13 posts were merged into an existing topic: Shortwave. HF Radio. High Frequency
i’m currently down the gold coast and have been listening to juice 107.3.
for a community licenced station, they do an even worse job than 96.5 Brisbane serving the Christian market.
I’ve often complained about 96.5 sounding commercial and not serving the Christian market, but Juice is worse. they play a limited amount of Contemporary Christian music and limtied other shows (such as preaching)
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@Rossco here’s the Brenno funeral link (if not found already):
His son, Peter is speaking at time of posting, voice is a chip off the old block, down to the eye glance over the glasses.
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… of course it’s actually illegal to use an open narrowcast licence to broadcast a commercial radio service, so I asked the ACMA what the story was … this is their response …
ACE Radio Broadcasters Pty Ltd (ACE Radio) acquired a number of licences in the Deniliquin area in 2017. As part of that acquisition ACE Radio identified that the planned Moama HPON service on 92.5 MHz was not operating and that the frequency planned for that HPON service (92.5 MHz) was being utilised to transmit the 2MOR commercial radio service to Echuca. ACE Radio self-reported the non-compliance of the use of the HPON licence and requested that the ACMA exercise regulatory forbearance while the matter was resolved. The ACMA agreed to this request. Subsequently, ACE radio proposed a number of changes to the technical specifications for its two commercial radio broadcasting services, 2MOR and 2QN, in the Deniliquin RA1 licence area. The ACMA has been considering these requests and intends to publicly consult on the proposal to vary the Licence Area Plan – Deniliquin Radio (Deniliquin LAP) in the second quarter of this year. This LAP variation proposal will, among other matters, address the use of the 92.5 MHz frequency in Echuca/Moama.
In addition, in March 2020 the ACMA received a request from ACE radio proposing to use the existing Deniliquin HPON technical specification on 106.1 MHz to retransmit the 2QN service in Deniliquin and asking for regulatory forbearance, to improve the quality and reliability of its service during COVID-19 pandemic. The ACMA agreed to temporarily exercise regulatory forbearance in this matter during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So I’ve discovered a new phrase … if you’re a member of CRA and you want to do something illegal, you just tip the wink to the ACMA and they’ll give you “regulatory forbearance” for years on end …
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Thought this might have been the case, appreciate you taking the effort to follow up!
ACE Radio identified that the planned Moama HPON service on 92.5 MHz was not operating and that the frequency planned for that HPON service (92.5 MHz) was being utilised to transmit the 2MOR commercial radio service to Echuca
Sounds as though they’re blaming this on the former owners (but are seemingly more than happy to continue with the status quo)
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… my pleasure entirely … I get a perverse buzz asking ticklish questions of pencil-pushers 
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Isn’t “resolving the matter” simply stopping doing that? Just stop feeding the commercial service to the HPON - not doing something isn’t something that needs 4 years of “forbearance”
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ARN are now using neuroscience to show how the brains of their audience are affected by radio (and advertisements, of course). The research apparently shows that radio provides “60% more neural engagement than other audio formats”.
That’s not my experience when listening to ARN stations 
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106.1 was the old KIX Country station. I would think there would be a lot of peeved people in Deni about the above. I knew lots who used to listen to KIX Country.
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And that Deni is the home of the annual Ute muster too!
Synonymous with country music.
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Sounds a little like 4MMM in Brisbane being relayed via a mining site FM translator in central Queensland against the rules, right under ACMA’s nose…
ACMA attributed it to an “administrative error” and that it is actually 4RGK being re-transmitted at the site, not 4MMM. But it’s still essentially an out-of-area service as the retransmission is outside of 4RGK’s licenced coverage area.
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Gee the ACMA seem like an inconsistent and ineffective bunch. They always seem to bend to the industry and give little regard to the community they are supposed to serve.
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It seems like radio advertising promotions are becoming more frequent - at least on the stations I listen to. Has anyone else noticed this?
I’m referring to the ones where a normal ad starts, then the audio ducks and a voiceover explains that ‘this business was able to harness the power and flexibility of radio. For more information, contact this station’ (or something similar).
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Hi,
With Syndication of shows on Country Radio Station (Ie Neil Mitchell on Gold Central Victoria and 2QN Etc).
