Death of a Radio Station

Snippets from the archives of a bygone era

In April of 2021, a Myall Lakes newspaper headline announced, “Big things ahead for Myall Coast Radio.” The accompanying article revealed that the station had raised over $100,000 to launch its community radio service. But in April 2022, only a couple of months before I joined as a presenter, ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) ruled that Myall Coast Radio was not providing an open narrowcasting service as defined in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, and therefore had failed to comply with its licence condition. Specifically, ACMA didn’t like the music format.

Curiously, the station wasn’t spewing out sexually explicit or expletive-filled rap and punk music; instead, ACMA found that the music had too much of a “broad and general appeal”. Forced to surrender its narrowcast licence, the station battled on using an internet streaming service, but not being able to broadcast on the FM waveband to its community resulted in the gradual decline of its sponsors that provided the vital funds for its ongoing operations.

Nevertheless, it was admirable how the volunteer staff, steered by the leadership and technical prowess of the station manager, carried on with a fierce commitment to deliver the same level of community service accompanied by music, news, and information that it had proposed to ACMA when the licence was first granted.

Each morning before my show, I’d leaf through the Myall Coast Radio binder filled with the latest community announcements, including those for the elderly residents and visiting tourists alike. These included the ‘Free Clinic Bus’ service, providing transport for medical, optical, dental, and welfare appointments for those in need. Additionally, ‘Linked Community Services’ offered low-cost transport for the disadvantaged so they could go shopping or even attend social and community outings. There was also a host of other community announcements too numerous to mention, from local sporting events to monitoring the koala population to broadcasting vital tourist information and special broadcasts during emergencies such as floods, fires and major accidents.

These special broadcasts were a boost to the Myall Lakes community, as the major commercial radio stations transmitting from Mount Sugarloaf, overlooking Lake Macquarie and Newcastle, were not only alienated from the Myall Coast and its services, but they also suffered major signal degradation, dropouts and distortion in the Myall Lakes area. Along with their services, Myall Coast Radio also supported the socially isolated individuals, those with medical or mobility issues or the loss of a partner. A joint initiative to read the local newspaper for the visually impaired was also part of the planning. The service was especially welcomed by the Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest communities, which have the oldest population profile in New South Wales and the entire nation and who traditionally tuned in to radio broadcasts, not smartphones or computer apps. Similarly, the mass of tourists entering the town, who were welcomed by the Myall Coast Radio 87.8 MHz billboard, could no longer tune their radios in for vital tourist and local weather information, including safe boating, swimming and fishing.

I was never made aware at the time that a disgruntled former Myall Coast Radio volunteer had lodged the vexatious complaint with ACMA that led to their investigation of the station. ACMA’s own compliance guidelines state that it operates under a co-regulatory model and generally only investigates the operation of a Low Power Open Narrowcasting (LPON) service when “a formal complaint is made about the service.” In fact, the official investigation into Myall Coast Radio (Report BI-601) explicitly mentions the complaint as the trigger for the April 2021 investigation that brought about the loss of the valuable community asset from which broadcasts had been made by the local member of parliament and the Mayor.

All community radio stations combine their messages with music, news and information, but here’s where it got crazy. In a bizarre trip down the rabbit hole, ACMA went through Myall Coast Radio’s audio logs with a fine-tooth comb, concluding that “the music genres were too vaguely defined and had broad, general appeal.” Myall Coast Radio’s 87.8 MHz broadcast had been limited to typically one Watt ERP (yes, one watt ERP, effective radiated power). Regional LPON stations’ maximum limit is 10 watts ERP. Did ACMA seriously contend that the music’s ‘broad, general appeal’ challenged its commercial entities transmitting over 80 kilometres away at 20kW (twenty thousand Watts) in all directions, or was this just ‘all hat, no cattle bravado’ with ACMA ‘riding shotgun’ for its commercial station entities?

Here’s ACMA’s finding: “Our investigation found Myall Coast Radio FM was not targeting a ‘limited audience’ as required under its licence,” said ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin.

However, Section 18 of the Broadcasting Services Act covering narrowcasting services notes only areas where the ‘reception is limited’; the Act doesn’t mention any limitations on the type of music that narrowcasters can play. Section 18 says: “Open narrowcasting services are broadcasting services (a) whose reception is limited (iv) because they provide programs of limited appeal.” It specifically mentions that the reception is limited, not the programming or music. But this is where ACMA pulls out its trump card to ‘move the goalposts’. It uses Section 19 of the Act, which states, “ACMA may determine additional criteria or clarify existing criteria.” I wonder how many artists would enter into a recording contract with a clause like that.

So, in the blink of an eye, the community’s hopes for the Myall Coast Radio station were dashed, and by late 2023, the station’s financial situation had become so dire that they could no longer afford the rent at their professionally outfitted on-air and production studios at Tea Gardens. Sadly, we had to rip out all the equipment at the Tea Gardens studios and transport it to a small room at the rear of the Bulahdelah rural Transaction Centre, run by the Chamber of Commerce, which then became the makeshift MCR studio. Of course, the costly fittings and studio fixtures that made up the Tea Garden’s soundproofed on-air studio and the production studio had to be abandoned, and I was later to learn that due to the financial situation, the broadcast and transmission equipment was sold to the Bulahdelah Chamber of Commerce. I continued doing shows at the Bulahdelah back room studio, but as I reported in CX205, August 2024, family commitments left me little time to prepare my show, and I took a break in December 2023.

