Adelaide radio history
Seagull
We seem to get very few posts from Adelaide.
A friend and I were recently discussing Adelaide radio and are a bit
hazy on a few things.
5DN used to be a Macquarie station. Am I correct in recalling that it
was the only one in the network that covered racing?
When did 5AA commence? Was it in the mid-70s when Melbourne got 3MP
and Sydney got 2WS?
And when did 5TAB commence? Was this an extra licence issued by the
ABA's forerunner as Adelaide had fewer commercial licences than
Brisbane did?
Can anyone explain the strange occurence of both 5DN and 5AD having
goes on the FM band. Did they swap names (like ADS7 and SAS10) or
what?
Adelaides media history is fascinating.
Pity about 5DN dumping its local staff and networking from SEN.
Hopefully it will get the minimul ratings it deserves.
btw ... What's happened to Adelaide's Lamb family that used to own 2UE
4BC and NWS9? Did they ever own radio stations in Adelaide? Do they
still own Nine?
Seagull
Paul Nicholson
network (1969-1974). They used to give the temperature from "under the olive
tree" in North Adelaide.
Going entirely from memory, 5AA would have commenced in the era you
mentioned; it was the "beautiful/good" music station similar to 2CH and 3AK
but with a little soft pop added in; I can remember hearing "Don't Cry For
Me, Argentina" when I visited Adelaide in 1977. You wouldn't have heard that
on 3AK at the time.
During my time at 2GB (1972-1974), they covered racing with Ken Howard (in
his twilight years). The other racing station was in Sydney was 2UE with Des
Hoystead (plus the ABC). There were fewer race meetings in those days. I
think 2KY only covered trots and dogs (at night). I think 3AW may have
covered some racing in the early days.
As I recall, 5DN got one of the original FM licences in Adelaide but the
conversion was not a success. Maybe someone can suggest some reasons? 5AD
eventually purchased 5DN (or was it the other way around) and converted 5AD
to FM on the 5DN frequency (102.3). The former 5AD frequency of 1323 became
the relaunched 5DN. And of course 5AD-FM became Mix 102.3, The original 5DN
frequency (972?) is now Newsradio.
I expect all this is covered in Wayne Mac's forthcoming book.
More postings from Adelaide would be of interest, definitely.
Paul in Melbourne
"Seagull" <dav...@csiro.au> wrote in message
news:1105058507.6...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Seagull
Thanks guys.
Anyone know when 5TAB came on the scene?
Looking at the music formats in Adelaide there seems to be a glaring
opening for an easy listening station.
Seagull
Reegs
Radio102 FM. Not sure why it didn't work... just remember listening to
it one time in Adelaide - the next time we went back - it had become
X102. (Kate Economou was one of the announcers on the station at that
point.)
It didn't last long and the station was bought by 5AD which pulled the
plug and started simulcasting on both frequencies until they relaunced
1323 as the new 5DN in Setember (1994? - I think) there used to be a
blurb on the old DN web page.
Reegs.
And yes Seagull --- I reckon an easy music station or oldies fromat
would do well in the market. I guess somtimes it's better to take the
easiest option rather than format change after format change etc etc.
AK's a perfect example of that. It doesn't always work though - look at
3EE - the breeze 693. 3 double what????
Reegs
Artie
Cuisine" - you'll get an animated discussion - m...@garymac.com.au
Artie
"Reegs" <crie...@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:1105077374.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Andrew Bayley
"Reegs" <crie...@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:1105077374.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Radio102 FM. Not sure why it didn't work... just remember listening to
> it one time in Adelaide - the next time we went back - it had become
> X102. (Kate Economou was one of the announcers on the station at that
> point.)
>
> It didn't last long and the station was bought by 5AD which pulled the
> plug and started simulcasting on both frequencies until they relaunced
> 1323 as the new 5DN in Setember (1994? - I think) there used to be a
> blurb on the old DN web page.
