As I am trapped in NSW (not a bad place to be), I am heading up to Sails in Port Macquarie in early October.
I used to get excited about regional radio, but I gather the choice in PM will be Hit or MMM.
It looks like it’s Star as I drive through the Central Coast and then over to streaming to save me from the generic radio that has spread faster than COVID.
I used to get excited about my frequent Brisbane to Sydney trips in the 90s to sample the regional stations along both the Pacific and New England Highways but not these days.
Scene of my first marriage back in 2010, recently renovated, quite a nice place these days
Recently when up there I listened to RAW FM if you don’t mind dance music.
I can imagine that drive in the 80s and 90s - Radio 10, 4GG, 2NX, 2CS, 2GO, New FM…now it is really just Hit and MMM.
More like Hit and Miss.
Fixed for you.
Yep, throw in Radio 97 and 2GF (which was one of my favourites) and it was a great ride.
I used to do the inland New England Highway as well for variety (it was actually a quicker run in those days). 2NM, 2TM (not a favourite), 2AD. Then it was a bit of a wasteland until the border apart from a community station in Tenterfield in the late 90s I think. Then 4WK (not great), 4AK, until you got to Cunningham’s gap where the Brisbane stations magically appeared. Good times.
There was 2NZ from the west - not the best signal though.
Ah yes, I recall this one through towns like Glen Innes.
I remember from my road trip through QLD back in January 2018 that every station in regional QLD is either owned by Grant Broadcasters or SCA . They all sound the same ,not like the old days before networking 
Funnily enough for me it was the opposite; while heading north though Sydney I’d like to listen to the Sydney stations a bit, including 2Day & Triple M, both to hear something different and somewhat envious of the all the choice available instead of the very limited selection at home.
IMO, the worst experiences with regional commercial radio have been hearing Ray Hadley on 2CS-FM (well, probably Triple M during the most recent trip in 2017) while going through Coffs Harbour. I left Sydney to escape that type of radio! Needless to say, it didn’t take long before the station was changed.
While I’m sure both used to be great stations in the 1980s and 1990s, these days they’re probably the two FM stations I (and going by ratings results of recent years, most Sydneysiders) listen to the least!
WSFM and Smooth 95.3 are probably the best of a fairly ordinary lot of Sydney commercial music radio stations (what with 2CH dying and 2UE lacking a soul) these days IMO. Had it not relaunched as KIIS six years ago, I might still have a tiny bit of Mix 106.5 in my radio listening diet but that’s about it really.
2MC, 2KO and 2CS had networking from Sydney for decades though. 2MC used to take some 2UE network programming including overnights as they were both owned by the Lamb family. 2KO, also owned by the Lambs, took overnights from 2UE. In the early 1990s I remember 2CS used to take 2UE’s network night program, which was an entertainment and music program offered to regional stations as an alternative to the 2UE nighttime talk-back program. 2MC and 2CS both had the 2UE talk-back program at some stage in the mid-late 1990s, iirc. It was later dropped, and I seem to recall that Stan Zemanek was most upset that his show had been removed from a number of regional stations in NSW.
John Laws of course was on many regional stations back then.
Yeah, I definitely was thinking of many years ago. In recent years I’ve ended up listening to Smooth & WSFM more than Nova, Triple M or anything else.
They do this because they can. I’ve posted an article here before, but feel posting it again may be inappropriate for forum rules, but it’s from a pro commercial radio station publication, the writer of the article basically describing with much of the past regularities of owning commercial broadcast licenses removed, they all couldn’t be any happier…
The sad reality is how the so called broadcast establishment owns and operates Australia’s radio landscape, how they’ve become firmly entrenched into the political and corporate psyche; they are untouchable. No-one can stop them from having their big wetdream, this countries few media owners pushing their idea of radio down everyones throats.
It’s pretty much like a runaway train, listeners nor anybody else can’t do a thing. The article I quoted noted that once upon a time, all commercial radio stations had their licenses reviewed every few years, in relation to community consultation, and that this was a time just before network programming started (1970s and 1980s).
When network programming started in the early 90s, things just deteriorated from there. Hyperthetically if I was the goverment briefing ACMA, I would a:) heavily limit how stations could network (i’d do everything to make it basically damn next to impossible), and b:) bring back these so called license reviews, together with a very strong local content quota, relating to local presenters, content, and news. It would be fund to have all the ownership regulations changed to, no more then one capital city station and two regionals, (I would also wind back the two out of the three media type regulations as well) and at best I would possibly give them an exemption on the midnight to dawn shift for networking as audiences would dip.
I guess it’s fun to wildly dream, but hey, dreaming at least breaks the boundaries :), and now that one realistically has come to the conclusion that radio has become so irrelavent (like the titanic), I just couldn’t care less.
A comfortable compromise between good radio and limited networking was 2WS in the mid to late 80s, networking to 2GO and 2OO overnights, but all three stations still had great programming material during the day. Goes to show a good operation can be done on three stations.
