Just like Rugby in NZ too, its a religion. I think Sydney is a big enough city for a sports station but not at the expense of an adult oldies station. There should be scope to rebadge old frequencies that are going FM for players like SEN to setup shop in Sydney and Brissy. However I know others have rightly said this won’t happen in the current radio climate.
SEN has every right to buy 4KQ/2CH as well as a counter argument also. Its a “free market”.
Very interesting thread and good discussion. As a Sydney lad … SEN has nothing but bad vibes imho. It’s a Mexican invasion chuntering through our Sydney and now BrisVegas airspace. Yes we get that Melbourne can sustain niche sports formats like SEN day and night across multiple stations. Woopie Doo Basil. However from Sydney we prefer way broader and more varied and interesting programming. To knock out our beloved 2CH from its 1170 home with mostly batshit boring sport was bad enough. Now to take out the high rating 4KQ with more batshit sport … well that’s why north of Mexico we hate SEN.
My 2 cents, Once you wound a AM station these days its basically dead man walking.
There will be no coming back for 4KQ.
That is so true. You can’t bring them back once you kill off an AM music station. Even if 4BH pull off a miracle comeback from Talking Lifestyle and Macquarie Sport (because of the death of 4KQ), it will still only manage half of what 4KQ had.
You make it sound like what SEN has done/will do in Sydney and Brisbane is somehow immoral when they’ve legally purchased 2CH and 4KQ from owners willing to sell the stations to them.
Yeah I find all the SEN hate going on in here bizarre. It screams “my favourite AM music station is no longer on air because of some government rule and I’m angry at the broadcaster that bought the license and is not broadcasting my favourite AM music station again”.
Many people view it as a regulatory failure yes. Including myself. Broadcasting is a regulated environment and the spectrum is ultimately publically owned.
People don’t have to like what SEN is doing with the licences either. At the end of the day it’s narrow appeal.
I tuned into this morning. SEN 1170 DAB sounds ok, not ground breaking great but you know what I mean. The 1170 feed sounds narrow, even sort of tinny (like it is ever so slightly off the station like I am tuned into 1172 AM). It doesn’t have the warm sound like an AM station should have.
SEN Spirit 621 also sounds very compressed, distorted and narrow banded.
Easy to see on a spectrum display-
Totally agree. Whether the regulatory regime is the right one is a different debate but SEN have done nothing wrong here under the current regime. It’s a free market, SEN were perfectly at liberty to buy 4KQ and broadcast whatever they want on it within the law. Again that free market will determine its success or otherwise.
It is quite likely that some AM music stations that have converted to narrowcast were not even selling enough advertising to cover the power bill for the transmitter. The same goes for some regional TV markets - the only reason they stay on there is to keep new operators out.
I was never a frequent listener to 4KQ, but did occasionally come across their breakfast announcers doing OB’s on my commute to work which is probably a testament to their public visibility.
SEN’s purchase of legacy music stations has failed in the past with the exception of 3AK which was a basket case since the 1980s. Before SEN took over 3AK in 2004, the highest rating 3AK had in the previous 12 months was 1.5. In SEN’s first survey in February 2004, they rated 2.1 and within a few years they were in the 4s and 5s particularly during football season. When they took over 5DN, they dropped from 6.7 to zero and then abandoned it. 2CH went from 5 to less than 1 within 2 surveys. 4KQ will be similar.
@stilesykenny most stations book 70-80% of revenue at breakfast.
The SEN SA breakfast program can be heard in Adelaide via the 10kW HPON of the TAB. The 4TAB national show that was on the Adelaide TAB HPON is substituted for the SEN show, making it available to a far larger audience and with much better audio quality.
RE: The SEN Hate. For me I personally don’t hate SEN, I think for me, I’d like to see improvements and theyhave better success. Often in the bubble within a organisation there might be problems but the staff/managers may not see it. I think this forum is an important area of feedback so stations can improve. Most of the people who post are not part of that bubble and some like myself are outside the industry but share a common “love” for radio and music etc.
To me that it is the great thing of forums (not just this one), you can get the punters opinion of an ISP or type of phone or many other things. Sure there could people who don’t like things but generally if an organisation is run well it will be in the main, be reflected within the forums. I am also referring to Whirlpool .
On Whirlpool I know official reps do join the forum. Maybe something radio stations could consider in this forum. So they can improve and listen to some feedback.
Look what happened to 3XY in the late 80s, changed from “Hot Hits” to “Easy Rock”, ratings plummeted, not even a return to “Hot Hits” and a simulcast with Bay FM in Geelong would save it in the end. In that same era we saw 3AK move from “Beautiful Music” to an adult contemporary format, then talkback (CBC), then back to adult contemporary with sport, then it was sold to the Corso family which changed format to an Italian/English format, then Southern Cross Broadcasting brought back “Beautiful Music”, then Fusion with a talk format and now SEN. Each format change saw a reduction in the ratings books and they never rated above 10% since the last survey as “Beautiful Music” in 1985. 3MP when it changed to MTR ratings also fell, and after that experiment ended it became a classic hits, then classic rock, then SEN Track until Ace bought it and returned to Easy Music. Their ratings never recovered after 2010.
Agreed. Its very easy to lose audiences - just radically change your format multiple times but very difficult to regain lost audiences. 3XY would have been better off sticking with More Music but gradually shift to an older audience. Similarly when 3DB changed in the early 80s from a music and disco format to talk, it was very grating. Ernie Sigley replaced Peter Harrison for breakfast and it was all downhill from there until they relaunched as 3TT some years later.
I also don’t understand the SEN bashing here.
I think it’s good for the radio industry to have a strong fifth player behind Nova, ARN, SCA and Nine. It is good for diversity and plurality and possibly down the track SEN might even lease some of its DAB spectrum to another independent such as Rebel, which would be great for Brisbane, if they have the spare capacity available to them.
ACE will also do well with it’s suite of AM stations on the east coast, giving listeners and advertisers choice, so it’s not all doom and gloom with 4KQ soon to be gone.
It’s OK if you don’t understand… I understand. But what I don’t understand is how “It is good for diversity” to have a player take out mainstream decent rating stations to replace them with a niche sports format that rates bugger all.
It’s good for the industry in that there is a new competitor in the Brisbane market. Even if it rates low, it still has scale and DAB spectrum to use, most likely you will see SEN Mel and SEN Syd as well as Niche radio broadcast into the Brisbane market, which is good for diversity.
Yes, 4KQ was a mainstream, highly-rating station, however as ARN were forced to sell it, a new player entering the market with a different format will increase diversity. It might not rate as highly as its predecessor but it will give Brisbane listeners some new formats and give SEN more scale nationally.
Agree. Diversity for the sake of diversity is pointless if fewer people - far fewer people - want to hear what replaces a top rating station.