5AD initially re-launched the AM frequency as "1323AM" when it split the
station from the simulcast with 102.3FM, not sure what the format was but i
believe it was "classic hits"-oriented. It was a little while after that
that they decided to revive the news-talk format and the old "5DN" callsign
on 1323.
He Who Knows ? Well Maybe...
ON THE TOPIC OF 5DN / 102.3 FM and TAB RADIO & 5AA .. .. ..
from my understanding 5DN won an FM conversion at Auction (Closed bid
auction - like in the conversion of 3TT and 3KZ to FM back in 1990)
5DN chose to convert to become a music format station - thus leaving a
massive hole for TALK radio in Adelaide. At the time 5AA was running
racing broadcasts.
5DN relaunched as "X102FM" and relaunced as "Radio102" and later again
as 5AD-FM. (Sales / Listeners / ratings figures / marketing gurus and
focus groups are to blame for this)
For some reason the X102 brand failed - people failed to warm to it -
especially the old talk listeners who expected the new station to be a
better quality sound for their old favourite Talk Radio 5DN.
Even worse 5DN quite it's hertiage which meant everything to the
station - and left large market gaps open in Adelaide.
(Note the huge gains of the ABC in this time period !) and 5AA was
basically a racing station at the time.
With the two stations a market rule, the owners of the 102.3 Fm licence
purchased 5AD and launched a 12 month simmulcast. Australian Radio
Network (I understand) increased its interest in the stations to ful
ownership and AGAIN relaunched 5AD-AM/FM to 5AD-FM and 1323 AM. the
1323AM relaunched AGAIn as 5DN (same name - different dial position -
and did not relaunch it as a talk station rather as a CLASSIC HITS
music station with some talk and some sport - it was some of this and
some of that - and probably for that reason it failed to attract solid
talk listeners and failed to attract solid "classic hits" listeners.
Being on AM did not help, the fact that 5DN left the airwaves once
already was not helpful either (Compare this with the consistency and
relative success of 4KQ Brisbane)
So the station was 5DN -> X102 -> Radio 102 -> 5AD FM -> Mix 102.3
if 5DN as rtalk went to FM as-is back in 1990 - this mess would never
have happened and the station owners would heve been forward thinking -
just look at this fact - kids who were "introduced" to FM back in the
early 80s are now TALK RADIO audience age - and expect better than AM.
Pity that did not happen
AND Tab-Radio is the result of a HPON Narrowcast auction back in
1994/95, which allowed 5AA to off load its racing coverage to the new
station and pick up the valuable talk market in Adelaide.
Now - enter SEN to Adelaide
(Hope this stuff is in the right order - to my recollection it is - but
who knows !)
BFT
sh shilshodhwiur hliwurhwiulhr iour hwlour hlowuh row;h
ri;uhwhsblksnkjwyhrolwij iugvfxckljndsoiuho;idqhliebdsdujkk k
ljdkpoweu
Andrew Bayley
> as 5AD-FM. (Sales / Listeners / ratings figures / marketing gurus and
> focus groups are to blame for this)
The first survey for 102 was disastrous... it was something like a 3 per
cent which in a market like Adelaide (with only a handful of competitors)
must have been embarrassing.... while FM conversions in other,
more-competive markets were hitting record highs in their initial surveys
(eg. KZFM, B105).
> With the two stations a market rule, the owners of the 102.3 Fm licence
> purchased 5AD and launched a 12 month simmulcast.
It was the other way around IIRC, 5AD (AM) bought the 102.3 licence (5DDN)
and then commenced simulcast. 5AD, understandably, were sore about losing
out to 5DN in the auction process so as soon as the opportunity arose they
snapped up 102.3 and became one of the first metro two-station operators
under the new rules (2WS/2SM was the first?).
> So the station was 5DN -> X102 -> Radio 102 -> 5AD FM -> Mix 102.3
Almost... it was 5DN -> Radio 102FM (5DDN) -> X102 -> 5AD FM (5AAD) - > MIX
102.3
> if 5DN as rtalk went to FM as-is back in 1990 - this mess would never
> have happened and the station owners would heve been forward thinking -
> just look at this fact - kids who were "introduced" to FM back in the
> early 80s are now TALK RADIO audience age - and expect better than AM.
