Some more on the Coast Rock FM test transmissions… I didn’t hear it at the time, but 99.7 caused havoc with TV reception too.
(from the ‘Central Coast Express Advocate’ 31 August 1990).
And also from the ‘Central Coast Express Advocate’ 5 Sep 1990, an article on the newly competitive nature of Central Coast commercial radio.
Following on from this discussion of it being 30 years since EJ Whitten’s final lap
Peter Le Grand, former commentator with K-Rock Football, shared this audio of K-Rock’s coverage of that moment. EJ had been a mainstay of the 3GL/K-Rock Football team for many years and was well known and regarded by the team and the audience, making it quite an emotional moment for them to cover.
https://x.com/legrandracing/status/1934868875138789665?t=kI-JqciRydSa8Rn3wSMOgA&s=19
Australian radio dial with call letters - surprised to see this in Superman Returns that was apparently mostly filmed in Sydney. Still unusual for the US Midwest!
It looks to be that hard to read that I’d doubt the Yanks would have noticed!
But it did make me think that kind of dial wouldn’t have worked in the US with the larger number of stations and 4 letter callsigns they have.
Wow, CKAC on the dial? That’s a Montreal station I believe?
News reports on the opening of QFM
FM 104 TV Advert
Both Videos played ok for me???
the privacy marking has probably since been removed
Apologies, video privacy fixed now.
They were big on newspaper/print ads back then… I’ve also saved an 8 page supplement (!) on the move to 801 that i haven’t posted yet.. if that’s not overkill, I don’t know what is!
Wow..you have knocked my socks off. 8 pages!
That must be some kind of record for a radio broadcaster anywhere globally re newspaper advertising. 
Yeah I know! I’ll post it when i get home then!
Flashback to 1985, when 3KZ had news on the hour at 1.00am on a Sunday morning! Mid-dawn announcer Peter Roberts doubled as newsreader.
YouTube: kazelot44
Airdate: 6 October 1985
Here’s a set of jingles from 2SM in 1982 - 1983, when the station was “The Power”. I love the Australian sound of the jingles, they almost sound like they were sung by a band in a Sydney pub on a Friday night.
In the last decade, most of the planet’s CHR-style stations sound like either KIIS in Los Angeles or Capital in London. It’s easy to forget that radio used to sound much more local. Even the big city stations were not always clones of Capital Radio.
Was The Power 2SM’s last ditch effort up against 2MMM?
In 1982 MMM and 2SM were both rating around an 8 share (in survey 2 and 3 the ratings for both stations were between 8.1% and 8.3%). It was 2UW that was winning the survey with shares around 13%. In late 1983 2SM adopted the “Rock of the 80s” format.
Survey 1 in 1984 saw 2SM rate 9.1 and MMM was on a 10.8% share. In Survey 4 1984 Triple M reached 13.5% for their first survey win whilst 2SM was still a respectable 10.1% share.
Wow. So roughly how long/how many years did 2SM manage to put up a strong fight against FM until the AM music demise? Was it around the late 80’s when SM started to decline? And was it a rapid decline?
Was it caused by listeners wanting FM? Or by poor programming decisions to counter-program against FM stereo?
