle in the mid 1980s, was a good listen.
Sadly didnât get to hear any of KZFM before it was rebranded as Gpld 104.
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I wonder if 3KZ signed off 1179 with a 3 kHz tone?
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â3KZ is Football!â
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Frankster is currently doing a huge 3XY/Bay FM simulcast feature. Unfortunately he had to do a server cleanout yesterday and so most of it has been erased from the site, but you can hear the latest in the series here:
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Which is a shame, i would like to think adults (like me) would like to explore similar songs to what they know. And I just love hearing a great song that I donât often hear on the radio . But I guess that firmly puts me in the âmusic geekâ camp!
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But are not necessarily music geeks or music lovers.
I know radio stations like to promote their music as âreal music varietyâ etc but they donât really back it up and play the same safe 300 songs every week.
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Thereâs currently a weekend evening program about lesser-known Vietnamese songs and Oldies on VOV Traffic/91fm in my country. They played a wide range of songs from the presentersâ own personal collection and they insisted that âyou canât even find those songs online or even at the cassette storeâ, and it can be ranged from adult standards in the late 1930s to softer AC songs/easy listening in the 1980s, and often there are episodes with specific theme, such as Vietnamese movie soundtrack or foreign songs with Vietnamese lyrics. Reviews of the program are very excellent, some listeners have messaged on Facebook telling how joyful they are when they could finally hear that song on radio after 40 years (!). Some even wonder like âwhere are they now? their singing voice are so excellent, but why they havenât been performing since?â
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Why do you say that?
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How come? Iâm not familiar with whatâs happened to them?
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But what is the problem with the radio stations?
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The same could be said for any station that was once under the ownership of RG Capital & later MRR, most of which are now owned by SCA (and possibly soon by ARN if the merger/acquisition goes ahead).
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ARN to their credit has stuck to their word so far since the Grant takeover and left the stations alone. Compared to what SCA has done around the country with their networking of breakfast this week, Tassie amazingly still has 7 breakfast programs over the 10 licenses. No mainland network programming until 5-6pm on all stations. Local networking only done across neighbouring/overlap license areas Burnie/Devonport or Launceston/Scottsdale.
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The reason for why ARN left the Grant stations alone is because they have a clause in which they have to keep staffing at the same levels on those stations for 2 years after the acquisition. Weâre now coming up to 2 years since the acquisition, so it will be interesting to see on what ARN will do with its regional stations in the new year, regardless of whether its merger/acquisition with SCA goes ahead or not.
Sorry for going a bit off-topic there. 
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Getting back into the topic of commercial radio ownership, particularly in regional markets, Iâve put together a table of markets that lists stations that were at least operated by DMG, RG Capital & Grant Broadcasters back in late 2003, ie. about 20 years ago.
This was only about a year before RG Capital & DMGâs regional stations (except Star 104.5 & Hot 91, the latter soon sold off to another operator) were merged under Macquarie Regional Radioworks (MRR), and also predates Grantâs acquisition of HOFM (now 7HO).
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I do wonder what Nova think back on in terms of how they divested from regional radio, given their competitors have both moved in that direction?
I suppose they got out with likely the maximum value they could have gotten from them - the sale price of those stations to Macquarie would be about $300m in todayâs dollars, while ARN might end up picking up most of those stations via SCA for maybe a quarter of that - given that all of SCA is now only around $200m.
Though for DMG at the time, you wouldnât really have forseen a time where youâd be wanting a deep integration of their metro Nova stations and the kind of content on their regional stations, given how totally different they were in sound and business model.
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Itâs not really the same company though (despite Nova technically being the same company as DMG Radio) given that it was owned by DMGT and sold the regional and metro stations separately. Lachlan wouldnât have been able to purchase the company if it had the regional stations.
DMG were only ever in regional radio to get a foot hold in the Australian market. Their plan from day 1 was to lobby to Government to get more metro licences, which they wanted to buy. Almost amazingly, it worked out for them. Once the metro network was complete they no longer needed the regional stations and wanted to cash out to cover some the considerable cost of acquiring the metro licences.
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Luke Bona is live overnights (from 12am) on Triple M.
But yep, there arenât any 40+ something commercial music stations that are live in the evening.
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i get your point but I donât think it is a fair comparison between the potential for social isolation from automated music radio to the real tragedy of 911.
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Thatâs an outrageously wild comparison.
Besides, almost every station with automation has the ability for someone to go into the studio, turn off the automation and go live at a moments notice.
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