The tempo for recognising the 100th anniversary has only risen in the last few weeks. It should have been a year-long celebration but it is all too easy for governments and other national affairs to get in the road of something positive these days. Other early stations changed their callsigns early in the peace too. 2UE (the oldest commercial radio station in Australia) started out as 2EU, apparently the letters got swapped to stop people thinking that the station ident was calling out "Ay You!". Another statistic, 2UW (now daftly called KIIS) is the longest-transmitting station - apparently not going off air since it became the first station to transmit around the clock in 1935.

2CO Corowa was one of if not the first of the rural radio stations. One of the Morris's of Rutherglen was heavily in volved. That station was also involved in the In 1934 the MacRobertson Air Race with the Uiver DC2 incident; https://www.uivermemorial.org.au/

A radio was built by Mr Morris to listen to it. That radio still exists: I have seen it and have no doubt its still a worker.

In 1937 2CO was on 448 Kc/s with a wave length of 670m running 7.5KW into an Alexanderson Antenna. Located 3.5 miles NNE of Corowa PO.

Here we are - 100 years of AM radio in Australia.

... and will it stretch to 110?

Another one from the ABC...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-23/abc-switches-off-the-pips-irrelevant-digital-age-smartphones/103137592

So, to celebrate 100 years, they will... remove the hourly time pips that have always been a feature of radio..

Last one at 7pm tonight.

A google search for 100 years of radio turned up a number of links which may be of interest.

https://citynews.com.au/2023/winding-back-the-dial-on-100-years-of-australian-radio/

https://www.2gb.com/australia-celebrates-100-years-of-radio/

https://mumbrella.com.au/change-competition-and-the-future-celebrating-100-years-of-australian-radio-807559

https://www.kidsnews.com.au/history/australian-radio-celebrates-100-years-of-history-on-the-airwaves/news-story/28d285ce8e3455a5db1ec891a68df018

https://www.bay939.com.au/local-news/happy-birthday-radio-celebrating-100-years/

... and many more

Happy 100th birthday !!

6KCR, Kalamunda Community Radio celebrated the 100th Anniversary of radio in OZ by having the opening of our new studios on the same day 100 years later.

Was a great opening for us a Community station with about 45 invited Guests and opened by the local MLA for Kalamunda Matthew Hughes through whom KCR was able to secure a grant of $31K to mostly fund the build.

This has been the culmination of a 3 year project to get it done with some of the time being tied up with obtaining Council approvals as the studios are in a Council building.

The desk pictured is in the larger studio especially setup to accomodate large groups to perform
on air for various programs with many being local artists and the most notable being Dave Hole who lives nearby and has been live on air a couple of occasions.

The other studio is smaller but has an identical desk and Presenters switch the desk to transmitter feed via an Elan Delegation Audio Switcher...a very fast and silent audio switch.

To connect every device to the desk which includes the remote control functions of the fader ON button consumed 130M of twin core screened audio cable and oodles of various connectors.

The steel frame was made by one of our volunteers and the local Mens Shed manufactured the MDF top and our volunteers finished it with 2 pack Estapol Epoxy clear floor finish so can withstand lots of hard use.

Inputs from a Mini Disc unit, 3 CD units Turntable, two others for Laptop use plus Announcers mic and 3 Guest mics which are all headset mic combos. Other inputs from news feed, standby music and output from the OB Codec.

Re the pips. There should have been six, but there was sometimes only 5, occasionally 4. So care was not always taken to fade them in properly.

Brad can you fix the links in my posts? It seems the automated process isn't doing its job.

Apparently, at least with the ABC networks in recent years, the pips were only sent by the main stations.
Reason? Regionals were fed by satellite links with inherent delays and did not transmit the pips.

ZScan, the process used to correct spelling mistakes and format links was offline. It's back now.

The time signals once sent by most, if not all, radio stations was a useful resource and probably still is, given that ringing 1194 does nothing now. If you need to set your clock, just tune in prior to hourly news bulletins and wait for the signal.

I remember the signal being played at 16:00 each Sunday during the footy broadcasts on 2UE 40 years ago over Frank Hyde, Rex Mossop and Ray Hadley. Even match callers couldn't defeat them.

I don't think many stations play them now, but it's a shame they are ditched just to please the phone generation.

I remember 2SM having a special distorted time signal back in the heavy metal era.

ZScan...

Thanks Brad for fixing it .

Something I picked up today.

".......As the ABC celebrated 100 years on air, the pips were silenced, not with a beep but a whimper

The first licensed station to go to air in Australia and reach its 100th birthday originally had the call sign 2SB. It later became 2BL and is now known as ABC Radio Sydney. The celebrations last Thursday, November 23, 2023 went from early morning to late into the night.