Is there a person at 3aw or the syndicated show give notification to the Station taking to show in a separate feed advise of going to the break and/or for news(although I think that is more specific timing)?
or is there a rundown sheet of the show sent to the station and the Stations that picking are ready for the ads?
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To answer the question of how Radio Syndication is done, when you purchase access to the program (if outside the originating network), you will be told start & finish times of program, how many minutes of ads there are to be scheduled in an hour & times of the hour they are scheduled to be.
News Syndication you are told of start time, usually Top of Hour for live feed, generally 10 minutes to the hour for pre-recorded feed, how long the news report goes for, timing for sport intro, & length of time for sport/news finish time.
To simplify it, the receiving station loads their automation system with all the ads & any station ID’s/promo’s etc. they want to run in the hour, & then set the automation software to receive & action specific DTMF tones sent by the master station, to fire off the said ad etc.
The master station’s playout software will be programmed to generate these tones with the certain press of a button or at a particular point in the playout of the program log.
If the program is live, when the Jock clicks on their log to play an ad, it will fire off the ad locally & send the tone over the Satellite or fibre link to the network stations picking up the syndicated program, & their local playout automation will read this tone play the local ads previously inserted, an ad break will be of a pre-told length so the local automation will play the required number of spots to fill this time, then will stop down & wait until it receives the next tone to play something else.
Music can also be programmed the same way, so a network station could play different songs to what the originating station is playing as long as they go for the same time length, which will also be predetermined for example a 2 or 3 song block that goes for 7minutes 45 seconds.
If the Syndicated program is pre-recorded then it all works the same way as live but the program recorded, then played out later from the master station playout automation system & the tones are configured in the correct positions in the program when a local ad or music plays.
These tones can be programmed to remotely start, stop or do anything, turn something on or off.
Giving away secrets here now, but for example, just a simple setup, CoastFM Gosford has macros set up in Zetta that puts playout to time out the last song of the hour to end at exactly TOH, then Zetta goes into Automation Mode & listens for the tones, then plays the News intro & gets the Nine News off the satellite, then the sport intro is fired off when the sport tone is sent from 2GB, then at the end of the news the outro ad plays fired off from the end of news tone, then a weather into plays, Zetta goes back into Live Assist mode & the jock reads the weather & continues on with the hour of programming.
This is all done without the News going through the desk/panel in the studio, it’s done in the master control racks in the MCR, this gives the jocks time to change shifts or go & get a coffee without worrying about timing the news & sport to air.
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Sending stations - in this case 3AW - send a signal down the line called a “pulse” and this is what fires ads off on all stations (if they have it set up properly, which most of the time they do).
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@oz1235 You’re welcome mate… now I’m in front of my computer and not on mobile, I can expand a little for you.
I’m a network and local panel operator for SCA. My roles are varied, but in the past I’ve paneled AFL for 2MMM and the network and the NRL for 4MMM and the network, plus the regional Australia By Night on the MMM regional network, along with my usual roles in Newcastle. My Zetta layout allows me to be in control of Hit and MMM Newcastle, plus the Hit and MMM Network.
When we do what’s called a “net send” you have your interface in your playout system (Zetta in our instance) and the ad breaks (spotblocks) and intros/sweeps/essences etc etc are all there and what we called “formguided” (so everything is coordinated, checked and put in the right place.)
My role would be to make sure things played where they needed to be played, so when firing off a spotblock, I would simply hit “Play” on the Axia desk and everyone in the network would receive a “pulse” that fires off their local spotblocks in their playout. Where I was in Newcastle, I would simply hear dead silence plus have a countdown clock on Zetta telling me how long was left. If I opened the studio door I could hear on our internal speakers 2KKO Newcastle playing local ads.
Back in the “old” days (mid 90s for me) when occasionally paneling for John Laws, they would have a studio coordinator at 2UE who would scream down the line things like “add 20 seconds, John is late” and you would have to scramble to find a 20 second cart to play. Thank god it’s not like that these days.
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It sometimes is. Well not exactly with carts but the skills required are the same. Timing my retro countdown show exactly to fit around news and ad commitments is a bit of an art. I hate any dead air, waffling or cutting off too much of a song. I have (mostly) managed to do it smoothly so far. Thankfully the ad blocks vary in length a little bit, and I often play the AIR News promo if I need 30 seconds before the news.
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