Article written by Lauren Johnston.
Radio stations have been around for decades! They have helped promote and support bands and artists, not only that they have games that involve their listeners. Radio stations are an essential part of our everyday life, without them the day to day drive to work would be silent, you wouldn’t hear about artists and bands or any new song, there would be no information or news to listen to between songs. Life would be boring without it.
There’s a lot that goes into a radio station, the IT side of things, like being able to have callers come on the air, change songs at the exact moment another song ends, radio waves, sound boards, the list goes on and on. Then you have the radio hosts, who plan out cool fun segments, news segments, and chat with callers about different subjects and topics.
So, what actually makes a radio station? Having a target audience, the listeners that will keep tuning in every day to hear the kind of music they like, to hear the topics they are interested in be talked about. Having quality makes a good radio station, if you don’t have quality radio hosts that are funny, kind and friendly, if you don’t have quality sound and songs etc, then you certainly don’t have a radio station that people are going to want to tune in and listen to. Radio hosts are the key to a radio station, if you tuned into a radio station to hear a flat voice, who just sounded like it was another day in the office, not sounding interested in anything, would you prefer that to someone who sounds up beat, happy, and engaged in the conversation?
This week I got to chat with a University Student, also our Film Section Editor and film writer of this very newsletter, Sam. Sam interns at ‘Fair Comment’ on 4EB Radio Station.
I first talked to Sam about what made him want to intern at the Radio Station? “Because of my interest in journalism, it acts as an outlet for my love of writing, the radio station happened to be offering an internship.” Griffith Uni have an internship program that allows the students to be an intern all over at different companies.
So, what is 4EB radio station about in general? Sam told me that “4EB is a community radio station designed to give a voice to those without one. It was originally designed as an ethnic radio station but now it caters to the youth and LGBTQ+ listeners.”
A radio station that involves everyone is absolutely amazing. That is exactly what 4EB is all about, their age bracket isn’t restricted to any set age bracket. Their target audience is everyone young and old and everyone in between, having an audience range that big is a good thing as you will always have someone listening and can keep a wide range of music and segments. Another thing that is unique about 4EB is that they only play local Australian music unlike other radio stations that are more popular.
We have a wide range of radio stations that we are able to listen to such as more popular ones like NOVA 106.9, Triple J, Hit105, 97.3 FM and so on. What makes these radio stations so popular is that they keep up with the ever-changing music scene and local news, their segments are fun and engaging and they have good quality sound and music choices, everything I mentioned earlier.
In 1925 the Government opened the first ‘A Class’ radio station, 4QG, between the dates of July 25th- 29th was the first broadcast with the first program including a market report followed by an update of the Stock exchange and lastly a weather report. Making this the longest running radio station now known as the ABC radio.
Australia and Brisbane have a long history of radio stations with a long list of successful and unsuccessful stations. Today’s most popular radio station is torn between HIT 105 and 97.3FM, NOVA came second surprising many including myself, as I personally love ‘NOVA’. ‘Triple M’ took third place. The scores aren’t quite that clear, but I do know that it came down to 0.5-1.0 points between all these radio stations, making Brisbane’s radio stations taking out all top 3 places in the ranking charts. 97.3 also took out the award for the title of Brisbane’s most listened to Radio Station overall from Monday to Friday 5:30am to midnight, Nova took out second place, with Triple M coming in third.
That’s about all I have to share on this week’s article about our radio stations that make life better by sharing information, playing some banger hits, lighting up our days and keeping us entertained.
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