Of course, your humble correspondent, who rarely rises before the crack of noon, sent others more able to cope with the early hours than he. Their handiwork can be read here and here. You can listen to the whole morning’s show presented by Sarah Macdonald here. Sarah also features on my home video of the pips execution below.

No, I am far more suited to evening events where there’s a wider variety of refreshments than orange juice and coffee.

Apparently, King Charles III was unable to attend. One might be tempted to surmise he was somewhat distracted watching the latest episodes of The Crown. Nonetheless, His Majesty did find the time to scribble out a customary Royal note of congratulations afforded all Commonwealth subjects on becoming centenarians, including Australia’s dear old Aunty.

However, this particular “dear old Aunty” has no intention of falling off the perch any time soon according to the speakers that addressed the crowd. Among them were Ben Latimer (main pic) who has taken up the role of national content director for the ABC Radio capital city brand after many years at Nova.

Also on the podium was the founder of this masthead, Steve Ahern who is managing the Sydney station as well as acting in that role for the others in the major market network. In a bit of a surprise to the crowd gathered in the art gallery section of the State Library, the CEO of Commercial Radio and Audio, Ford Ennals was also invited to speak. Both he and Ahern spoke of the great collaboration between the public and commercial broadcasting sectors on matters that affect both, such as new technologies and emerging platforms as well as audience measurement.

In the end, they vowed to remain close. frenemies. Strong competition, after all, drives better content and innovation.

Mr Ennals, of course, cut his teeth working with both the BBC and the commercial sector to introduce digital radio into his native UK. Chatting with him after the ceremonies I asked him to draw a comparison between working with the BBC and the ABC. He told me that the BBC was more dominant in the market and could afford to attract the biggest stars.

A bittersweet moment came later in the evening when the pips were officially made redundant. No, not The Pips of Gladys Knight fame, but the Pips that lead up to the news on the hour. Yes, those high-pitched electronic chimes that are oddly reassuring as they countdown to the hour and the news theme, are now considered superfluous to Auntie’s needs.

Scattered among the crowd were some dozen “ABC Superfans” who, eschewing the million-dollar prize giveaways offered by some of the public broadcaster’s commercial counterparts, instead won their way through to a cocktail party where one of them was selected to pull the plug on the pips – so to speak – never to be heard again.

BTW: Don’t you just hate it when you’re standing with phone camera to eye, obviously filming an event when some inconsiderate ‘person’ saunters in front of you and blocks your shot?

Comments
Anthony The Koala
Monday 27th November 2023
The DAB+ versions of RN and Metropolitan (2BL 702) do not have time pips at the start of the hour. That's because of the delay between the analogue and DAB+ signals.

In fact the time pips, which were provided to radio stations by the Sydney Observatiry were ditched in 2013 for the 1300 timeslot on 2BL.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/column-8-20130206-2dyn6.html

Other stations have never had time pips from the beginning: 2WS, 2Day and MMM to name a few.

2SM ditched the time pips in the 1980s.

Anyway, the clear identifier for a top of the hour "signal" has been the news theme.

Today clocks are synchronised on the FM band via its RDS service or the DAB+ service.

True many FM radios don't have RDS facilities. But if your FM radio displays the callsign and/or scrolling text, the FM radio receiver has RDS and the clock is displaying the correct time.

Like mobile phones, the clocks on a DAB+ or RDS-enabled FM receiver automatically change for daylight saving.

2GB continues to transmit time pips on its DAB+ signal. But due to the delay of the DAB+ signal, the time changes before the time pips.

When time pips were the standard fare of a broadcast, time pips had a pip at 30s before the top of the hour, then 10s then the six pips at 5s to the hour.

Today, time pips are only six pips at 5s to the hour.

So are time pips necessary? ABC TV ditched the analogue clock in the 1980s. There is a clear identification of a change in the hour with a recognisable news jingle. Music stations never bothered with time pips.

Today, radios through RDS on FM and mobile phones automatically time.

If you don't have any of those devices, try your digital TV or PC.

If that is not available ask a friend.

Thank you....."

Re The Time Pips.

6KCR recently changed news providers which automatically downloads itself 15 mins prior to the hour every hour and our very savvy IT bloke generated his own Time Pips which on the computer are automatically inserted in the audio file immediately before the news bulletin starts.

The Pips provide the Cue to the live on air presenter to fade UP the News and put it to air..works very well for us.

In the past never had any pips but now we do.

ABC only got rid of their clock because they changed their programming format. Back in the early 1980s and before, the ABC took several breaks per day in their broadcasting schedule because they mostly ran programming that was shorter than 30 or 60 minutes due to the programme length permitting ads. Even SBS only broadcasted for four or five hours a day back then.

2SM reintroduced time signals in the early 1990s.