Yes, made worse because, though close they were not in the same market so that 4WK was a fringe station in Toowoomba an not well received anyway and vice versa. BTW at a similar time in 1975, 4AK that had been on 1220 kHz was “forced” to move frequency to 1240 because 3EA started in Melbourne and it was interfering with the Melbourne signal (at night).
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That can’t be right.
3EA started out on 1120 KHz in 1975, moving to 1116 in November 1978, and didn’t move to 1224 KHz until 1980, though test transmissions may have begun on that frequency a bit before then.
3ZZ did go on the air on 1220 KHz from 1975 until it was closed down in mid 1977.
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Thanks for the clarification - 4AK announced that they had to move because of the start of a government station in Melbourne.
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tbf while 3ZZ (ABC) and 3EA were from different broadcasters, there was a lot of similarities between them as they were both government broadcasters, and their focus on “ethnic” or multicultural programming (although 2EA/3EA were launched with the intention of providing information to multicultural communities on the new Medibank scheme, and they didn’t formally become part of SBS until 1978), and they both launched within about a month of each other, so it’s probably easy to confuse them 
which is correct, it was 3ZZ (ABC)
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Before launching in November 1978 on 1224kHz, what frequency was originally allocated to 2WS or used during test transmissions. Did it ever perform test transmissions before 9kHz spacing was introduced.
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Why didn’t Australia or some other countries use the Copenhagen Frequency Plan of 1948 before the Geneva Plan of 1975.
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From what I’ve read, only European countries and Tunisia took part, and it only applied to stations in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/the_copenhagen_frequency_plan_of_1948.html
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I can’t say for certain, but I seriously doubt that they were ever assigned another frequency, nor did test broadcasts on another frequency, given the day they started broadcasting on 1224KHz was the same day everyone in Australia changed from 10KHz to 9KHz spacing.
Retuning the frequency of an AM transmitter (especially back then) wasn’t a simple or 10 minute job, that’s mostly why most stations, didn’t move far on the dial, the set transmitter frequency (done during initial build) & the antenna tuning, would’ve been close enough only moving a few KHz until they could retune it properly.
Having known they wouldn’t be starting on air until the 9KHz spacing came into affect, they would’ve built the transmitters & transmitter site tuned to 1224KHz, then had an agreement/licence allowance to test broadcast on that frequency, being offset to every other station at the time.
I don’t know, but they probably actually planned & chose that start day, specifically so they wouldn’t have to do any retuning of things?
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When 4IP was moving from their 2kW transmitter new Ipswich to their new 5kw St Helena Island site, they moved down the dial slightly off 1010 kHz for a period to allow testing of the new transmitter. They moved back to 1010 on the day of the change over.
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How far is slightly, & why, if it wasn’t far enough away in frequency they couldn’t be both on at the same time as they’d cause interference with each other, so then why would you do that? You wouldn’t be able to test & take measurements to prove everything’s good if you’re off frequency to what you will be using normally.
When did they move sites? I’m just trying to think was 4IP & 4KQ together at St Helena Island from the start or did one of them come later? I know when 4KQ left the island, but can’t remember when they both arrived on the island?
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I’m glad the 9 khz spacing change occurred.
Radio in the 80s would have felt a bit boring if every frequency ended in a 0, and i think the jingles wouldn’t have sounded as good eg. 1224 2WS or 1341 2NX.
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AFAIK the year was 1975 and both 4IP and 4KQ started from St Helena at roughly the same time - it was designed for both stations and approval was given for both to move at the same time. The signal carrying the 4IP program was the one that moved. I don’t know how far, lacking a digital tuner, but it seemed like just 10kHz. The new transmitter would have been testing on 1010.
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Name of radio formats tend to have different interpretation in AU vs US.
In this case, 3MP is more of “Soft AC” (in U.S. meaning) rather than “easy listening”… or am I forgot something?
Smooth FM of today seems to be resemble KOST 103.5 Los Angeles (at least for me).
Nova today is Hot AC - newer hits but not so new.
Or maybe I’m wrong?
“Classic hits” also, when it was actually oldies (U.S. radio didn’t use that term until 2000s)
Also, it’s surprising to see that 6KY used to be easy listening back then. Since when did they do that? The only thing I’m really sure is that they must be drifted more contemporary (AC) once it moved to FM.
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Different ad but from the same era, just as AM Stereo was starting and before 3XY switched to its modern HOT HITS logo.
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ABC Olympic Radio ad 1988 with the 141 stations listed
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“Vintage” radio seen on Boy Swallow Universe had one band that went from 54 - 108 MHz labelled on the lower half as TV1 that could potentially receive channels 1 and 2. then the FM band could receive 3, 4 and 5. Then another band that went from 108 to 176, the lower half was labelled AIR and the upper half Police Band so it would have been AM. Plus it could receive CB radio.
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An ad for Triple M Sydney just a week or so after it launched.
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