There were 2 opportunities in the AM-FM conversions to launch an FM talk
format - with 5DN and 3AK, both news-talk stations, snapping up FM licences
in the auction process. 5DN went for music, and 3AK ended up defaulting and
the FM licence went to 3TT. It is a shame neither of them took up the FM
talk option.
Seagull
He Who Knows ? Well Maybe... wrote:
> if 5DN as talk went to FM as-is back in 1990 - this mess would never
> have happened and the station owners would have been forward thinking
-
> just look at this fact - kids who were "introduced" to FM back in the
> early 80s are now TALK RADIO audience age - and expect better than
AM.
>
> Pity that did not happen
Thanks 'He Who Knows' for all that!
After 3AK won one of the original FM conversions in the early 90s I
wrote to them saying that they should go to the FM band with their
bright local talk format which was sounding great following the
unfortunate 3AK/2UE "biggest sound in radio" networking disaster.
I even suggested that they drop the 3AK callsign and simply call
themselves "Melbourne FM".
It was never to be. But it could have changed Aussie radio.
Now 3MEL FM is Nova. And nothing much has changed.
Seagull
Thanks Andrew. You're not such a bad guy really - even if you seem to
have an obsessive aversion to AM stereo.
I'd like to hear something better too (digital??). But until it
arrives I feel obsessed to support AMS which sounds great to me.
So what is left re Adelaide?
What exactly is a HPON station?
How come TABRADIO on 1539 is allowed to broadcast at 10k - when 5AA is
only allowed 5k (the norm) and 5DN 2k?
It would seem to me the Adelaide AM band needs an injection of
"something" ...
Only 8 stations are listed. Three ABC, two community, and three
commercial ... even if one is listed as HPON.
And the FM band is just as sparse.
A city of similar size in New Zealand has more than double this number
of stations.
Why don't Adeladeans complain? And why don't they contribute here?
Seagull
BearCave
"Reegs" wrote:
> When DN converted it dropped it's talk format and became Classic Hits
> Radio102 FM. Not sure why it didn't work...
I'll start by saying that anything I say in this post probably needs to be
verified with others as I'm relying on really scratchy memory :)
As I recall, Radio102 retained the sports-format drive program that had been
running on 5DN, just as 2SM now do the same.
Now ask yourself, "What listening environment am I trying to create here?"
What was a sports-format drive program doing on a 'classic hits' station?
From what I've been told, 3DB didn't find much success as a music station
during the 70s and 80s. Perhaps that had something to do with the coverage
of horse racing on the weekends (my understanding is that both 3UZ and 3DB
covered the races on Saturdays until 1983, with 3UZ covering the races solo
the rest of the week. 3DB and 3UZ then did a format swap in 1984, with 3UZ
dumping horse racing and calling themselves 3UZ M'uz'ic, similar to how 3DB
called themselves DB Music years before, while 3DB went full-time with the
racing).
The point I'm making is that maybe some blocks of programming will
compromise too much the flow of a format, enough to stifle a station's
imagery, in turn preventing the build-up of a (favourable) listener mindset
towards the station.
That said, I'm not suggesting that a flowing format is necessarily better
than a format that's divided into lots of blocks. It is way too simplistic
to assume that having a consistent, flowing format provides the best
results.
In 1996, Triple M launched a serious attempt to lure Triple J listeners to
their station by introducing a format that you may now consider was an
earlier incarnation of the Nova format - in that it had a very cross-genre
music format like Triple J, only trying to be more mainstream, like
Nova...............for the purposes of competing against Triple J.
Of course, we all know now that Triple M's ratings collapsed nationwide. In
Melbourne, Triple M nosedived to 7% and within weeks, the format was dumped
and replaced with more a traditional Triple M format.
