Ballarat radio stations Phaze DFR and Phaze Country closed down by ACMA
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) reportedly executed a warrant at the offices of Ballarat-based Phaze Broadcasting Pty Ltd, owner of Phaze Dance Floor Radio (DFR) and Phaze Country, on Monday.
“The ACMA undertook escalated enforcement activities at Bakery Hill on 8 May, 2023,” a spokesperson confirmed to The Courier.
"ACMA is currently investigating a complaint received in relation to a Low Power Open Narrowcasting (LPON) service in Bakery Hill.
“This investigation is ongoing, and the ACMA does not publicly comment on details of investigations underway.”
Industry sources have told The Courier the investigation surrounds licencing conditions, however the exact circumstances could not be confirmed.
Probably no good, I have 3 of those “modern Ghetto Blasters”, not the one from Jaycar but others made over the last few years & while they give a decent sound & the tape/usb works, the AM/FM reception is beyond crap, 1 of them I took back thinking it was faulty as I couldn’t get my local Newcastle stations, but nope not faulty they’re all like that.
I suspect it may be due to the DSP tuner chips used in modern AM/FM radios. Most of these chips are lousy. This also explains why so many FM/DAB+ radios are so bad at picking up FM stations.
As for “decent sound”, define “decent”. Almost every modern boom box style radio cassette player sounds terrible; the only ones that don’t are old designs made by name brands in countries where cassettes refuse to die, such as the Indonesian-made Panasonics. Good luck finding one of those in your nearest Harvey Norman or JB.
There were so many ancient ‘ghetto blasters ‘ at my former workplace that staff members would bring in to listen to the radio while working.Of course this was back in the’ olden days ‘before DAB radios or Bluetooth speakers were available ,when we didn’t have many options on what to listen to
not often you’d see a community radio station do TV advertising? Although I have vague memories of One FM in Shepparton doing ads as well many years ago. I suppose regional TV airtime was relatively cheap?
Not sure what year that ad is from, I don’t remember seeing that on NBN or anywhere. TV advertising wasn’t really cheap before aggregation, certainly became cheaper from 1992 omwards.
Also, being community stations they may have been granted airtime as Community Service Announcements i.e. airtime donated by the TV stations, although those are usually declared with a caption on screen.
Not that I suspect that 2NUR would have qualified for a CSA plug given it’s run by the university up there.
Not much of a hint as to when that ad was, although 2NUR’s history page (where it’s the only thing on that page besides pics of their 40th birthday celebration in 2018) has the jingle as “from the 1990s” so it’s very possible it was a little later than aggregation.
The amount of viewers at that time was still miniscule and ad slots would have been cheap even with Nine being the only one overnight, although Seven in Sydney was also overnight from 1985, and Ten were overnight on weekends from 1984, extending to 24/7 in 1987.
According to the notes on the video it was broadcast on 22 September 1986 on ATN7. So possibly overnights or during breakfast children’s program which would be relatively cheap for advertising.
Extra: A poster said it was broadcast on afternoon kids tv.
Could totally imagine something like that in the afternoons back then, anywhere between the midday movie and the news (which would’ve included the kids’ shows, would’ve been probably Wombat back then primarily) - there were a LOT more local ads back then in that timeslot, even in the early 90s… probably especially in the early 90s when they had to fall back on filling mid-afternoon slots with things like Perry Mason et al.
