The sad thing is that regional listeners have a choice:
Watch your favourite heritage brand slowly slowly be destroyed with garbage mish mash of music and pre-recorded off brand shoes (like BOG FM… think of how great the NewFM brand once was).
Or rip it off like a bandaid and at least have some semi decent sounding regional radio stations, announcers, production, programming and prizes, but all under a Triple M or Hit brand (like SCA).
Unless you have a Grants station in town, there’s not much else going on in regional Oz.
I’d have to agree with you re. New FM but at least some of the others still sound decent (Zoo FM, Now FM, Max FM, 2ZZZ) and as I mentioned have a fair amount of local programming. Let’s hope Bill leaves B-Rock alone…
Grants have been dumbing down some of their stations too; 2EC now takes Sydney talkback overnight for example.
Or the Capital Radio Network stations for that matter, which has quite decent music formats across its stations, such as the “Forever Classic” stables (2CA, 2GN, 2XL, 3GG, 6iX) & Eagle/Snow.
Look no further than Wave FM as an example, which used to be a fairly decent adult music station, but is now essentially a Top 40 station.
The beauty about the “Forever Classic” stations is that they don’t take talkback at night (only Ray Hadley on 2GN & 2XL on weekday mornings), nor do they air the AFL/NRL on weekends during either code’s seasons.
Sometimes I like to get some prospective and look overseas. I dont travel much but Malaysia my last place, I went abroad, I believe that the radio stations were all branded the same (the English ones anyway). I think they all share the same log too, although I did not really seriously check. Are we just trying to copy overseas? Just in a cost cutting approach. NZ, I believe, dont have many local unique stations as well even back in the early 2000s when I went there last.
Dont get me wrong, I love the concept of having unique stations in every town. However like a lot of corporations, scale and standardisation seems to be the ongoing trend in todays world. No wonder interest rates are low, it seems the corporates are taking more safer low cost options. Growth and Inflation are low. And as pointed out in the other central coast thread, the leaders at SCA put a spin on it to suit this narrative.
Internet based options such as Spotify, podcasts and also iPods/MP3s have taken a lot of listeners away from traditional radio.
Gone are the days when it’s only competition for portable entertainment was the humble cassette tape.
Unfortunately broadcasters have turned to cost cutting eg. networked and automated programming to offset lower ad revenues arising from fewer listeners.
Radio tends to me still better than playlists on google music. FM sounds better too. I dont pay for spotify, I have google play music with Youtube premium bundled. For me with the exception of sport I watch less TV and more Youtube.
I have discovered suburban community radio in the past few years. I do like Triple M night love songs creepy show. The music is a bit more random. There is my go to station during work hours being SWR FM. So for my music fix I find myself listening to radio these days.
The other problem with Spotify is that it’s very hard to search for user curated playlists. You should be able to type in an artist and see what playlists they appear on. At least you can search for compilation albums this way (through the ‘Appears on’ section). Spotify have a very limited number of compilations available, though (no Hitwave '81 and its ilk, etc.)
Playlists created by an actual human being are far superior to the automated crap that Spotify puts out. Of course, it’s trivial to find these playlists.
I find that searching on discogs.com for various compilation CDs (can search by artists) is better for music discovery. I then look up each track on YT and ‘play’ the compilation through my Watch Later playlist. But I’d agree with you all- nothing beats a live DJ who knows their music, but even on community radio these hosts are hard to find.
It must be the segment that airs at 1930 that’s putting @Laoma off.
The two shows I listen to without fail every week are The Mechie Show and Inphase on SWR. There are plenty of other good programmes as well. As a general rule, the better presenters and formats- for my tastes at least- are on air during the afternoons/evenings and on the weekend.
I think more hosts should upload their shows to somewhere like Mixcloud or Archive.org so that people can listen at their leisure. They’d get more exposure this way too. I’d imagine you’d have to get clearance with your station first, and then there are the copyright issues (Mixcloud pays a royalty though). A lot of British DJs upload their shows to Mixcloud.
Spotify and at streaming are too much stuffing around for me, and i don’t have an aux input in my car. I also feel a bit disconnected if I just had Spotify (No news, traffic etc) so FM mainly for me also.
That said I happened to be in Macksville lastnight when the Mechie show was on. Nelson was blasted along the old Pacific. Perhaps @Mechsta you need to get 2BBB to buy a bigger transmitter so the sounds of bellingen can be heard in Sydney
Re the ongoing ridiculous rebranding of everything and sundry to Triple M, I’ll reflect what @RFBurns said above and note that SCA have essentially devalued all their stations. Who ever buys them (carallis will probably end up with them) will need to rebrand and roll out transmission infrastructure. Not good selling points. I won’t rant about it, but imagine how confusing it will be particularly for those newer car radios that create a list of dab and fm stations. Lucky dip I guess.
The challenge is that Caralis already owns stations where SCA currently has radio presence, such as Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Orange, Dubbo & Toowoomba. If Caralis were to acquire some of the SCA stations in the aforementioned regional markets, then he would have to either divest some of them, or that Grants acquire either the SCA or Caralis stations.
