As 2HD’s Belmont North translator on 90.5 is not on air yet, it was interesting to see on a drive of Lake Macquarie where 97.5 from Port Stephens was receivable.
Pretty much everywhere.
Sure, signal would fade in south facing locations with obstruction to the north, but would soon improve.
Amazing how far 250 watts will reach.
I’m thinking that with the water tower location at Belmont North, the 90.5 service will cover much of the urban Newcastle are very well from at least within the car.
On an overcast day, even at elevated, south facing locations with Sydney digital services available, Alive 90.5 was not.
As we discussed at the time of the proposal, plenty of other locations in the licence area that are further from the TX and could do with an FM translator.
Listening to a variety of BOG FM stations recently, I must commend each of them and their programmers (not their owner) on their individualism.
I noticed that stations including MaxFM, FM104.7, NowFM, RealFM and 92.9 are all local right throughout the day - way longer than SCA stations. I wouldn’t say all of them are live, as some simply put a playlist on and go announcer-free all day, still giving a solid illusion that the station is live and local. It also shows a big “F.U.” to the wayyy to broad and all-over-the-place NewFM network playlist.
It was great to hear a bunch of radio heads putting together some semi decent production and putting their twist on the 80’s to Now network wide format.
Points must be deducted from MaxFM though. Within an hour I heard at least 4-5 ad breaks! The station would play two songs, then around 2mins of ads… then two songs, ads, etc. Very annoying over time as you were unable to get into the feel of the station and its music. In saying that, MaxFM and FM104.7 did play some great tracks.
Well it’s as close to independent radio as you can get without actually being independent (as they all have the same owner).
And I think Bill Caralis deserves some credit for allowing some free reign on the FM stations. He could very easily insist that Newcastle or Sydney provide an FM hub service from 9am onwards and that all stations have to take it (I sincerely hope he is not reading this!).
IMO BOG FM stations should be skewed to the 18-40 year olds (e.g. CHR format), with the BOG AM stations skewed towards the 40+ stations (e.g. Gold format).
With SCA moving further & further from CHR regionally, along with them ‘muddying the waters’ and overlapping the playlist on Hit & Triple M, it leaves a bit of a gap for this to occur.
As BOG stands, it sounds like Jack FM and Jack AM - a wish-wash of all genres of music on FM, with all genres of talkback on AM (i.e. are they a sports station, a talk station, a classic hits or country station, etc.).
Pick a category/direction & focus on it.
… I do not see why everyone believes regional radio has to have wide variety …
They still play some music on the Super Radio Network AM stations, maybe 3-4 songs per hour on some programs, so they’d still have to pay some royalties to APRA.
I believe the fee that stations pay to APRA is based on a % of revenue (???), though I wonder how much that they play comes into the formula.
…and of course, one would imagine that SRN/BOG (like any other talkback station) would still need to pay royalties for all the music they use as part of station branding elements.
TBH I think BOG would’ve been best cutting Talkin’ Sport 3-6pm and either have an evening talk show 6-8pm, or just extend Graeme Gilbert from 6pm-midnight (yes I just said that).
It would be better than two back to back live sports shows.