Because Sydney is full of hot air. Sadly we’ve not risen enough so that we literally fly off the ground and into the stratosphere. 
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Does anyone have a favourite past or present radio station foyer?
2UE in the late 80s had a silver reception desk and a wall behind it that was covered with a massive picture (15 metres or so) of the city skyline. This was at their North Sydney headquarters.
The 2SM foyer in Milsons Point was always a stunner. Glass doors led you into an area with a lift and staircase and a multi-level logo. In the 80s it was changed between the denim zipper, More Music, The Power and the Rock of the 80s logos.
The current 2SM foyer in Pyrmont is underwhelming. Almost embarrassing.
I guess in 2018 most RSL Clubs would have a more impressive foyer than the city’s radio stations. It say a lot about the increasing worth of poker machines compared to radio station licences in the 21st century.
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Isn’t that the ugly 80’s wood style one?
I had a peek a year ago. It had a 2SM sticker peeling off the wall…that was about the extent of the branding.
The only one I went into was the 2NM/Power FM foyer - if you could call it that.
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Interesting read. One thing I’ve noticed and I’m happy to be corrected but it really seems to me there is just fewer new songs around nowadays. Certainly they don’t seem to cycle new music through as fast as they used to up until the 90s anyway. In the 70s and 80s there seemed to be a constant stream of new entries to the charts every week. It was relentless. But now certain songs just stay in the “most played” lists for months and months. Look at Ed Sheeran tracks like Perfect. STILL in the top 5 most played songs after months and months. Nothing new seems to come through to bump songs like these off. At least not quickly anyway. Am I wrong?
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That’s because the charts are so heavily influenced by streaming rather than sales of new music.
The charts weren’t influenced by the amount of times you listened to recording in the past.
Impossible to compare charts from the past to the shonky ones we have today.
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Quality has also gone downhill fast.
I don’t think there will be many songs from the 10s that will be fondly remembered as Classic Hits in the 2030/40s in the same way we do now with 1970/80s music.
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I completely agree. In the 10s there seem to be half a dozen or so stand out songs each year and that’s it. Pick any year in the 80s and there are just dozens of instantly recognizable classic hits.
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Also due to the musicians having long term careers, enduring talents. So many one hit wonders and flashes in the pan since the 90’s.
Look at the deterioration in Australian music heard on radio. Until the early/mid 90’s, the venues existed to support live music of varying crowd size and talent.
This flowed onto radio with household names, recognisable acts still remembered today.
Since that time, record labels tried to cultivate their own talent, unsuccessful, now most of our quota filler comes from TV reality shows (not talent shows, total lack thereof).
Yes, there are very successful alternative talent and in dance and hip hop heard on JJJ and played overseas to niche audiences, but nothing on the level of INXS, Men at Work etc.
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Gang of Youths and Vance Joy have gone global.
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5 Seconds of Summer
Youngblood is number 5 in the UK Top 40 and number 23 in the US Billboard 100.
Their third album was the third to debut at number one in America.
Top 10 or top 40 across Europe.
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There was plenty of one hit wonders before the 1990s. There will continue to be one hit wonders. I’d argue there’s less One Hit Wonders than ever now given everyone’s discography is so easily accessible.
There might have been one hit wonders before the 90s but it was usual for artists to be signed to labels for 3 albums, so it gave artists a chance to continue to a second and third album even if their first one was a flop. A lot - and I mean a lot - of the superstars of the 60s through to the 90s would never make it today because this doesn’t happen anymore. Unless they are an instant hit they don’t get a second or third chance.
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2SM on Jones Bay Rd does have RSL like carpet and all up the walls.
Now is there a missing post on the music discussion about the state of music today and some comment about how radio is missing many new artists? Where is that comment?
I took delivery of an XHDATA D-808 portable today.
Initial tests yielded relatively poor FM performance when using the default (short) whip antenna. My Tecsun PL-390 easily outshone it; for example, 88.0 MHz Nimmitabel was clearly received on the 390 while the XHDATA got nothing! Upon performing an antenna transplant using the 1 m whip previously attached to the Tecsun, reception markedly improved. The performance was now roughly equal to a Sangean PR-D15 on FM. RDS from Canberra stations Hit 104.7, Mix 106.3, and 2XX was obtained and there was a good period of aircraft scatter from 107.1 and 107.9 Coonabarabran.
I briefly tried AM; performance was good with notably low noise reception, resulting in clean crisp audio despite the small speaker size.
The XHDATA suffers from processor noise on some FM frequencies which can mask weaker signals. Overall, it’s a handy performer considering its compact size, RDS capability, and rotary tuning (100 kHz steps). I give it 3.5/5.
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Just wondering has anyone got one of these?
Can you actually listen to am radio? I am not sure of the aerial arrangements to be portable enough to carry in laptop bag, I do have a DAB radio USB stick.
It has a range of 25MHz (25,000KHz) to 1.7GHz.
AM Radio is between 500-1700KHz.
I would imagine that it can tune into frequencies between 25MHz and 1.7GHz and interpret them as AM signals, but the stick can’t tune into the “medium wave” AM that most broadcasters use. You might be able to pick up shortwave radio broadcasts at the top of the shortwave band (the SW band is 2.3MHz - 26.1MHz).
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