25 October 1999

New radio services for Kingaroy

The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) has made channels available for five new radio services in the Queensland radio market of Kingaroy.

Channels for new community radio services will be made available in each of Cherbourg, Gayndah and Wondai. Two town-only open narrowcasting services will also be made available in Kingaroy. A channel has also been made available in Gayndah for retransmission of the commercial radio service 4KRY Kingaroy.

Capacity will also be reserved for one new national radio service in Murgon.

The ABA’s decisions are contained in its final licence area plans for radio in the Kingaroy area released today. The ABA can now move to allocate licences for the new services it has decided to make available.

"The decision to make these new services available to the people of Kingaroy, in Queensland’s Darling Downs region, follows interest expressed by parties in providing new radio services," said Professor David Flint, ABA Chairman. "If all these new licences are taken up, it will lead to a significant increase in the number and diversity of radio services available to listeners in the area."

The licences for the open narrowcasting services will be allocated by auction. The licences for the community radio services will be allocated via a merit based process.

The radio licence area plan for Kingaroy will be available for viewing at the Eidsvold Municipal Library; Gayndah Shire Libraries; Kingaroy Shire TJ O’Neill Memorial Library; Mundubbera Public Library; Murgon; Nanango and Wondai Col Morris Public Library. It is also available on the ABA web site, www.aba.gov.au.

Copies can be obtained from the ABA by calling Freecall 1 800 810 241.

Media contact: Anne Hewer, ABA Media and PR, on (02) 9334 7873.

12 October 1998 (Backgrounder attached - one page)

BACKGROUNDER

A radio licence area plan contains all national, commercial, community and open narrowcasting radio broadcasting services to be available in the broadcasting services bands of the radiofrequency spectrum (part of the spectrum used by AM and FM radio services) in a region.

The Kingaroy licence area plans do not include television services. Planning for television services throughout Regional Queensland, including Kingaroy, is scheduled to commence late next year.

Commercial radio

The ABA has planned an additional transmitter for 4KRY Kingaroy to serve Gayndah and Mundubbera. No additional commercial radio service has been planned for the Kingaroy area.

Community radio

The ABA has made channels available for one new community radio service in each of Cherbourg, Gayndah and Wondai. There is one known aspirant group in each area: Cherbourg Community Council in Cherbourg; Central Burnett Community Radio Group in Gayndah; and Community Radio of Wondai (CROW-FM) in Wondai. The new Wondai community radio service will also serve Kingaroy.

Open narrowcasting radio

Channels will be made available for two open narrowcasting radio services in Kingaroy. Interest in providing open narrowcasting services in Kingaroy has been expressed by Country Classics FM; CMP Services; and TAB Queensland. These licences will be allocated via a price-based allocation system. Other interested parties may emerge at the licence allocation stage.

National radio

The licence area plans reserve spectrum capacity for existing and planned national radio services. In the Kingaroy market, there are three existing national radio services in the Darling Downs and two in Eidsvold. Channel capacity has also been reserved for an additional national radio service in Murgon.

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