Hit running ‘Swifty And Fifty’ nationally (except Sydney it seems), also with a $50k prize.
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Wow, I would’ve thought Taylor Swift was on-brand with 2Day’s music format.
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They probably feel the need to push their breakfast brand more since 2DAY had the lowest breakfast share of all Sydney commercial FMs in the last survey.
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Although given the number of commonly-owned stations in a number of markets, they’re more than likely to be broadcast on a HD multichannel of, say, an existing AC station on FM - if not moved entirely in order to fit a sports betting channel (basically the SEN Track model, no-one likely to listen but it’s likely a big earner) - or otherwise, it’s often relatively easy (with the cash 
) to just buy a low-rating FM station outright, or plonk in a low-powered infill FM translator if needed.
Japan is mostly shuttering AM too, crucially, with most commercial AM stations (aside a couple of isolated prefectures, Hokkaido in particular) going dark by the end of 2028 - having moved to FM frequencies when they expanded the band upward to 95 MHz - and NHK getting rid of one of its two AM networks by 2025.
Between those two + the situation in much of Europe, AM’s days are certainly numbered in the car at least…
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AM radio’s aren’t included in new hifi systems, as they mostly focusing on FM and DAB.
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I consider my purchase of my Pure internet/DAB radio I bought last year a great investment. I often listen to BBC Radio 2 at home,I’ve noticed if I listen on my phone that the UK radio app is ahead of the internet broadcast
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That’s interesting, I thought it would have essentially been the same stream.
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I get to hear the news headlines from the UK on Radio 2.They would have a few Australian listeners ,I’m sure.I might contact them one day myself and say how much I enjoy listening to them.Maybe I can’t text them from here,how do other Australian listeners contact them then ,maybe via email .
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Does anyone know why the HPON licenses don’t have callsigns in the ACMA listings?
It would be a great idea if they had one per operator so you could see what was on it… eg. All the NSW SKY Racing ones had a callsign of 2SKY, KIX Country as 2KIX or 4KIX depending on state, 4TAB, 5TAB etc for that state’s Racing HPONs
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Because HPONs aren’t assigned one, the category of licence they’re assigned to (unlike LPONs) don’t require one, much like temporary community licences don’t.
LPONs on the other hand apparently get a callsign per transmitter now, in a format like “2N123” [where the state number and letter are aligned; the ACT ones use “1A” and not “1C” notably].
The NAS services (16xx and other VHF out-of-band services) may or may not have them.
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That makes too much sense, which is why ACMA will never do it.
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You know what, I’ll contact/email the ACMA and suggest that to them.
I’ll be interested to see what they come back with, if I get a response at all.
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I just can’t imagine a call sign would be useful for them to allocate, they’d deal in site/license numbers for those kinds of stations, while call signs only make sense when the one license can have multiple transmission sites under the same license.
As narrowcast licenses are per transmitter rather than per license area, you’re never in a situation where they are regulated as a collective, so a distinction/grouping based on shared content would just be extra administration work they don’t need.
The operators should be the ones telling you the places/frequencies you can listen to the same service, not the ACMA.
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I’m not looking at this from an ACMA perspective, I’m looking at it from a end user ie, us perspective. We pay our taxes, we should be able to have this info all in one document, not to have to look up different websites to find out what narrowcast operator is on / where.
I can imagine ACMA will say there’s not enough demand etc for it, but it can’t hurt to ask.
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MW DXers overseas get very frustrated with the lack of documentation on MF NAS services (1611-1701 kHz). It’s puzzling to them because our on band AM/FM licences are very well documented by the ACMA, yet it’s entirely a guessing game as to what’s on the MF NAS frequencies.
Frequencies above 1600 kHz propagate very well- at times behaving like shortwave- so our MF NAS services have been heard across the planet.
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in the last year or so… the ACMA have stopped allocating callsigns, even land mobile (2 way radio) and links etc have no callsigns now or should I say any new allocations in the last 2 odd years.
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I haven’t seen the exact numbering on a SW band, but suspecting it does start off at 1,600khz up to 30,000khz, which would be the reason why.
PS: Correction, just saw that SW does start off at 3,000khz, so 16xx are completely off band for normal radios.
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I mean, their RRL database definitely has them, but it’s a bit obtuse to find them as the sub-category is “Narrowcasting Service (Fixed Tax)” instead of anything mentioning HPON in particular.
But since they are only apparatus licences and not broadcast licences (what @Moe pointed out better than I did) the most you often find is the company name - great if it’s say an SEN Track station or something like Vision, but who would casually know who, say, “Gumnut Nominees” were and associate that with Rete Italia/Niche Radio without searching, let alone other more niche stations than, well, Niche is.
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There
There were certainly a number of shakeups in the amateur space (partly associated with moving exams/callsign requests from the WIA to the Aus Maritime College), including loosening regulation on the callsign space for hams… I wouldn’t be surprised if the ACMA or govt regulation just threw their hands up on everything else not absolutely requiring a callsign in the commercial space at around the same time.
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DRM is really the future. Works for AM and FM. The ABC’s DRM test in Wangaratta was excellent at hearing FM quality audio along with Text, News etc and even a second channel can run. Well worth having a look at www.drm.org
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