ABC Local Radio
| Broadcast area | Australia - AM/FM & Internet |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Variable |
| Format | Talk |
| Owner | Australian Broadcasting Corporation |
| Website | abc.net.au/local/ |
ABC Local Radio is a network of publicly owned radio stations in Australia, operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
ABC Local Radio stations broadcast across the continent using terrestrial transmitters and satellites. Its programming consists of news, current affairs, talkback, entertainment, sport, music and local affairs. They are usually reckoned as the flagship ABC radio stations in their areas.
Depending on the time of day and the day of the week, programming can either be purely local (typically on weekday mornings), broadcast from the state or territory capital city ABC station, or simulcast across all ABC Local Radio services across the country (typically overnight, public holidays, in the summer months and on weekends).
Originally, Local Radio was known internally as ABC Radio 1 in metropolitan regions and ABC Radio 3 in regional areas. Radio 1 was a largely local format while Radio 3 was more networked and included content from the national programme, Radio 2.
In the 1980s, Radio National emerged from Radio 2 and Radio 3 dropped its Radio 2 content with Radio 1 becoming ABC Metro Radio and Radio 3 becoming ABC Regional Radio. The Regional Radio stations provided local programming in breakfast and drive but networked common content for most of their broadcasting hours. Some different, local market formats emerged, including the Darwin Metro 8DDD, FM105.7 [1] and Gold Coast Regional, ABC Coast FM (4SCR), 91.7. Up until the mid-1990s, the majority of the local radio stations identified on-air as (frequency) (callsign). In the 1990s, a different convention was used, generally as ABC Radio (region) or (region) FM.
In 2000, these two almost identical networks merged as ABC Local Radio. From this point all ABC Local Radio stations ceased to identify themselves according to their callsigns or other existing names, and instead use the format (frequency) ABC (region), or ABC (region) where there are multiple frequencies broadcasting the same service. However, as the callsigns were used continuously for up to seventy years and are much shorter than the new names, many long-term listeners still use these callsigns to refer to ABC Local Radio stations.
...
Wikipedia