It’s a pity 90.1 didn’t stay on air as I received it weakly via double hop on a couple of occasions.
As far as I know, such an arrangement is unique in Australia. You don’t see temporary full powered FM transmitters anywhere else. I’m guessing it’s because of the sunk cost fallacy: 1152 is a relatively new installation, so they’d rather repair it than replace it.
These high power ABC Newsradio / RN / Classic FM stations, I would say, would be of more interest to DXers than local regular listeners.
Example - ABC Classic FM Narrogin 92.5FM had a fault for 2 months. Audio drop outs atleast every minute. If that was my favorite local radio station, I would say something! I ended up reporting this via the ABC Audience Feedback form and it was fixed in 3 days. Safe to say, that station has 0 local regular listeners.
They’d even rather keep old ones on air… When 630 4QN Townsville was off air for a while, it was temporarily replaced by a high power 91.1 ABC Local, but that was taken off air when 630 returned.
Those FM Transmitters had great potential, in my opinion they should had turned off the AM transmitter and just went with the new FM service, although you do have to account for relays for the services that were once served by the AM services but could not get the FM service.
Didn’t know that! 91.1 was within the ABC3 bandwidth so that must have been quite recently?
July 2020.
From 21 July to early November 2020 a temporary tower will provide the ongoing signal to most listeners, but if, during this time listener signal astrength is impacted, here are a number of alternative ways to listen to ABC North Queensland:
Townsville: 91.1 FM
Cardwell: 100.1 FM
Charters Towers: 100.1 FM
Read more at: https://radioinfo.com.au/news/abc-radio-tower-falls/ © RadioInfo Australia
All should be OD, +3dB minimum and interference limited. Blast your best principle.
A third category A multiplex, second in Perth & Adelaide should only be considered if there were minimum thresholds of bitrate and error protection across all multiplex for music formats. Higher than the race to the bottom 32kbps currently airing.
They probably wouldn’t like being told how to use their allocated spectrum, if won at an auction. It would come down to demand vs sound quality.
Matt Tilley on ABC… Jason Morrison on Triple M.
What an interesting time in radio right now.
Yes you can never tell who will be doing what in 20 years time! Or even less.
There have been other FM music jocks who moved to AM later in their careers… Garth Russell was NEW FM Newcastle breakfast in the 1990s (with Steve Graham) and later moved to 1233 ABC Newcastle mornings on talk.
This affects music formats in general…
There has been some discussion of late about the music played on the “easy” music stations like ACE Radio (2UE/Magic 1278/4BH) and Smooth. In that they aren’t so much easy listening any more as much as the traditional view of that genre is / stations were.
I think they are facing a similar issue that Triple M has with rock, that there isn’t as much music being released anymore that fits that “genre”, and stations are being forced to evolve to stay fresh, so they have been leaning into pop - thus a bit more up tempo as a result …. And Triple M have been doing a bit the same for the same reason to stay fresh, but more going for so older pop / new wave.
In Victoria at least, Triple M regional has quite a different format than Triple M 105.1 Melbourne. Many of the songs you hear on Triple M 94.3/95.3 for example you would never hear played in the city (not on Triple M anyway).
From memory, years ago Triple M would occasionally freak people out by playing something like Eminem, which clearly isn’t rock. I think they know their audience but like to occasionally “test the waters” by playing something out of the ordinary. But generally whenever I have a listen to Triple M 105.1 these days, I don’t really hear anything outside the usual “safe/boring” format you get across all Melbourne commercial stations.
Also, as their overnight show is networked, the format in kinda somewhere “in between” regional and city, which makes sense and is no surprise.
Triple M evenings are networked too (outside of Fri/Sat night football), but the shared music is skewed more to the Syd/Melb format, so you still won’t hear Madonna, Pink or Ed Sheeran that us country folk get.
Yes it’s an interesting phenomena. Smooth in particular is a different station to a few years ago. The playlist is narrower, less easy-listening, and yet somehow manages to play less new music than it did a few years ago. They seem so narrowly focused on 80s, 90s, 00s. And they’ve dropped most of the really easy listening stuff for more up-tempo.
Breeze has even morphed a little away from easy listening, but still stays a lot more true to that than others. But at least they play both more older and more new songs than Smooth.
I think the only true rock station in this country right now is Rebel. A broad playlist but still focused on rock - both classic and new rock. I find I’m listening to Rebel a lot lately.
I was going to add that Smooth in the UK hasn’t followed what Smooth are doing here. They still retain a very easy listening feel, even as the music trends a bit younger.
Back at home now…
If KIIS is still on the new set up, the signal here at Charlestown is a lot weaker than it used to be.
The best signal I can get now on 106.5 is 27db, WS, 2Day and MMM are all still around 41db.
Even last night when I was staying in Sydney (just off the M7 near Prestons), KIIS was also significantly weaker there too, 42db vs 53 db for WS, 2Day and MMM.
Power 100 in Townsville are moving away from all rock ,that’s what I noticed last time I was there, I’m going up there again next week to cat sit for a friend,if I get a chance I’ll listen to them again
They are now competing with Triple M.
Yes they are still playing rock music, hope they keep playing it
