The sad loss of yet another AM music station, 4KQ Brisbane (693), will occur on July 1. It's another victim of SEN sports. There won't be an online music presence. The 693 frequency will suffer the same fate as 2CH, becoming another useless sports channel.

As far as I know, this leaves 4BH (1116) as the only AM music station in Brisbane.


(Seems 4BC and 4BH swapped positions on the dial late last year, that I didn't know about).

I've been streaming 4KQ for years. Sad to see it gone soon.

In the 1960s 4KQ was "Easy-Listening" format while 4BH was Top-Forty with a 2-kw pre-war AWA transmitter located remotely near the river delta on 'salt flats' for good 'ground-plane' effect. There was no FM then for some strange reason(s).

No FM in the sixties. Not strange at all! Australia was backwards in lots of these things. We had no colour TV till the mid 70s.

A lot would say we are a more backwards nation now than back in the 1960’s.

Spinning in the hits on 4BH was Bill Gates, funny enough they also had 'Gates' brand mixer consoles!
Although US had many FM in early 60s, nearly all the Top 40 and Rock 'n' Roll was only on good old mono AM I'm told, so same experience for the youth as Australia! The FM stations thought rock music was beneath their dignity!

Australia did have a FM service operating out Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide between 1947 & 1961. The programme source was either the ABC National or Metropolitan service depending on the whim of the transmission engineer. The FM service ceased in 1961 ostensibly to make room for more VHF channels with the introduction of regional television in Australia.

In regards to colour television, Australia wasn’t too far behind the rest of the world. The US did have colour television since the early 1950’s, but most of the programs were still in black & white until 1966.

I remember all the advertising for AM Stereo in the late 80s by my local radio station at the time 3UL. Does anyone broadcast AM in stereo these days? Other than car radios, I wouldn't imagine there were too many receivers made to support it.

Electronics Australia had a FM/AM stereo kit in the late eighties which I built - still got it somewhere. Put it away because the AM stereo tended to drop out regularly, supposedly because of insects getting fried on the transmitter antenna - at least that is the story I heard - and then the FM stereo failed.
The AM radio was not very sensitive and only worked well when the non-resonant loop antenna was replace with a tuned loop.

Officially we didn't get FM until the late 1970s, following a long on-air campaign by then-AM station 2JJ. In Sydney the earliest stations were 2JJJ (youth-oriented), ABC-FM and 2MBS (both classical music), and 2CBA (religious).

As for AM stereo, it was basically a failure as nobody could be bothered buying radios to listen to it, and also the overmodulation that the stations employ couldn't be used. I still have the Electronics Australia kit radio and while it was useless on FM, it worked a treat with AM stereo. The stations that I know broadcasted in stereo were 2BL, 2GB, 2UE, 2KY, 2UW, 2CH, 2SM, 4BK, 2BS, 2CA, 3UZ, 5AN and quite a number of other country stations (which I can't recall exactly which ones now). 2BL, 2GB and 2UE were a complete waste, being talk stations. 2KY were for the most part useless too, but they did play music on the odd occasion. 2UW started with rather poor frequency response but they worked on getting it better. 2CH and 2SM both played easy-listening music at that time. 4BK (1296) had the best content but was only available at night with severe interference, but then they switched to FM and were never heard of again (here).

But as far as I know, no AM station broadcasts in stereo now. I may as well throw out that EA project, despite it being a wideband receiver.

The big advantage of AM is that it can travel. It is suited to stations that are either playing older music or talk-back and politics. FM sounds better because of the wider bandwidth and channel spacing but it requires far more powerful transmitters for a given distance. A typical AM transmitter in a capital city today is 2-5kW but an FM one will be 10-50kW and still not transmit as far as an AM one.

The only stereo AM receiver I have ever seen was a Eurovox car radio in a mate's VN Holden Commodore - they were the standard fitment at the time. By the time the VR model came out, stereo wasn't an option. One of the last radio stations to stop advertising stereo transmissions in its ident was Bathurst's 2BS.

"Worked a treat with AM"
It did. The sound quality was excellent, if you could find program material you wanted to listen to.

I built an electronically tuned loop antenna offered by Oatley electronics in the early '90s in the hope of getting a somewhat more convenient loop antenna but never succeeded in getting it to work, and put it in a box during a house move- strange since the big projects such as EA amplifiers and the tuner worked first up.
The only initial problem with the tuner was that it fritzed the processor chip early on - the replacement continued working for ten years or so until the stereo of the FM packed it in.

By the 1970s, some US FM was dipping its toes into the once taboo Rock music in the more timid formats of 'Soft Rock' or 'Album-Oriented-Rock'--(AOR). Same with Brisbane's first commercial FM station 4MMM (not wanting to provoke the regulators?) with an AOR format -- their first tune to air setting the theme: "Time for a Cool Change"!

I really enjoyed AM Stereo during the 80's and 90's in WA as most AM stations got on board with it and I had a Dick Smith AM Stereo receiver in the car and it was a VG performer...In fact I still have that receiver tucked away in a cupboard somewhere as at that stage I owned a Lancia Beta but like many Italian cars it suffered from rust and it ate away the front door pillars and when you could see the road through the foot area on the drivers side it was time to send the car to the scrap yard.
So hoiked the AM Stereo receiver out before it got carted off and used it on my work bench until AM Stereo died in WA.

AM most certainly goes way further than FM does and I now wonder what is going to happen to the country areas on the outskirts of Perth as ACMA have put out a discussion paper to virtually MOVE all existing AM stations in Perth ...except for 990 AM to the FM band and the community station I volunteer at 6KCR on 102.5 200W ERP is to move to 88.9 to make way for the ABC (6WF 720) 100Kw on 102.5FM.

When we wander out into the bush here in our camper the ONLY 3 stations that can be reliably picked up are 6WF 720 on 60Kw, 6WA Wagin on 535 I think 60Kw and 6DL on 510 also 60Kw...I am talking 100kms out of the Perth metro area. There is NO way that 6WF when it goes to 102.5FM that we will be able to receive that anymore whereas the AM three are generally all receivable in varying strengths depending upon time of day so one could always tune in and get the latest news and weather from one of those.

The first commercial FM stations in Sydney were 2DAY-FM (104.1) and 2MMM (104.9). Both stations shared facilities and there were technical problems early on, so they went off the air for a while to fix the issues, before anyone would notice.

2DAY had a soft music format (they acquired the nickname of yester-day), while MMM went straight to the top of the ratings with rock music (I was one of their new listeners). The power level was initially quite low for FM, but went up in increments to get the coverage they needed. 2DAY later had a format change to become a current-top50 station with lots of rap music (ugh!), so at that point I stopped listening to them. MMM has sports talk and other talk too, although sometimes you can get music among the ads. Not surprisingly, they no longer lead the ratings.

2WS probably got away with the biggest con of all. They started on AM (1224) in 1976 (I think it was), with a commitment to focus on Sydney's western suburbs. The transmitter was at Seven Hills. Then they made the change to FM and the transmitter went with the rest of them to Atarmon on the North Shore. At that point the commitment to the west was forgotten about, and their play list consists entirely of a small list of 1980s music. The transmitter at Seven Hills was taken by 2RPH, and Fred can tell you all about that.