Audio quality is compressed in streamable.
However the NT stations have adapted it weirdly. Territory FM is still using the previous Nine News theme as they have for years during live updates and now Macquarie’s
Grant Broadcaster stations in NT have adapted the current Nine News theme.
No one using the 10 News First Darwin theme? 
What’s their theme? The General Manager screaming “F*** Channel 9!” over and over?
Speaking of 10 Darwin, their channel hasn’t had audio for the past hour.
Is it an improvement?
My chances of suffering from deaf and blindness decrease when the 10 Darwin ads come on, so it’s a massive improvement.
Who owns 10 Darwin? That is borderline community television.
Their website still has a mishmash of current and previous 10 logos.
As it’s a two station market, the third licence is a JV of the two licensees, SCA with 7 (TND, the second licence, a legacy of the TNQ era) and Nine with 9 (the original licence, NTD from the 70’s).
So I did spend a bit of time parked at Sutton’s today (where I did have a pie, as one must in that part of the world) and while there was no digital radio the Brisbane FMs were there at a clear enough level. All the Mt Nardi services were in too, including a very clear ZZZ on 100.9, as were the Mt Dowe nationals
Something needs to be done about the spurs from the Stanthorpe TX site on Mt Marlay though, I had spurs not only clear enough to be audible on 95.5, 96.3 and 104.3, but strong enough to give me full RDS reception as well! It appeared Hit 97.9, and to a lesser extent the newer 4GR relay on 100.3, were the main culprits. Destroys the entire dial within the township there
Speaking of which…
This reminds me of a similar situation during Black Saturday bushfires in February 2009 when several Melbourne radio stations pulled certain songs from airplay, including Jessica Mauboy’s Burn which only topped the ARIA singles chart three weeks earlier.
I made a blunder and a half whilst on air at Hawkesbury Radio during the 2001 Christmas Bushfires. I foolishly played Relight My Fire by Take That featuring Lulu. Realising what I had done given I had given a bushfire update 5 minutes earlier, I faded the song down and threw on another song I had cued up in the CD player. Never did that again.
At least you realised your mistake. I still can’t believe someone at 2EAR played ‘Everything’s On Fire’ by Hunters and Collectors about a month ago. In fairness, that was before the conflagration down there, but still not on given that other areas were affected including nearby Braidwood.
There was a long list of songs that Clear Channel in the US banned in the wake of the 9/11 attacks:
I know this is going to be controversial for some, but I’m gunna say it anyway, sorry I’ve gotta rant.
This is where radio falls into a hole of believing everybody feels this way, mostly because of all the noise on social media.
Yes the fires are devastating & I feel very sorry for those who have lost some or everything, or their lives, but I haven’t been affected directly, & I’ve got my own problems in life to deal with, so do I get upset when I here a song about burning or fire, No I Don’t.
It’s just more of the Political Correctness bull dust we’ve been dealing with for the past few years.
Social Media has done this to society, that everyone (well not everyone), is, or has to be involved in everyone else lives, & most people on social media seem to post everything they do, thinking everyone is interested in them eating toast or having a crap before going to work.
It’s just like the Michael Jackson issues a few months ago, when some stations stopped playing MJ songs because some people couldn’t deal with the allegations about him being a pedophile, & can’t seperate the man from the music. All for them to bring the MJ songs back to air a few weeks later & now it’s like it never happened.
Smooth FM was one of those & I chose not to listen to them until the MJ songs returned.
It’s not the radio programmers place to censor what I listen to because some can’t deal with it, your job is to entertain me, if I don’t like what your doing I’ll censor my own life & tune to another station.
I’ve heard a number of stations still playing burn or fire songs, so those minority stations (though SCA isn’t a minority) might lose out?
Also they say they’re doing it out of respect for those who have lost, but those people/communities are still the minority of Australia, what respect do the rest of us get for moving on with our lives the best we can with our own problems, which could be family members addicted to drugs, or having depression & wanting to commit suicide?
It’s more of the Me Too thing, where people have to join the band wagon thinking they must feel sorry & bad, otherwise you might be seen as having a mental problem & not being sympathetic, whereas in reality it’s the opposite, if you feel bad about every bad or unhappy piece of news you hear, you do have a mental problem & are heading for deep depression, you can’t take other peoples problems & everything bad to heart, it’s not healthy & generally doesn’t help the other people, & it certainly won’t help you in the long run.
Give money or other items or volunteer to physically help people who are down on their luck, but the token gestures are only self indulgent.
I tend to agree. It’s outrage for the sake of outrage.
You can definitely get a bit too precious and PC with current affairs but the scale of this disaster is massive and has implications for the whole nation (if you’re not a denialist). Therefore a little sensitivity is warranted on this occasion, imo.
At the very least, people in Newcastle and Sydney have had to deal with ongoing toxic air quality, so the direct impact on those outside the firegrounds isn’t zero. The impacts on economic activity are also fairly significant; some roads have been closed for months and the railway over the Blue Mountains won’t open for weeks yet. But this isn’t the thread for this discussion.
I agree with the charge of tokenism but I suppose there’s not much to be done about that. Tokenism is the language of global politics after all.
Well said guys. @RFBurns I agree with your post. Its the era we live in now. Interesting how its evolved the world. I wonder what the world will be like in 30 years.
Has anyone listened to the tourist radio (usually around 88.0FM)?
I’ve only seen it occasionally in NSW but haven’t bothered to listen in to it.
What is the content like?
The vast majority of the tourist info LPONs have gone; their heyday was in the 90s, pre Internet. Nowadays most folk rely on their smartphones for tourist information, perhaps using a tourist information office to book activities.
There are a few stations still on air such as in the Shoalhaven and Southern Highlands. I think Western Visitor Radio (Dubbo, Parkes) is also still going.
The content on most stations was just short information pieces on various tourist attractions in a continuous loop.
The signs are still there on entry to many towns (a relic from decades gone by no doubt), but when you tune in the frequencies have often been hijacked by religious nutters or the like and you soon tune out again. In some places the blue highway signs actually direct you to tune into the local community station (the sign entering Narrandera sends you to 91.1 for instance) which is a nice touch although not strictly adhering to the ‘tourist radio’ brief
Following the Spirit (if not the letter) of the law.
Something intriguing I’ve found whilst reading the consultation paper for the AM-FM conversion of 2ST Nowra, which you can read here.
The paper also made mention on page 9 that ACMA has received a request for a 3rd commercial station for the Nowra RA1 licence area, which would most likely transmit from Cambewarra Mountain (as per 2ST’s proposed main FM service), with a translator at Ulladulla & possibly Kiama. If it’s to go ahead, it will be allocated by a price-based allocation, so we could see the likes of SCA, BOG or WIN expand into the Shoalhaven region.
It would be an ironic situation to see the Shoalhaven having more commercial stations serving the region than the higher-populated Illawarra region, which will be stuck with just 2 (barring overspill/overlap of 2ST & Power FM) that compete with one another.