One thing that’s been made clear to me by several mates at the network, streaming is on the cards early 2025.
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Good news, and about time!
Streaming will be even more useful for SRN (compared to your old mob anyway) given there are more local shifts, playlists and IDs etc.
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The way they’re going it will be all hubbed from the Gold Coast outside of brekky anyway.
Rumours were if Catalano got it, all shifts would be networked outside brekky. Wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up like that anyways.
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No doubt while having a whinge about poor government advertising - this seems to be his modus operandi, buy regional media and be portrayed as some kind of savour only to strip them to a bare shell while complaining about market forces.
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Looking for broadcast techs
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Not surprised, they’re going to need a good team to rebuild the network, I’d love to join the network & jump at the opportunity to do it being based out of 2HD/NEW FM & rebuild it & would even be willing to drop $20k a year on what I get now, but from what I hear they’re offering (award or just above wages).
I’m not willing to drop that much & I think they might get a couple of in-experienced people, but there’s few experienced/qualified techs left in the industry now, & those who are still here are earning generally much more than award wages, in the case of some of us, (not naming names), well above, double or higher than award wages.
A lot of the techs left in the industry are close to retirement too, next 5 - 10 years (me personally have 15 years until retirement), so are looking for big $ to stay in the industry & setup their retirement, they’re not likely to do it for award wages, no matter how much they love the job, an adult working at McDonald’s could probably earn more per year (depending how many shifts they get) than a broadcast tech on award wages.
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It is a worry and not just in the broadcast engineering space. The problem of expecting more for less isn’t unique to this industry. Does one now need a university degree (in electrical engineering, say) to command higher salaries in broadcast engineering? I think it could be done with a TAFE qualification in the past.
Unfortunately I am not good with manual skills.
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Great to see SRN spending some money on their plant and equipment after a lot of years of underspends - hiring staff is usually the first step.
The Broadcasting Award is what is known as a ‘stripped award’ where it never got CPI increases for many years and now that has compounded into very low wages - I doubt it will be possible to hire staff with any actual experience onto that award now.
Broadcasting usually requires a lot of travel and there is just better $$$ available on similar styles of work like 5G projects or mine sites. If the low $$$ have not driven most Broadcast Techs out, the rogue managers certainly will have.
On another note its great to finally see very few techs laid off in the latest round of Commercial TV cuts - since most of the TV work is outsourced to JV’s and service providers with wide customer bases, the MBA’s can’t sack their techs anymore to save a few $$$. The Journo’s and Camo’s were not so lucky unfortunately.
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I’d like to see both AM and FM network feeds come from Sydney in 2025 rather than Newcastle.
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They should make a flagship “FM network” station on digital in Sydney and cut down to just that and 2SM. The jukebox stations will never become profitable, even if they are cheap to keep running it’s probably not worth it with so many other places in the network needing investment.
If you let New FM entirely split from the network to run something fully local and tailored to Newcastle it’ll make it a better station, and the network feed better for the rest.
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I’m pretty sure NewFM is running its playlist based on what local management currently feel the market wants (which I disagree with, as I personally find the format jarring).
If anything, it’s the BOG FM regional network outside of Newcastle which suffers as they are forced to take this generic music format based on Newcastle’s “needs” which take a priority.
I’ve mentioned it before, but the FM network needs different logs to take. Either a CHR format or an AC format. Let the local markets decide based on competition in each market (similar to what ARN do).
As for Newcastle, they need to go more male skewed to make up for Triple M Newcastle shifting to a softer/lesser rock format.
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I’ve noticed in previous posts of yours you hint at that, you seem to hate Newcastle for some reason, not sure what you think will change just moving them to Sydney?
Personally I’d like like NEW FM & 2HD back locally, not networked at all except maybe 2HD mornings, 2HD has suffered being network, especially Breakfast, the local show was 100 times better before it became networked, the best part of the day on 2HD currently is the 3pm - 4pm hour of a weekday when it’s totally local.