There are more listening options now (for example Spotify as mentioned earlier), plus ad revenue going from broadcast to targeted platforms like Google and especially Facebook, so it’s hardly surprising that the financial side of traditional media is tighter than ever and is driving more networking to reduce costs.
Corporates wanting to maximise their profits by reducing costs isn’t new of course, but reduced ad revenue is still a thing.
I doubt that, I believe they would’ve tried this down the track anyway but the pandemic has forced their hand now.
Almost, but not quite.
Mareeba and Innisfail have NQ Radio, about the last of 3 independent operators with full commercial licenses in Australia.
And even those stations are owned by 8HA Alice Springs.
Yes, on the straight up and for what the current environment is, that makes perfect sense, but I want to try to draw an analogy on how commercial radio (particularly the larger networks) have become a protective species. I’m begging the question, with covid, alot of people are doing it tough, and going through a rough patch. Several businesses are going bankrupt or are at least close to it as in being on life support. I’m asking here, why is commercial radio treated so specially.
The analogy is if we work with the-chases statement that other networks are basically running regionals as repeater towers, it’s like a bankrupt store chain wanting to keep all their empty stores in Westfield locations across a state or territory, while no-one else could ever get access to those same stores for starting a new shop chain. Think of ACMA’s smokescreen argument for any newcomers, “oh the broadcast spectrum is oh so, oh so precious”. For simplicity we’ll use the recent demise of leisure goods store Mr and Ms Jones. It’s like saying despite their business model not being viable enough to sustain, Mr and Ms Jones can keep all their empty stores.
In normal circumstances, they would VACATE their westfield locations, so then in their efforts of saving money from less physical retail space, they’d continue to trade online and ship their goods to their customers. But they’d only be able to do that if they were successfully bought out of receivership, or remodeled their business structure to service their remaining liabilities, which I THINK is currently the case.
However it seems the commercial radio australia attitude has been to lobby for legislation that allows us to keep all our empty stores in westfield (emptied or underutilised broadcast spectrum). This would be despite them not being used, so they’ll be locking out other shops (other potential broadcasters) that would use that retail space. Obviously with the motives of a:) protecting themselves from competitors and b:) holding the retail spaces for when retail picks up again.
For saving money and running businesses mor efficiently, stores have been closing up shop fronts and going online, that’s been a pretty normal practice over the last two to five, if not ten years. But then if a commercial network are having issues with the viability of a broadcast model, then instead of asking for special exemptions on regulations and local content, they, like EVERYBODY ELSE have to understand that if they can’t afford it, SELL IT OFF AS A LOSS. I know that they’d be businesses in other sectors that can only dream of such sympathetic legislation.
I know they’d be somewhat of a flaw in this analogy, where stores in westfield pay a rent, where broadcast station owners own licenses, and that TX sites and station buildings are most probably owned outright too, but I wouldn’t say this as an absolute fact, as I’m quite sure that a lot of broadcast infrastructure is also rented.
I just think if somebody can more broadly entertain this analogy, they would realise that the commercial radio industry are enjoying a much easier deal then alot of other sectors in business, retail, property, manufacturing, and so fourth. If their operation is not viable, then they SHOULD suffer the forces of the market.
If the commercial radio scene was also expose to the same fources, if they go bankrupt, then so it be it, someone else buys out the operation for a good low price, or actually has a chance at getting spectrum. They would then be more chances at other operaters providing different and varied material. They’d be more owner turnover in the industry, something like other sectors I can only describe as being healthy, for keeping the aspect of new ideas and approaches to an industry’s environment fresh.
Even if you don’t believe a word I’ve written here, just ask yourself, what was the last HIGH PROFILE bankruptcy of a normal business. Over the last few months, I’m quite sure plenty of brands come to mind, then ask yourself, the last time a commercial radio broadcast operation went bankrupt? To me, it was new world media with their “Radio 2” operation, only because they were a narrowcaster who were screwed over by those monsters at ACMA.
The immediate disagreement that comes to mind is your suggestion that commercial radio is being treated specially but other large companies aren’t (although at the end you did point out the lack of large bankruptcies).
Look at the bank guarantees when the GFC hit, and now JobKeeper subsidies, special payments to FTA broadcasters, the money handed to Foxtel - who aren’t even a free-to-air provider which could at least be seen to provide a (free) service to the general public - and subsidies provided to mining, plus the ridiculous grant of millions to a new company (with no experience) to look at the feasibility of building a new coal-fired power station (something the market has already decided is not financially viable).
Sometimes there are genuine reasons to support large providers of services to the public in times of massive crisis; imagine the impact if the main banks went bust, taking not only people’s savings with them, but also the loss of financial services, and loans to individuals and businesses.
[Added:] Unfortunately the bigger companies have more customers which are impacted when they close up, so the impact is bigger & therefore the motivation to save them is bigger.
Where the line should be drawn - what should be allowed to fail vs supported by taxpayers - isn’t always clear, perhaps especially at the time, but (perhaps unfortunately) politics does play into this (would companies providing regional news have been supported by the federal government otherwise?).