How well does Breeze and Rebel get into Brisbane?
They’ve been using that ID for about 12 months - they split the signal for 92.1 and 100.6 (Gold Coast) - with separate IDs, plus localised traffic and weather reports.
Can be received across most of the city fairly well including in car.
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Pretty good in the car right across the south side and even the north east.
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Yes, the Beaudesert outlets are fine on the northern approach to Brisbane. I don’t think they quite make the Sunshine Coast, though.
The Mount Tamborine (Gold Coast) outlets don’t really make it to Cane Toad City.
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Older car radios may have trouble preventing interference from nearby Sunshine Coast stations too eg. with SEA on 91.9 being adjacent to Breeze.
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I think the following should get a mention on this thread.
Despite the fact that not all radios go to 1620, it would provide a decent alternative to Triple M (4GR), which was the base of its “Classic Hits” stream, but was axed late last year due to SCA’s cost-cutting drive.
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Yes, and stereo or otherwise, I think Breeze will be an interesting addition to the Toowoomba market. 4WK has a predominantly talk format, Triple M takes the more generic log covering a wider audience, leaving a space for an easy, older-skewing station like the Breeze.
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I’d like to know how this gets around the prohibition on s 40 commercial licences. This was introduced in the wake of the Radio 2 fiasco many years ago. Perhaps they have had this Toowoomba licence for some time? 4KZ operates on 1620 in Karumba and until recently on the coast as well; these licenses are grandfathered as they were in operation before the prohibition.
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Rebel has a few other off-band AM licences in Queensland, and has three NON-BSB commercial radio licences the first of which appears to date back to 2003. Radio 2 went bust in 2006, so maybe Rebel’s licences are also grandfathered?
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I believe this is an old Rete Italia(?) licence they purchased in recent times, so old licence but new owner.
As for the legality, it must be similar to what Crocmedia are doing in Adelaide (and many other markets)?
Yes was Radio Italia, was purchased by Rebel Media when RI sold a heap of their Licensees last year
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SEN Track could be classed as a narrowcast format; Breeze is clearly commercial. Unless an adventurous music format is so rare as to be narrowcasting these days (arguable).
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But SEN Adelaide 1629 is clearly commercial in the way 1116 in Melbourne is, and it’s operating on the same licence. So I can only presume there’s some exemption for this type of service/licence>
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There is nothing to stop an operator putting a narrowcast format on a commercial licence, but the reverse is a no no as others have said.
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Does Crocmedia not have an s.40 commercial license? Though, if that was acquired with the Rete Italia licences that may not justify SEN’s existence in Adelaide (which pre-dated the RI acquistions)
Then again with Macquarie Sports’ ratings, let alone SEN’s first attempts in Adelaide, perhaps sports talk really is narrowcasting outside of Melbourne 
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Best comment yet. Sports broadcasting will always be a struggle especially outside of Melbourne.
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I think sports talk is a narrowcast format outside of Sydney and Melbourne; it would rate something like 1-2% if it was on a full commercial licence.
I must admit I haven’t looked at the Broadcasting Services Act recently so perhaps the restriction has been repealed.
I also have a feeling that ACMA wouldn’t act without a complaint. Crocmedia’s ‘competition’ either no longer exists (MSR) or are racing stations which they have some kind of relationship with (RadioTAB in Adelaide, RSN’s owners)
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I thought these ‘off band’ licences eg 1620 could be whatever format they wanted ie. commercial was fine. After all Radio 2 was full on commercial. I thought off band was completely different to narrowcast?
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They changed it after Radio 2’s demise. MF NAS (1611-1701) is in spirit equivalent to the LPON scheme on FM. It’s my opinion that both should be non- commercial and in the case of LPONs, minimal networking should be allowed.
The non-commercial restriction on s 40 (non BSB) licences only applied to the MF-NAS band:
https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2009L03344/9c316893-87c1-48b8-a180-3ae106632735
Looks like it is no longer in force! Apparently repealed in 2013, which is when the government of the day took the scissors to a lot of ‘unnecessary regulation’. So it seems that you can now once again operate a commercial service on the MF-NAS band.
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