Interesting that Sea FM and Mix FM sunshine coast are for sale. I wonder who will pick them up, possibly ACE and Super Network?
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I really hope Capital Radio Network or Rebel Media picks them up. At lease you would have a good point of difference on the Coast.
I think ACE or BOG owning these stations would be disastrous.
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Yes, it would be good if Rebel or Capital Radio Network could at least purchase one of the stations for sale.
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I imagine they will be sold together, unless Grants buys one (since they already own Hot 91.1).
Or Grants buys both and sells Hot91.1
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Then they would also have to sell Zinc 96 as well, since the Gympie RA1 licence area has almost 60% overlap with the Nambour RA1 licence area.
Further discussions about this are already being made in the below thread.
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I agree! ACE or BOG would be a disaster.
Rebel would be great but not sure they could afford it. Would be awesome though.
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Correct - it comes down to money at the end day. Rebel or Capital would be good.
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It would be interesting to see how Rebel would program the Sunny Coast stations.
Would they apply the Rebel and Breeze brands, formats and log with local announcers or keep Sea and Mix?
Not sure how well their formats would work in a larger market, perhaps itās not mainstream enough?
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I think Breeze is definitely mainstream enough and would go really well in the Sunshine Coast market. Rebel might be a bit niche (as much as I love it personally). They might put Breeze on 92.7 and keep Sea as a CHR station.
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Currently down at Lorne now that Regional Vic is out of lockdown, the licenced Mixx repeater is still not on air and Otway Community Radioās repeater has Stereo pilot but is silent.
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The Mixx FM āPeter is meant to be on 92.7 is it not? I remember it being on air during my last trip down that way. Admittedly that was 2017.
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Itās meant to be on 92.7 but itās not on air and not mentioned on the Mixx FM website, only 95.9 Apollo Bay is mentioned
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Iām sure it was still on-air in January when I was down that way? I was chasing its RDS in the car down Torquay/Anglesea way but Classic FM Bendigo kept messing with me
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Mixx 95.9 at Apollo Bay definitely had RDS when I was there in 2019, so I imagine Lorne 92.7 would have had it too, but I canāt recall if it did at the time.
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Yeah they both did before that Iām sure, and AF too with 106.3 Colac (although when I was down there in 2019 the AF kept sending you to 96.3 instead of 106.3 due to a coding error, meaning the music would suddenly take on a much more Christian flavour from the Geelong station).
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Colac is kinda an odd radio market to me, itās a lot bigger than I ever would have assumed. On the flipside, the Warrnambool license area is significantly smaller.
I know itās in the overlap, but I certainly wouldnāt ever think Lorne was an area thatās part of it. The Geelong stations do a good job of pushing āGeelong and the Surf Coastā - so itād probably be a tough ask to get people to switch onto a station from Colac, it just seems kinda irrelevant to half the license area.
I dunno if thereās any precedent for doing it - but itād probably make more sense to use the Coast FM branding of the Warrnambool station on air for those repeaters.
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The Melbourne stations also get in pretty well down most of the surf coast.
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Do you mean as in switching Apollo Bay and Lorne over to the Warrnambool licence area so they get 3YB FM and Coast FM?
Or 106.3 Colac take on Coast FM branding as well as Lorne and Apollo Bay?
As I think it would be pretty much impossible to use different branding for the repeaters only - unless you donāt allow announcers to use station branding on air at all and have a different feed with different sweepers and promos go out to Lorne and Apollo Bay. External advertising such as social media, billboards etc would all need to be changed.
Itās a bit of an unusual situation down there at Lorne in particular. Even though it does have a lap alignment to Colac only 50km away, the Melbourne and Geelong stations come in at high strength and most people visiting the area come from that way anyway as opposed to Colac so there is little motivation to switch from what they are comfortable with. The other challenge is that the 92.7 coverage only provides a limited range between Lorne and Anglesea at best, gets swamped by Classic fm once you drive 10 mins into the hinterland.
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And also when in Apollo Bay, itās also licensed for Flow FM (remote) on 97.9, which wasnāt on air when I was last there in 2019. So whilst Apollo Bay is licensed for both Mixx and Flow, Lorne gets Mixx only,
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