So, why did this earlier Triple M fail to dent Triple J, while Nova
succeeded in most markets to achieve the same aim?
There's no easy way to answer that question, so I have to keep my attempt to
answer it as general as possible. It could well have been that Triple M
were doing many things right, yet got a few critical things wrong - a few
things that that success or failure hinged upon.
Who really knows, for example, how much of Nova's popularity, has simply had
to do with the novelty of it being totally new?
Perhaps listeners perceive Nova to be an authentic brand, while they
perceived Triple M's attempt at being a commercial variant of Triple J to be
a fake brand.
In the case of 'Classic Hits Radio 102FM', there had already been the
introduction of 'Greatest Hits KAFM' earlier that same year, so a 'bit music
format with some old-5DN thrown in' was a half-hearted, six-months late
attempt to take any lead in the market.
Perhaps the next format in line, X102, could have been a greater success if
given enough time, but we'll never know. 5AD came along and intervened,
just as SEN is now doing the same.
I guess 5DN just isn't meant to be. Tough job, this radio gig.
From Justin.
James Engelman (ADSL-Home)
5DN won the 2nd FM lic in 1990 (the first was 5KA but that's a whole other
story!). From what I understand they didn't really want the lic and bid
what they thought was a figure well under what 5AD was bidding, expecting AD
to get the license.
However, DN's figure was actually higher and they now found themselves with
an FM license they didn't really want! DN had been a strong performer in the
talk radio scene for years in Adelaide and really wanted to keep it that
way.
So Classic Hits Radio 102 FM was born on the 27th August 1990. The station
was launched in breakfast with Scott McBain (who was also the voice of
Channel 9 here for years) ending 5DN appropriately with Cliff Richard's "We
don't talk anymore".
Radio 102 FM was a ratings disaster. By 1992 Alan Scott, the owner had had
enough and brought in former SAFM PD Bill Page, who had taken that station
to a record 31% share in the late 1980's. With him came many former SAFM
announcers such as John Pemberton, Grant Cameron and Kate Economou.
If Radio 102 was bad, X102 just made things worse! By the end of 1992 X102
was rating an abysmal 4% and going nowhere.
With no promotions budget, they went to air calling themselves "the
underdog" and trying to tell their audience "we have nothing to give away
but at the end of the day only the music matters". Wrong.
At the other end of the dial SAFM were throwing cash everywhere and the
audience lapped it up. At a time when the recession was at it's height,
SAFM devised a clever promotion called "A MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF WORK FOR
ADELAIDE". In a nutshell, it connected unemployed people with jobs and
actually got many out of work people back into the workforce.
X102's response?
An on-air slander campaign called "BANG FM", basically taking the piss out
of everything SAFM was doing. Sure it was mildly funny but it brought legal
action from SAFM (hard to blame them) and made the big X look even worse
publicly.
By the end of 1992, Alan Scott had really had enough of his broken FM toy
and sold it to Jeremy Cordeaux who at that stage owned 5AD, which was doing
really well on the AM band with it's easy listening format. In fact not
long after that it went No 1, a position it held until SAFM took it back in
1998.
So, in 1993, 5AD 1323 AM became 5AD 102.3 FM, which is what should have
happened in the first place. Cordeaux re-launched 5DN on AD's old 1323 AM
frequency after simulcasting AD on both AM and FM for a period of time,
which drew complaints from the other broadcasters in town.
5AD FM went from strength to strength in the mid-late 90's and dominated
commercial radio in Adelaide. Poor old 5DN however, never regained it's
crown of talk radio king of Adelaide, which by that stage and ever since has
gone to 5AA. After the ARN purchase, DN became a mix of talk and classic
hits, which never really warmed itself to the listeners either. They wanted
just talk and they got it at 5AA.
