Golden opportunity
Is a Queensland country pub’s renovation part of Christian O’Connell’s cunning plan? Also: 4BC boss mystery.
What a great idea! GOLD’s newly national Christian O’Connell Breakfast show is helping to renovate a few local pubs around Australia.
And a big winner in the XXX Save our Pub contest is the Criterion Hotel in Helidon, about 100km west of Brisbane, which, according to RadioInfo, will undergo a “community restoration effort that will unfold across broadcast, digital, social and on-the-ground activations”.
Brilliant!
But hang on a minute. Where is the broadcast audience for GOLD in Helidon?
By my calculation, the nearest signal is the DAB+ one coming from Brisbane, and it would surely not go the distance under normal conditions. (I know people in outer suburbs who struggle to get DAB reception.)
However, the FM broadcast signals for GOLD parent company ARN’s stations in Brisbane (KIIS 97.3) and Ipswich (River 949) almost certainly can be picked up in Helidon.
But neither of them broadcast the Christian O’Connell show.
It seems like an odd decision to attempt to engage an Australia-wide audience in what’s happening in Helidon when radio listeners in the Criterion’s own big backyard are effectively locked out (unless they use the iHeart app).
And from the lucky pub’s point of view, where are any new non-local customers going to come from if not the highway between Toowoomba and the River City?
Perhaps something else is going on here.
A toe in the water, perhaps?
As I, and others, have already suggested, GOLD might do quite well in greater Brisbane if it were available on the FM band.
Perhaps something will be revealed at an outside broadcast from the pub coming up soon.
4BC’s happier days
Somebody involved with Radio 4BC is in a sentimental mood at the moment, sharing some ratings results from a few years ago that included a 9.0 share in Breakfast, 10.9 in Mornings, 6.8 in Afternoons, 7.9 in Drive, 5.0 for the 6pm Wide World of Sports show, and 9.7 for Weekend Breakfast.
All the numbers are far lower now; less than half in some cases. Where did it all go wrong and what can be done? Well, I’ve already had my say here, but I will note that all those shows have different hosts now.
Meanwhile, my spies tell me Craig Laundy, whose company Tapt Media bought 4BC as part of a package deal this year, was spotted walking into 1 William Street, a.k.a. the State Government’s “Tower of Power”, last week. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at whatever meeting he was having there!
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P.S.
There’s damning with faint praise, but there’s also damning with effusive praise. A review of a Brisbane production of a well-known and often-performed play suggests it’s the best interpretation of the classic. Unless the critic has somehow seen every production, on every stage in the world over several centuries, I don’t see how they could possibly make that call. Still, I hear the show is pretty good.
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