Yes, I remember Hervey Bay had great KQ reception. Bundy, Bargara adequate too.
4BU signal does improve on the drive from Maryborough to Hervey Bay, slightly better as you say. I remember trying to listen to Stan Zemanek via 4BU one night in an esplanade apartment where signal boomed in during the day but hit with skywave fading at night.
4BU should have asked for a repeater before licence area boundaries were defined in the late 80’s. You’re right, Caralis would have repeaters all over the place.
Edited to add: 4BU had local ownership did it not in the 80’s? A very local lot who kept the station sounding more in the dark ages than 4MB as Brianc68 has often made comment. Surprised they spent money to install the 5 kW DA setup. Therefore unsurprised no progress on wider licence area or translators.
Remember, Caralis bought the 3rd commercial licence in M’bo, $700 000, multiple extensions granted by ACMA as he tried to have the TX site moved to Mt Goonaneman. ACMA/ABA rejected this and he gave up on it, passing the licence for auction price to RG Capital (now SCA).
Caralis, for all his FM repeaters, does not keep up the maintenance on 4GY Neusavale. 4GY haven’t had an engineer on staff for years. Staff do have training to do some work, but that’s it. Engineers come from Toowoomba or Tweed Heads for major work.
Who knows, might have turned down 4GY to make a case for FM 107.1 translator?
Always frustrated me that 4GY could broadcast its AM signal (in the 90’s for me) into the Sunshine Coast, but 4SS faded rapidly once beyond the little school at Federal.
Yes, I haven’t heard a need for a translator for 4RO. TX site is on salt flats at Port Alma, so it’s on the way to Gladstone anyway.
Northern end of the licence area, around Yeppoon , Capricorn Coast towns, 4CC signal is not good.
I wonder if a 3rd FM in Canberra would work? Enough ad dollars to support it?
Despite being the nation’s capital, commercial radio is a business, if the ad dollars don’t support enough revenue, the service will be limited.
Many of the towns mentioned are adjacent to Remote NE licence area, he had to get translators on air or risk the remote services eating into his area. It also provided more standing to convince ACMA to reject or wind down the applications for transmitters of the Remote NE services.
Each existing licence could have a condition placed on it to serve its original area first or similar.
Yes, the Rocky/Gladstone AMs did share programming, but that was a disaster and never done before.
4RO was always run older, on the Toowoomba log when RG Capital (SCA) owned, they were once all Alberts stations. When 4RO was bought by Prime, it took the talk programming. 4CC (4CD before) was always a younger station, Gladstone has always had a younger population and the thinking was to grab some Rocky audience with a younger format. That continues today.
Prime did a lot of things wrong when Ronnie and Rob left but they never stuffed up those two stations as much the Camerons with the shared programming.