Maybe they plan to use the poor ratings of SEN Sydney and Brisbane to prove their content is narrowcast to get that decision reversed.
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It wouldnât surprise me. Itâs hard to argue rating 0.2% is anything other than very narrow appeal.
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You can still have low ratings with potentially wide appeal programming. So I donât think the argument would stand. Covering cricket for example would have to count as wide appeal even if no one is listening.
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Itâs certainly debatable though. How can something be wide appeal if itâs actually not appealing to anyone, or barely anyone at 0.2%
If it was appealing, there would be an audience for it by definition.
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The problem with a sport like cricket is that most people prefer to experience it with visuals by watching it on television. Cricket can be difficult to listen to for long periods just with audio on radio. However, thereâs also social media and SEN are reaching an audience there by posting videos of commentators calling the games. The video of SENâs call of India beating Pakistan in that nail-biter game has 1.1 million views on YouTube (a lot of those being closer to the time of when it happened of course). So, there are other ways of reaching an audience and connecting with advertisers than just normal ratings.
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Iâm not sure this is the case. In fact cricket is one of the great radio sports for broadcasting because of the pictures you can paint and its longer runtime than other sports.
You can pretty much mention Indian cricket on social media/YouTube and itâll do numbers
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Iâd just think that for the purposes of the legislation - the horse racing station loophole was created when thatâs what existed - regional areas wanting access to horse racing stations, but them being a horrible use of a commercial licence (glares in 3BT).
Sports Talk and generalist sports coverage seems to be a similarly niche level of content as horse racing, and to the extent that the horse racing loophole is warranted, expanding to âsports formatâ stations would be fine.
Might also help free the ABC of feeling the need to cover so much sport on analogue radio, which further hurts the amount of listener choice.
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Perfect. I think youâve found the solution to SENâs ratings problem.
Give up terrestrial radio and become a digital/online/video only company.
Terrestrial radio clearly does not provide the company with anything valuable. Their press releases state it themselves.
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It gives them the credibility of being a ârealâ broadcaster and not a fly-by-night online operator. People might not listen to their content on terrestrial, but they listen online because they are on terrestrial. The same reasoning goes for getting talent, interviews, advertisers etc.
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Probably made necessary by their choices of programming during the BBL (or possibly the likelihood of BBL + tennis overlap): theyâve finally added SEN Fanatic to their Sydney DAB+ bouquet, replacing the Central Coast SEN Track feed. They added a call-out on their app when itâs set to NSW; sounds like it happened in the last day or two.
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It makes way more sense for them to do this rather than broadcast an out of area station like Central Coast or SEN Melbourne. Means the DAB+ SEN channels can actually focus on providing more live sport options when there are multiple live sports on.
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I think theyâll want their two talk stations there; more so the Melb stations in the northern markets than vice versa (although those who need their AFL hit are likely already listening online, so I doubt itâd bring in anything new when 1170 is rating low-decimals 
). But broadcasting essentially a duplicate of SEN Track (the only extra thing it gave in Sydney itself was their local Saturday morning show) seemed like a weird waste.
That said, they probably do have extra bandwidth in Sydney vs Melbourne (ie. they donât host Niche in Sydney), but maybe there were reasons they didnât put Fanatic into Sydney DAB+ straight away.
Maybe this will mean more usage of Fanatic for national things (for instance, they already use it to extend their Monday morning NFL coverage, that gets bumped on the main stations at 6am but continues throughout the early slot); NBL and soccer might overflow more onto it too in particular than using Track for some things (which is likely close to the wind narrowcast-wise).
But there have been other very Melbourne-specific things on Fanatic before, eg. the Eastern Football-Netball League coverage (the contract of which dated back to the SEN+ days) and it remains to be seen whether that will remain and be broadcast nationally.
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Maybe they could have state specific feeds of SEN Fanatic so it can be used broadcast out of state content when itâs relevant.
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They probably could - they probably wonât and I sorta hope they donât, but they have about 50 variations already [slight exaggeration but not by much], whatâs another three or four to add 
Speaking about the different âSEN VICâ logo in the RDS DAB+ content thread reminded me of one thing that I noticed when flicking through the app a while ago (it might have been when I initially blocked it from a location) is one other money-spinner: if youâre outside Australia/New Zealand, they charge you to listen now (have for a bit). Looks like $5 a month/$50 a year to listen to Sydney + Melbourne + SENZ + Fanatic + Track, after an up-to-14-day trial. (Brisbane not there but I guess youâre not missing much beyond local breakfast.)
The logo thing reminded me of it because they donât use the frequency -or- the alternate âVICâ logos - theyâre branded as âSEN Sydneyâ and âSEN Melbourneâ, which likely makes more sense than any state-based branding for overseas people, but then only adds further to the confusing branding (makes it three different versions for 1116?).
I guess itâs âbetterâ than completely geoblocking stuff but I canât imagine itâs even worth the bother of going to the effort for how many would bother listening in. I guess the cost is basically zero upfront to set up, apart from the app store cut.
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I agree with you. Happy at least we got it in Sydney now. If they had different versions in each state they could probably switch off Melbourne SEN DAB in Sydney despite it being only talk the bit rates are rock bottom. They can also keep the error correction 3A.
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Is this Whateleyâs last SEN broadcast?
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Whereâs he going?
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Didnât he leave the network? Or am I thinking of someone else?