Just spent some time down in Tasmania - and I was driving for it so did quite a bit of listening to what exists of radio stations.
Some observations -
7AD desperately needs that FM conversion - their coverage is absolutely woeful compared to that of the 107.7 Sea FM transmitter. For a station that I can easily receive at night in Victoria, I’d have thought it would do well within its intended coverage area.
Instead - it was unlistenable within about 50km travelling towards Cradle Mountain - while Sea FM stayed receivable pretty much right down until I got in range of the 7XS transmitters.
I didn’t mind 7XS as a station - for it being the only commercial station, it’s a fairly good format. I read somewhere that it shares a music log with 7HOFM, but either that isn’t always the case, or I just got a better run of their music choices for the time I was in the area. Once actually in the range of the Hobart stations, I didn’t listen to HO nearly as much.
LAFM and Chilli FM both seemed very odd coverage wise - I was able to receive them fine when I was well outside Launceston - including a large part of the middle of the state where I seemed to get both Hobart and Launceston FM just fine (with Hobart a bit stronger the further east I went) - but once I actually got to Launceston - they were hopeless. Switching to the inner city repeater didn’t help either - plenty of places driving around I found both of them to be scratchy, and I lost them entirely once about 20km north west outside Launceston - only for them to return and be fairly strong in parts of Devonport.
Dunno if that’s the general experience with LAFM - but it seemed noticeably poor coverage wise driving around Launceston’s surrounds, and even if it was useful, they don’t promote the city repeaters on air - so I’d assume most people would have to just put up with the poor signal.
That said, it wasn’t a huge loss - I didn’t listen to much of LAFM - their music selection just seemed strange. I did like the Tasmania Talks program though - it was interesting hearing ‘Brian Carlton’ on the radio again - having listened to The Spoonman’s night time show on Triple M a decade back.
They probably could slot in a little bit more music into the show - they seemed to play just 1 song an hour - especially as two of the stations it airs on are FM and others will be soon.
This is the non-SCA thread, so I’ll just quickly comment on finding the ‘Feel Good’ sweepers on Triple M a bit strange - as was hearing some of the song selections on a station called Triple M - but I certainly preferred it over 7HOFM.
If it is the same music selection - it works far better on 7XS when there’s no other option, than on 7HOFM where there’s Hit and Triple M as well.
Didn’t listen to much of Hit/Sea/Chilli - I was about to say that I don’t get why Grant have kept with the Sea FM name, but given ‘Chilli’ is what they came up with for a unique name, I suppose that’s why.