I returned to Myall Coast Radio in January 2025 and, like the other presenters, I didn’t understand how to programme music to satisfy ACMA’s obsession with music that wasn’t broadly appealing. But not having a broadcast licence meant that an internet streaming service wasn’t regulated by nor had to suffer draconian inquisitions by ACMA, so I carried on delivering our community service messages with programmes that included music that wouldn’t turn off our listeners.

Admittedly, I did have a skit featuring some of Yoko Ono’s primal screams and wails, but I stopped short of presenting Tuvan throat singing or Swiss yodelling.

Typically, most community radio stations are constantly walking on eggshells in fear of ACMA’s pedantic rulings, especially when anything marginally crosses over into the realms of the commercial stations. In September 2025, Magic 87.6, a narrowcaster broadcasting to Mudgee, Kandos, and Gulgong, was found to be in breach of the same arbitrary ‘broad appeal’ music absurdity. The ACMA investigation (Report BI-701) confirmed that the station’s target audience was seniors 65 and over when the licence was issued circa 2015/16; however, the investigation found that this would “likely appeal to a general audience in the broadcast area,” and the station’s manager claimed he was told narrowcasters could not play any “recognised artists” that might also be played on commercial stations, a term which is not defined in the Act. At the time of writing, the station was required to pay a non-refundable $15,100 assessment fee to ACMA so the regulator can evaluate an alternative music programme proposed by the station, which is run by a husband-and-wife team now facing the loss of their radio station and severe financial difficulty.

The paranoia is such that even comedy broadcasts and political satire cause some trepidation in most community stations. I did get a Trump AI voice to read out the local weather report one morning, but before airing a Christmas skit I’d written about Santa Claus being a ‘socialist interloper’ because he delivered free toys by sneaking into children’s homes at night, I checked with the committee, who were worried it might be taken seriously. Additionally, inspired by the Indigenous Voice Referendum, I ran my own referendum, ‘Should you pay extra for tomato sauce on a meat pie?’ Trump AI voiced his support for the ‘no’ vote and even threatened tariffs on Australian meat pies if the tomato sauce surcharge wasn’t lifted. Listeners were instructed to submit their votes on a ‘naughty seaside postcard’, which was a thinly veiled dig at how comedy on commercial radio had descended into on-air teams airing sexual innuendo and toilet humour while laughing hysterically at their own tedious insider jokes.

A classic example of toilet humour was demonstrated when the Kyle and Jackie O Show aired a segment in August of 2024 where callers had to identify the station’s female staff by listening to recordings of them urinating in the toilet. ACMA found the segment and commentary revolving around the content to be “vulgar, sexually explicit and deeply offensive,” constituting multiple breaches of the Commercial Radio Code of Practice’s decency rules. In fact, ACMA listed 12 breaches in all and issued repeated warnings to the station; however, no punitive actions were taken, nor licences revoked. Here, Myall Coast Radio’s breach of playing “popular music of broad appeal” presents as a mere blip on the radar compared to the “deeply offensive” breaches by one of ACMA’s commercial entities.

In early 2025, Myall Coast Radio volunteers were advised that an application to ACMA to reissue an FM broadcast licence was declined; the advice conveyed that ACMA suggested a merger with GLFM (Great Lakes FM), a community station based in Tuncurry, NSW, over 100km to the north of Myall Coast Radio’s original Tea Gardens studios. A number of emails from the Myall Coast Radio committee were then sent to its members with recommendations for the merger, including: “Revamp the Tea Gardens roadside billboard. Circulate information to past members to encourage them to rejoin.” And, “Reignite interest with previous sponsors.” Although I wasn’t on the MCR committee, I attended two separate meetings with GLFM regarding the ‘merger’, one at the Bulahdelah studio and one at GLFM’s Tuncurry studios on May 2, 2025.

The amalgamation proposal was accepted by GLFM as noted in correspondence on May 19, 2025. All MCR volunteers were then required to register as GLFM volunteers (as I did), and access was requested by GLFM to refit the Bulahdelah studio. But in June of 2025 I received a text from an MCR volunteer stating that GLFM hadn’t offered any positions to former MCR announcers. I did formally contact GLFM twice, offering my services, but they didn’t respond. I then offered my resignation to the Myall Coast Radio committee, thanking them and all the volunteers for their support, and advising them that I thought the merger was disadvantageous to the former Myall Coast Radio volunteers and presenters.

On September 5, 2025, the Myall Coast News of the Area newspaper ran a headline that read, “Great Lakes FM launches new studio in Bulahdelah.” The article went on to report, “The new studio at Bulahdelah will retain the current experienced presenters, while encouraging new volunteers.” However, the article mentioned only one former MCR presenter, Greg Hayes, a talented country music host and presenter I featured in CX188 (Feb 2023). At the time of writing, almost six months since the ