Random Radio

Goo to hear - just the commercials?

Only the commercials as SBSFM, JJJ & ABCFM do not have RDS operational from any site in Adelaide.

5MBS is licenced only for the Adelaide Foothills licence area, pop’n 667 093 & 506.1 km2 cf 1 158 187 & 5842 km2. It has no RDS.

I think Blair Sullivan is a disgraceful editor for Radio Today. I know he blocks comments to support the whims and wishes of his owners and the stations they receive money from for job ads.

The model is a conflicted one, taking money from the stations they should be writing about is always going to be a point of conflict.

Blair has blocked more comments being published than any previous editor. That said, he might receive more pressure from the owners than previous editors.

nickatnights is correct, ‘sites like Mumbrella publish lots of posts - most of them are really interesting takes on a story.
If RT does not want input from readers then they will lose readers in the longer term.’

Mumbrella has lots of freewheeling debate and most of it is respectful. When comments are allowed by RT, often there are numerous dribble quality comments of inside jokes that carry on for 5 - 15 comments and add nothing to the story, yet they are published.

Many in regional commercial radio, community radio in general and national broadcasters also find it difficult for Radio Today to publish news that they submit. They claim (and rightly so) a bias towards the metro, under 40 commercial stations and networks.

I hope Blair comes on here to defend himself and understand the constructive criticism but it seems from his online presence that he does not wish to engage.

I think we should have a discussion thread here, ‘mediawatch for media industry publications’. Keep the bastards (or otherwise) honest!

It’s the one great thing about mediaspy - the posts are instantaneous and (usually) on the mark.

If a radio station needs a bagging then this is the place!

In fact mediaspy is a good place to judge how a station is going in the market.

The Internet (and sites like mumbrella and mediaspy) gives a voice to the average punter. Radio Today gives a voice to a select few. Radio Today is a boring website.

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A response to a post in the Wollongong Radio thread:

Interestingly, 2GO and Sea FM on the Central Coast often air radio promos for Southern Cross Ten and no other TV stations (from my observations anyway) despite the fact that most of the region can’t receive SC10. On the flipside, I’m sure I remember hearing KOFM Newcastle air radio promos for Seven News Sydney and other programs on Prime7 in the past.

Of course here in Sydney, it’s generally a mix of radio promos from Seven, Nine (news promos for both Seven and Nine’s 6pm bulletins are often run on high rotation during drivetime radio in Sydney!) and Ten although I have heard the occasional radio promo for SBS World News on 2GB of all stations.

In any case, I’m a bit intrigued as to how the radio networks get their TV station promos delivered. Presumably in the case of general program promos they’re delivered to the radio networks in the same way that any other externally produced advertising would be, but what about the news promos? Do the radio networks receive promos for the news bulletins in a different way?

NBN put theirs on Soundcloud, don’t know if radio receives that way though.

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I’m not quite sure which thread to post this in, so I’ll leave it here for now.

Bay FM in the Nelson Bay/Port Stephens region of NSW (is it supposed to be a commercial, community or narrowcast station?) is moving from 99.3 to 88.0 from next Friday:

In areas where there was VHF TX channels 2 / 3 / 4 the ACMA (Dotc, SMA, ACA etc) would license frequencies above 96 MHz for narrowcasters, this was due to the vision carrier of say NBN-3, would have been 86 odd MHz (and a video carrier is 7 MHz bandwidth) this is also the reason for the shift to UHF in a lot of markets to make way for FM broadcasting.

I think the push is on to move them back to 87.6 - 88.0… same thing happened in Townsville.

I alway thought BAYFM was a community station, it was the first radio station in Port Stephens, long before the Newcastle stations got translators & Port Stephens FM came a long.

According to ACMA though it’s a narrowcast station, funny thing is too, ACMA have their other licence frequency at Nelson Bay (where 99.3 is) as 87.6MHz, 88.0MHz is owned by another guy who has lots of narrowcast licences.

BayFM does have a narrowcast licence on 88.0MHz, but that’s located at Tea Gardens.

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With news in the “Southern Cross Austereo (Regional)” thread that 2GO & Sea FM on the Central Coast are now streaming again (Star 104.5 switch theirs back on in October), that now means pretty much every commercial radio station in Sydney, Central Coast & Illawarra are now streaming again…except for C91.3 in Campbelltown, which hasn’t switched theirs back on yet. Not only that, C91.3 is also the only commercial FM station in the Sydney/Central Coast/Illawarra region not to be using RDS.

On a related note, with the “reach rule” set to be scrapped by the Turnbull Government, there’s also the possibility that WIN would have to sell off C91.3 under ACMA’s Media Diversity (aka “Number of Voices”) rule, as the Campbelltown radio licence area presently has 4 media voices (WIN, Seven, Nine & Ten), which is the required minimum for a regional commercial radio licence area, which Campbelltown is classed as. If WIN merges or gets taken over by Nine or Ten, then Campbelltown would be down to just 3 media voices, putting it below the required minimum, triggering a sell-off of C91.3 to another owner, eg. Grant Broadcasters.

As for WIN’s current ownership of i98 after a proposed merger with Nine or Ten, it won’t have to be sold off if they want to keep it, as the Wollongong commercial radio market would still meet the required minimum number of media voices, even after the merger.

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Based on what I understand of the Associated Newspaper Register, the Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald also count as voices in the Campbelltown RA1 license area.
I believe this is because more than 30% of the Campbelltown RA1 license overlaps with the Sydney RA1 license area (86.31% to be precise).

If you want to know why so many people are laughing at Radio Today - here’s a good example:

Seriously. What. The. Feck.

Mark HD - I just ate two magic mushrooms and read the Radio Today article. It made perfect sense.

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From their latest - Is it Magic Monday?

Could have sworn that Magic moved to 1278 in Melbourne recently.
No, make that ten years ago this March.

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that’s a Blair classic that one.

According to a Facebook page, looks like that Pirate on 99.4 in Wollongong got raided by ACMA & the equipment confiscated.

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A power outage at SCA in Melbourne has taken out Fox, Triple M and all the SCA DAB+ stations.

Not 100% sure about the DAB+ stations in other states, but I suspect these will be down since they are played out from Melbourne - maybe with the exception of Kinderling which is played out privately, depending on how it is routed in the DAB multiplexes.

It will be interesting to see what happens if they’re still off at 4 when Hamish and Andy are due to start.

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2DayFM, Triple M and Kinderling are still running on DAB+ (and FM for the former two) but the others are down, as far as I can tell.

[quote=“webguy, post:51, topic:263”]
It will be interesting to see what happens if they’re still off at 4 when Hamish and Andy are due to start.
[/quote]Tim Lee on 2DayFM a few minutes ago
"they’re nowhere to be seen. Please come up to World Square, you’re on in minutes"