Radio History

4BC has them on their AM broadcast but not DAB

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2GB still uses them. I have to say Iā€™m surprised that they are still around.

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As @TV.Cynic noted they would send the pips out only on analogue.

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A more detailed article about the 100 years of ABC Radio Sydney.

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Although:

Note: this site currently relies on your deviceā€™s clock and may not necessarily be correct.

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Capital Radio uses one pip at TOH which sounds weird if you ask me.

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Listened to a few stations, and ABC Radio National, ABC Melbourne and 3AW are the only stations left with the time pips, but only over AM. Previously, the other commercial AM stations also had time pips, but only over AM.

Also, any station relaying the BBC World Service, whether AM, FM, DAB+ or over the net includes the BBC time pips, albeit slightly delayed.

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Pipā€™s of course were the radio equivalent of the 1pm cannon blast from the days of yore to set your clock by. Radio automation still has its TOH pulse which is in most automation clocks to reset the server time as any discrepancy will turn into dead air.

What I really miss is the interval signals on shortwave - they were more listenable than most of the program content.

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BBC World Service still has these.

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Time pipā€™s were never really necessary on shortwave anyway because you could just tune to 5/10/15Mhz and get WWV or even VNG from Lyndhurst Vic in the good old days.

Even some of the numbers stations like the Lincolnshire Poacher had more interesting content than the government or religious shortwave stations.

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The clock synchronisation must not work very well as its not uncommon to hear the start or end of the personalised ads that they insert. 2GB is usually pretty good but SmoothFM is dreadful for it. I sware most of the time itā€™s due to clocks drifting. You sync a automation server every 5 minutes without much effect so there really no excuse for it when the fix is so simple.

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With the dumbing down of our broadcasting workforce itā€™s no surprise there would be people programming radio automation who didnā€™t know what time sync or TOH pulses did.

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This isnā€™t a history about any radio station in particular,I sometimes miss the days of radio ,any commercial music station ,when there was a real live person behind a microphone actually live,24/7.A concept unheard of these daysšŸ˜•
Maybe Iā€™m just missing the good old days from when I was younger

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I fear for the future of radio. I love commercial radio with live DJs but I am finding myself more often playing spotify in the car rather than radio. In Melbourne the only music stations I listen to now are 3MP and Magic, althoough Magic is still quite bland and has too many boring 60s songs for my liking. The FM stations have too much inane chatter and fake laughter which I find unbearable to listen to.

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Especially the eastern block stations like Radio Peace and Progress :smile: or Radio Moscow or R Peking.

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The radio I owned had a BFO in it so I could tune SSB and listen to the coast radio marine traffic lists or Honolulu flight service talking to all the cross Pacific flights when the shortwave programming was too boring or stupid.

The good old days were only good afterwards.

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How about smooth? Not much talking there.

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I did use that but mainly to improve reception on normal stations.

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Yes I must say the music on Smooth is quite good. I just canā€™t stand the name of the station.

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