I’m not quite sure which thread to post this in, so I’ll leave it here for now.
Bay FM in the Nelson Bay/Port Stephens region of NSW (is it supposed to be a commercial, community or narrowcast station?) is moving from 99.3 to 88.0 from next Friday:
In areas where there was VHF TX channels 2 / 3 / 4 the ACMA (Dotc, SMA, ACA etc) would license frequencies above 96 MHz for narrowcasters, this was due to the vision carrier of say NBN-3, would have been 86 odd MHz (and a video carrier is 7 MHz bandwidth) this is also the reason for the shift to UHF in a lot of markets to make way for FM broadcasting.
I think the push is on to move them back to 87.6 - 88.0… same thing happened in Townsville.
I alway thought BAYFM was a community station, it was the first radio station in Port Stephens, long before the Newcastle stations got translators & Port Stephens FM came a long.
According to ACMA though it’s a narrowcast station, funny thing is too, ACMA have their other licence frequency at Nelson Bay (where 99.3 is) as 87.6MHz, 88.0MHz is owned by another guy who has lots of narrowcast licences.
BayFM does have a narrowcast licence on 88.0MHz, but that’s located at Tea Gardens.
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With news in the “Southern Cross Austereo (Regional)” thread that 2GO & Sea FM on the Central Coast are now streaming again (Star 104.5 switch theirs back on in October), that now means pretty much every commercial radio station in Sydney, Central Coast & Illawarra are now streaming again…except for C91.3 in Campbelltown, which hasn’t switched theirs back on yet. Not only that, C91.3 is also the only commercial FM station in the Sydney/Central Coast/Illawarra region not to be using RDS.
On a related note, with the “reach rule” set to be scrapped by the Turnbull Government, there’s also the possibility that WIN would have to sell off C91.3 under ACMA’s Media Diversity (aka “Number of Voices”) rule, as the Campbelltown radio licence area presently has 4 media voices (WIN, Seven, Nine & Ten), which is the required minimum for a regional commercial radio licence area, which Campbelltown is classed as. If WIN merges or gets taken over by Nine or Ten, then Campbelltown would be down to just 3 media voices, putting it below the required minimum, triggering a sell-off of C91.3 to another owner, eg. Grant Broadcasters.
As for WIN’s current ownership of i98 after a proposed merger with Nine or Ten, it won’t have to be sold off if they want to keep it, as the Wollongong commercial radio market would still meet the required minimum number of media voices, even after the merger.
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Based on what I understand of the Associated Newspaper Register, the Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald also count as voices in the Campbelltown RA1 license area.
I believe this is because more than 30% of the Campbelltown RA1 license overlaps with the Sydney RA1 license area (86.31% to be precise).
If you want to know why so many people are laughing at Radio Today - here’s a good example:
Seriously. What. The. Feck.
Mark HD - I just ate two magic mushrooms and read the Radio Today article. It made perfect sense.
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From their latest - Is it Magic Monday?
Could have sworn that Magic moved to 1278 in Melbourne recently.
No, make that ten years ago this March.
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that’s a Blair classic that one.
According to a Facebook page, looks like that Pirate on 99.4 in Wollongong got raided by ACMA & the equipment confiscated.
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A power outage at SCA in Melbourne has taken out Fox, Triple M and all the SCA DAB+ stations.
Not 100% sure about the DAB+ stations in other states, but I suspect these will be down since they are played out from Melbourne - maybe with the exception of Kinderling which is played out privately, depending on how it is routed in the DAB multiplexes.
It will be interesting to see what happens if they’re still off at 4 when Hamish and Andy are due to start.
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2DayFM, Triple M and Kinderling are still running on DAB+ (and FM for the former two) but the others are down, as far as I can tell.
[quote=“webguy, post:51, topic:263”]
It will be interesting to see what happens if they’re still off at 4 when Hamish and Andy are due to start.
[/quote]Tim Lee on 2DayFM a few minutes ago
"they’re nowhere to be seen. Please come up to World Square, you’re on in minutes"
Tim Lee anchoring the network from Sydney - just had a phone interview with Hamish who described the situation as a “code black”. Fox is still on backup.
[quote=“AustralianAerial, post:54, topic:263, full:true”]
Tim Lee anchoring the show from Sydney, presumably networked. Hamish on the phone.
[/quote]Yes, from what I can pick up on streaming Tim Lee is being networked, supposedly going to play a best of Hamish and Andy.
Fox and Triple M on FM are on backup tapes - I’m pleasantly surprised how up to date they are, although volume is lower than the other FMs.
Fox and Triple M streaming are back online, playing the Sydney versions of their respective stations.
[quote=“webguy, post:55, topic:263, full:true”]
supposedly going to play a best of Hamish and Andy.[/quote]
Yep, that’s happening now.
[quote=“webguy, post:55, topic:263, full:true”]
Fox and Triple M on FM are on backup tapes - I’m pleasantly surprised how up to date they are, although volume is lower than the other FMs.
[/quote] Very obviously too - on the flip side, the community stations at Mt. Dandenong stations while on backup are usually slightly louder than normal.
Fox is back - albeit, just music so far
WERE BACK
— Keegs (@keegs) February 23, 2016
⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️
Thank you @mrmikechristian for your prayers.
[quote=“AustralianAerial, post:57, topic:263”]
Fox is back - albeit, just music so far
[/quote]Not 100% yet. They have power back in the building, but the FM broadcast has stopped a couple of times, as though they switched back to the studio and then went offline again when resetting thing.
EDIT: As I was typing this, I think it came back properly - song randomly stopped and another song started part-way through at a much louder volume.
Some digital streams have come back… Loveland playing 2Day, and Triple M Modern Rock and The Range both playing 2MMM.
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Yep, was recording it (but Audition seems to have other ideas this afternoon). Seem to be catching up on songs already played on 2Day since 4pm.
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The network have gone back to a best of. FOX is on commercials.