Waiting on ACMA to do their thing…
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The stations already appear in the ACMA lists (93.1 and 94.1), it’s just up to Rebel to do it’s thing?
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Thanks. Was looking at the radio guide Australia app ios which can be out of date by 4 years now, as it isn’t maintained, it had both the starions listed. So not on air thats a shame. Maybe it isn’t viable or is on the waiting list.
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The ACMA is the long delay.
Modelling shows the regulator allocated 4RBL Great Lakes frequency of 94.1 has co-channel issues in our market from Gosford community radio. The two licence areas are only 75 km apart, with a coastal path, and 1-2 kW towards each other. The sub standard 4RBL reception from restrictive ERP east towards the coast (around Seal Rocks, Myall Lakes etc) makes it worse.
4RBL needs a frequency & pattern change, and we’ve been waiting years for the ACMA to advance the applications. ACMA undertook to do it at the same time as the 2RE AM to FM conversion (which we agreed to), then they backed out of that, and won’t give us a revised time line.
As an independent, we are stuck with how/who they choose to prioritise planning for.
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Agree that 94.1 is a poor choice of frequency. Good luck with the ACMA hope they get it sorted for you soon.
Is there a chance of Breeze going to air on 93.1 in the meantime until a new 4RBL frequency is agreed upon, or do they both need to be done at the same time?
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Many years of ACMA risk averse planning & delays, we can no longer be sure GL services will make it to air. Had ACMA resolved GL a decade ago, they would of been on air within 6 months.
We have nominated 4RBL candidate frequencies, but the ACMA could allocate something different. The 4RBL frequency impacts both the choice of FM combiner and FM antenna array, so it’s better to wait till both final frequencies are secured.
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Any progress on the Wauchope stations?
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MNC regional feeds & coverage were designed to have Gloucester shire, Wauchope & GL sites to sustain it.
The ACMA are disconcertingly comfortable leaving Rebel with inadequate coverage and at a signal disadvantage within Rebel towns in GL & Hastings, compared to the stronger/better over-spill coming in from neighboring commercial stations.
As is, it’s not a workable or competitive proposition.
If we secure adequate GL coverage, we can invest more deeply in the region. We’d love to do that. All up to the ACMA.
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Thank you. Would love to have Rebel / Breeze on FM around Wisemen Ferry / Colo / Richmond / Putty / Wollemi ie in Sydneys North west , technically hard to do without repeaters.My guess it will never happen, but its nice to dream.
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We can’t get the ACMA to plan our bigger towns in the regional Great Lakes area of our market for adequate coverage. It would likely be more challenging adjacent to NW Sydney.
If you have good contacts in that region of our market and in the Hawkesbury council, the most likely way it could happen would be for council to apply to establish & operate small ‘self help’ Breeze/Rebel repeaters located in our licence area. Many councils do that across our market for their local communities.
If council are interested, we’d be happy to hear from them.
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If you haven’t already & have the money to do so, get an ACMA accredited person (list is on their website) to plan & assign a frequency for an apparatus licence & get them to apply for the licence on your behalf with what they’ve planned & the assigned frequency.
Doing it this way ACMA will pretty much rubber stamp the licence application & approve it, they don’t have the staff or time to go through it & pick at things, as the ACMA accredited people know the rules & what ACMA requires for a radiocommunication licence & ACMA approves them to do so.
If you put in an application & want ACMA to do all the planning, it will literally take them years to do with the small amount of staff they have in the department to do it, that’s why they approve certain private accredited planners to do it in place of them & reduce the ACMA workload.
HOPE 103.2 (2CBA) got ACMA to plan & approve an alternate transmit antenna slightly higher up the same tower at Artarmon for when their main antenna was having maintenance done on it & it literally took ACMA 4 years to approve it & issue the licence.
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Interesting post. The remote radio network radio is large, and it probably doesn’t make commercial sense to say for example cover for the whole of Wollemi NP/ Yengo NP. the towns in and around the parks are pretty small so its not logical. Essentially you need overspill to bigger towns to get commercials to justify the effort of setting it up. Like Richmond / Windsor maybe Singleton or Rylstone. I wouldn’t call Rylstone a big town either.
@RFBurns so theoretically they could apply to ACMA to have someone plan it out, as it is in their licence area.
Nsw map below.
https://www.commercialradio.com.au/RA/media/General/Documents/Licence%20Area%20Profiles/nsw.pdf
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Appreciate the suggestion.
Wish it was that easy! We’ve previously used accredited assigners. It’s not just standard ACMA engineering delays. The ACMA won’t advance proposals (no matter the source) for these areas that are likely to prove contentious with the large networks.
Hastings & Great Lakes has been an open issue for over a decade. For the ACMA, it’s all about the unavoidable overspill vs adequate in-market population balance, which is challenging given we have licensed towns <5km outside adjacent markets major population centers. The ACMA tend to be risk adverse in these situations and choose to leave towns unserved by their licenced commercial stations, rather than make the controversial planning decisions that deliver services.
We’ve identified the available alternate channels. Agreeing on frequencies is the easy part.
We sure didn’t design the odd licence area boundaries we have. We’re keen to serve the regions within it that we viably can, but the ACMA won’t always allow a broadcaster to serve its market.
Realistically it may never be resolved without government intervention, but always an optimist 
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id say they dont really have a choice, depends on what database they use
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none that I know of, but 3CR has a large chunk of its programming dedicated to talkback. 3RRR also has talk shows in their schedule.
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3RPH (Vision Australia Radio) 1179KHz is total talk as a reading service for the visual impaired
Though it’s more of a reading service as opposed to “talkback” like 3AW.
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