Though I’d most like to separate 2SM out from the network & make it local to Sydney only, (maybe a network morning program though?), run the regional network from regionally, be it Newcastle, Gold Coast/Murwillumbah, Lismore (like the hub used to be) or somewhere else.
Having said that though, I’d still like Newcastle to be local & not networked, but they could do network AM/FM out of other studios, worst thing I can think of for Newcastle, not just for jobs, but listeners is to Network the AM/FM into Newcastle from elsewhere, be it Sydney or other regional, I’d rather the network crap go out from Newcastle than be piped into it.
Moving everything to 2SM will give trouble with studio space, they don’t have it, the Laws studio was built in the office space, if there’s going to lots of full time staff there, they’ll need that general office space back, & that makes studio space that much harder again. Newcastle has the studio & office space to run things 24 hours a day with full staffing, who knows, maybe the kids will actually build the new Newcastle studios finally that were promised & DA plans approved by council 10 - 15 years ago, which will give them even more space & make it technically superior to 2SM (without major rebuild/refurbish there).
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Sydney is very expensive to live on award wages though.
I feel the plan is to make the Gold Coast/Tweed station more productive as it’s where Management is based.
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They might find it easier to attract up and coming talent though if they base it in Sydney.
But yes, due to the lower wages, they probably wouldn’t stay for long and use the Super Radio Network gig as an opportunity to be noticed by the bigger (and better paying) networks who also have bases in Sydney. They’ll definitely have higher turnover there.
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I just think you’ll find better talent in a major metro market than a provincial city.
(I’m not saying they will), but imagine trying to lure KIIS’s Gordie or 2DayFM’s MC to move to Newcastle for a workday music shift?
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Michael has done many a shift from Newcastle in the last 10 years.
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30 years, 40 years ago I would have agreed, new talent cut their teeth in regional, & moved to metro if they were good enough, these days there’s good talent that doesn’t want to go the the metro because of living costs, & lifestyle, some good metro talent has moved back regionally for the same reason.
As networking is big now, a lot more than 30 years ago it doesn’t matter if you’re located regionally or in metro, it still gets to the same audience, these days it really depends if your chasing money or not & if you grew up in metro & moved regionally to start your career, then most would want to move back to metro, but a lot don’t, Richard King for example on 2HD, came from Melbourne, he started regionally then worked in Sydney at 2UW in it’s heyday I think was one of his stations, before he moved to Newcastle & he loves it here, I doubt you’d get him to go back to metro, no matter how much you paid & he still gets the Sydney audience from Newcastle anyway as it is.
I’m sure if you offered K&J the right money they’d do their KIIS breakfast from Muswellbrook or somewhere else regionally.
Like @RabbitEars said, Michael has done many shifts from Newcastle, it really doesn’t matter where you’re located anymore with the technology available that wasn’t 30 years ago, most listeners would be blown away by how much comes from many a jocks/presenters homes, including walk-in wardrobes or bedrooms which give good no echo audio.
I’m pretty sure Trevor Sinclair does his 2UE breakfast show from home, I know Melissa Doyle would often do her Smooth FM show from in her bedroom wardrobe, Alan Jones (I know, not a good example) used to do his 2GB breakfast show from his Southern Highlands home & I’m actually surprised K&J don’t do their breakfast show from home, but I think they actually like coming into the studio.
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There is no way. They can’t even get Kyle to visit Melbourne.
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Can’t pay me enough to visit Melbourne either, so I don’t blame him, but unfortunately sometimes at work I don’t have the choice.
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Would need to be a huge amount of money & likely only a one visit show.
I could just imagine Kyle winging about not wanting to travel to Muswellbrook… being
covered in coal dust & risking his health dying prematurely of some respiratory disease - exaggerating as only Kyle can. 
I only heard him mention on air this morning that he doesn’t need to enter in or win tonight’s Powerball $100mil draw as he makes (or will earn) more money than that.
I’m sure Kyle is very comfortable living the high life in Sydney for the foreseeable future.
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