Then after the ARN purchase 5AD became Mix 102.3 in 2001, the sad end of a
great radio station, much like 3XY in Melbourne. In the late 70's/early 80's
5AD was the powerhouse of Adelaide radio, dominating with 15 survey wins in
a row. Now 5DN lic has been leased to SEN and we are about to see the end of
the old girl forever (17th Jan apparently).
So the genesis was:
5DN 972 AM (1924 - 1990)
CLASSIC HITS RADIO 102 FM (1990 - 1991)
X102 (1992)
5AD 1323 AM (1932 - 1993)
5AD FM 102.3 (1994 - 2001)
MIX 102.3 FM (2001 - ?)
5DN 1323AM (1994 - 2004)
SEN ADELAIDE 1323 AM (2005 - ?)
"He Who Knows ? Well Maybe..." <bluef...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1105100045....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Mac
> We seem to get very few posts from Adelaide.
>
> A friend and I were recently discussing Adelaide radio and are a bit
> hazy on a few things.
>
> 5DN used to be a Macquarie station.
*Yes
> Am I correct in recalling that it was the only one in the network
that covered racing?
*No. Other Macquarie stations such as 2GB, 3AW and 6IX had racing. Not
sure about 4BH. They were the Brisbane Macquarie station for yonks.
> When did 5AA commence? Was it in the mid-70s when Melbourne got 3MP
and Sydney got 2WS?
*5AA and 3MP went to air in 1976. 2WS in 1978.
> Can anyone explain the strange occurence of both 5DN and 5AD having
> goes on the FM band. Did they swap names (like ADS7 and SAS10) or
> what?
*See other posts on this. From what Bill Page told me over the years:
the 5DN switch to X102 sounds like a good yarn.
>btw ... What's happened to Adelaide's Lamb family that used to own 2UE
> 4BC and NWS9? Did they ever own radio stations in Adelaide? Do they
> still own Nine?
*Lambs from Adelaide? I thought they hailed from hailed from Newcastle
where they owned 2KO and then 2UE circa 1957. You learn something
every day.
Yeah, let's hear more about Adelaide for sure. As a historian I've
found many aspects of Adelaide radio intriguing. I was a big fan a 5KA
of the '70s.
Regards
Wayne Mac
aussieseek.com
There
The latter two I owned
The Lamb Family lived at Merewether and wed talk on Dixon Park Beach
when I went surfing there in the Morning. His Sport was Bowls
He owned a loan Company and 2KO and invested in UE and everywhere
..I was a panel operator at 2NX/2NM which was the old 2HR/2CK
2HR was at Lochinvar near Maitland then moved to Bolwarra to cover
Newcastle
All around about the time 2NX was opposite the nurses home at the top
of Hunter Street (Handy)
Laws was also at 2NX before 2KO. Manager Ken Robinson fired him. Said
hed never make a radio announcer
All Before I went to 2RE /2TM and the New England Network
keitha
PS this IS theYear of the Knights
Matt Cook
> What was a sports-format drive program doing on a 'classic hits'
> station?
Works for DMG Heritage Albury Hub (sorry "Local Works") with "Up Country
Punt" on Fridays during the AFL season. But then that network is almost all
talk during the day now.
James Engelman (ADSL-Home)
time...it would have done a lot better given the right backing I think
"Mac" <macm...@iimetro.com.au> wrote in message
news:1105304748.7...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
James Engelman (ADSL-Home)
be blamed on on-air or programming...Bill Page was/is a radio genius, you
only have to look at SAFM in the 80's to see that.
"James Engelman (ADSL-Home)" <jeng...@internode.on.net> wrote in message
news:41e1...@duster.adelaide.on.net...
jiminv...@gmail.com
> > > it one time in Adelaide - the next time we went back - it had
> become
> > > X102. (Kate Economou was one of the announcers on the station at
> that
> > > point.)
> > >
> > > It didn't last long and the station was bought by 5AD which pulled
> the
> > > plug and started simulcasting on both frequencies until they
> relaunced
> > > 1323 as the new 5DN in Setember (1994? - I think) there used to be
> a
> > > blurb on the old DN web page.