Most of the FMs in the 80s weren’t playing a Top 40 format at all during that time. So AMs still tried to maintain that format against them. It was similar in North America, with a few exceptions AM stations held on to the Top 40 audience for at least the first half of the 80s. For stations like 2SM, 3XY and Radio 10 it wasn’t a matter of them trying Top 40, they were already Top 40 stations just continuing that format. The first FM stations in Australia initially tended to be adult rock stations or leaning towards easy listening.
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Stereo 10 certainly tried to compete with top 40 but I thought we were talking about a later period after they ditched Lite and Easy 10-08 when the 4IP call sign was reintroduced (having been 4IO)
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My bad ,I meant the time after they ditched the Lite and Easy format,that was when they reverted back to being 4IP again,then in late 1991 became 4TAB
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Yes if I recall correctly when they reverted to 4IP after Lite & Easy it wasn’t really a Top 40 format, it was more classic hits actually. They seemed to be trying to capture nostalgia listeners of 4IP in the late 80s/early 80s mostly.
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You don’t need to work for commercial radio to know how it works, but you consider yourself to be superior to anyone else with an opinion who doesn’t have the same experience as you.
You’ve obviously been stuck in a bubble and have outdated ideas as to how markets/ industries work.
Time to think outside the box and outside the square buddy.
The biggest problem with many people who work in radio, they consider themselves superior to others that have new, fresh ideas, especially the younger generation, and this is one of the things holding the industry back. It leads to a culture of bullying, antipathy and mediocrity.
The same is true in community radio, unfortunately.
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You can’t argue that Brisbane radio is worse than before Nova or DAB radio launched there.
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I can actually. I was there. In my view it was better in the 80s. All major formats covered with top quality stations. All live and local and great playlists.
FM104 (broad rock ranging from soft to classic to new music), Stereo 10 (top 40/CHR), 4BK (soft rock/AC), 4KQ (classic hits), 4BH (easy listening), 4BC (local news talk). 4ZZZ was there for alternative music.
It’s not just the fact the formats were all there, it’s about quality. I could listen to FM104, Stereo 10 or even 4BK all day.
It was ok into the 90s after B105 and QFM launched, even though FM104 was a bit ruined following the sale and Triple M relaunch. 4KQ and 4BH remained strong and community stations were popping up.
Nova was ok for the first couple of years only, and I can’t listen to most DAB decade loop stations for more than a few songs. There’s no life in them, just a loop of music with ads. They’re not really “stations” as such.
I think you had to be there in the 70s and 80s to appreciate it.
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Agree, and it was helped by the fact that radio was all manual… no automation errors (which we often see/hear these days), and no ‘wrong songs’ being played etc. Sadly, radio is being driven today by corporate greed for the almighty dollar with things like automation ruining the quality.
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I agree. A “glitch” was so rare in those days. It just sounded so much slicker and more polished. Newsreaders sounded more professional and didn’t stumble over words. Even regional stations could sound very slick.
Also the playlists were certainly more curated. Today it just seems like a scattergun approach like a list of songs on shuffle. The only stations I rate these days in terms of a proper curated playlist are Rebel and Breeze. Even 4BH sounds a bit scattergun.
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I think probably the opposite in terms of playlists… today’s playlists are so heavily researched at a network level that they’ve become too stale and safe.
But back then, you were probably more likely to hear something different since music logs were done by each station, not at a network level.
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I agree with you there as I’m definitely old enough to remember what radio was like in the 70s and 80s.
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I used to enjoy the special programming. 4IP has some excellent weekends about various aspects of music history, not just playing a decade but analysing trends with interviews, background etc. MMM played every Beatles song in alphabetically one long weekend, and The Rolling Stones another.
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Was that in a row - or interspersed with other songs - if the former - that’s overkill… reminds me of when Taylor Swift when she was in Australia and we had 2TAY FM in Sydney… (did I just put Tay Tay and Beatles/Stones in the same sentence! 
).
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IIRC it was nonstop between certain hours across the weekend. I’ll have to pull the tapes out, as I recorded it.
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Yeah that’s what I mean by curated. Not researched to death like today, but put together using expert knowledge by a music director, and played out in an order that works properly. i .e. using expert knowledge rather than “research” or polling people.
The research has actually replaced the expert knowledge.
You definitely were more likely to hear something different back then.
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Legendary AM Top 40 station Musicradio 77 WABC (NYC) in late 1981 during its last months of playing music did a “The Greatest Disappearing Acts of All Time” weekend devoted to one-hit wonders of the AM Top 40 era (1950s to 1970s).
Maybe MP/UE/BH could do such a weekend?
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I think the stations in the early 80s in Sydney were targeted at those people who had high end hifi and didnt just want to hear teanie poppy music. People who owned more expensive cars with FM stereo radio built in like Fairlanes, ie who had a bit of money in their 30 to 40s.
This was in the first couple of years of commercial FM being launched.
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They were definitely aimed at a older age bracket than they are now.
FM stations didn’t really start targeting younger listeners until the early to mid 90s when 2Day and Fox moved away from classic rock and went more Top 40 / AC.
The original Top 40 stations like 2SM and 3XY had abandoned that about 5-6 years earlier, so there was a bit of a gap in that format for a few years, which is quite surprising when you consider how many “hit music” stations we have now.
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How come The Breeze and BBC Radio 2 can play anything from the 60s to today’s hits and it somehow works ?
No other stations have got it right including 4BH
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Let’s agree to disagree.
Brisbane probably had the worst-sounding commercial FM radio in the world, in the late 90s early 2000s, when I first heard it. B105 and Triple M had an FM monopoly and were dreadful.
Anyway , let’s leave it there.
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