Interesting thread - have been wanting a station back in Sydney ever since the "glory days" of Sydney radio died back in mid 2000...

The best point for me would have been around end of 98 and all thru 99 when New Wave (99.3 FM or later known as Dance FM) was on the air... They were running on a community licence and were full time - and due to their position in the northern area of Sydney (high up) you could get a decent reception across most parts of Sydney - except in far south or west... And at that time also Wild FM would come on for a month at a time (altho 99.3 was leagues ahead!)... I could only see it getting better from there! Esp with the FT licence handout coming up... But we all know what happened with that - and right now it's probably at the worst point it's ever been at from a dance / electronic / trance POV...

I guess there are a couple of decent shows on at diff times of the week on diff stations, but it's a matter of knowing when and where to tune in... Not just as simple as tuning to one frequency and that's it... And definitely not nearly enough of them on the air!

Maybe we could start a thread or site to collect info about all these various shows for people to tune into? But anyway, that's a side issue...


In terms of the actual station, I think it definitely needs to be conventional (ie. not Net stream based)... It needs to be something for the car, for where ever you are NOT just when you're in front of the PC... And I think it could be quite a lot cheaper this way - seeing as there wouldn't be the costs for buying large amounts of bandwidth, etc...

I understand and agree with what Matt P says about this sort of station not being commercially viable but would that really be an issue? We're not really talking about making $$$ here just to serve the trance community out there right? I guess that what Matt P was saying is more along the lines of "don't expect to get any companies willing to pour lots of money into this" cos they ain't going to get much back!

Interesting what he says about digital radio too, but that is still well in the future somewhere too... That would be awesome if we could get the interest of major labels like MOS to start their own or affiliate with existing radio stations...


But anyway, back to reality! I think that there should be one station setup in both Sydney + Melbourne under a community licence... Melbourne should be fine with only one station to cover the whole city cos it's a rather flat city (geographically ) + from the past when I was there I remember being able to listen to Kiss, etc almost anywhere you were... Someone correct me if I'm wrong (I'm from Sydney)...

With Sydney I think we'd need to take the lead of 99.3 and start up somewhere on the north shore which would cover the majority of Sydney but not all (as mentioned above)...


Now for the questions - how easy is it to get a community licence? What is the process? What are the restrictions?

How many people would be interested in actively helping out with this? DJ'n, technically, behind the scenes etc...

What would the cost be to start up? Transmitting gear, studio hire, etc...


We'd have to think of how to get money flowing into the station... (Not for profit but just to keep the thing running)...


As per Wild, etc we could start a membership where people themselves pay a yearly fee to be part of and help the station survive ($50 each or something)...

Can there be ads on community stations? I remember hearing lots of club based ads on Wild etc so there's $$$ there too... And then of course there's the eventual CD launches and all sorts of other ways of getting the cash coming in to keep the place alive...


I believe Wild was making so much money that this was a major part in why they didn't get the licence in the end, because they weren't really a community station anymore but turning into a large commercial station that wasn't in the criteria of what the ABA was looking to hand out the FT licences to...

The problem with these stations was that they weren't interested in keeping it non-profit and "just for the love"... Their main goal was to become a massive commercial success and in the end that may be what killed them?

I think that as long as the vision is kept simple and small then we will have no problem...


So, it's all possible - it's all VERY possible Basically quite a large untapped market out there in both cities I believe... Just a matter of someone taking the lead, getting it started, getting the necessary volunteers and then getting the word out, becos the only way this will survive is with a good amount of interest from the public...


Tell me people... Am I tripping? Or is this is all just there waiting to be done?

I really can't see why this can't be done... It's just a matter of the commitment + passion to making it succeed is it not?

Dance music is on the sydney airwaves.

FBI anyone tune into that?

6pm - 8pm monday - friday they have sydney DJs doing shows, now its all house & breaks based with some prog when ben korbel and dynamix are on, but i mean its a start.

Then 12 - 3am friday night and i think sat night aswell is Psy trance which is pretty cool.

8pm - 10pm saturdays is inthemix radio show (they had J00f on once )

3am - 7am saturday and sunday morning has prog playing by scott baker and simon bell.

And there are other shows scattered around the place that seem to play some stuff.

Its not trance, but its good for the car when driving around.

Maybe approaching FBI could be a start? they might give a slot to us? who knows!

Maybe Cam can get nova to put an extra dance slot on rather than just the saturday night? I know 96.1 do a dance show (commercial dance ) every week night at 10pm i think it is, maybe nova can follow suit with a real dance show?

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i thought that you could pretty easily get a low-powered transmition licence for community radio, and it was only the high-powered stations that you could get right across sydney that needed these hard to get licences. if that's right, then the idea of setting up somewhere up high, where that low-power signal would go further than it is really supposed to is the way to go.
all these low power stations that used to be around, you'd find the signal coming and going even within the target area, so I never stayed tuned in that long anyway.

unfortunately, it really does seem that everyone here has questions, but no-one has many answers

yes - it is an untapped market, and to be honest, the possibilities
are endless. streams from clubs every weekend, stuff like that.. maybe start to broadcast the big events. we have the means, but i dont think we have the $$$..

is there anyone out there who has been involved in this kind of thing before?????????????????????????????

we need help1!1

radio 100 presents a smell of trance with dj paulie, underground baby.

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radio 100????

Thinking of clubbing numbers in sydney who listen to the 1 style of music I doubt it'd be viable at all.

Trance and prog in Sydney get about 1000 people to monthly events, excluding hard trance which gets about 700-1000 a week.

So the audience is really small if you want to keep the quality high.

We already have FBi playing a decent whack of prog (about 14 hours a week), and RUSH playing a few hours of trance a week....

Local community stations, which is @ best the kind of license we could get still need sponsers...who'd be willing to sponser us? DMC/Lights and sound/MoS? Why would they both for a max audience of 2000 people in Sydney(And that's all of SYdney).

Cutting down the quailty of music would give more views but even for people like Wild/99.3 it wasn't viable to run a commerical station.

Australia just isn't the place for a full time EDM station.

Sorry guys, it's not going to happen.

Previous experience; I used to work @ the community radio station in the shire; 99.7. My Broadcaster's license has probably lapsed, but I'd be up for re-newing it. Time wise, to run a station, I'm not even going to bother with, especially if it was 24/7.

A nice dream; Australia just isn't the place for a full time EDM station.

--djway

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Last edited by Xavier on Jan-08-2004 at 09:25

Kiss was the best thing Melbourne ever had...there needs to be something like that..NOW

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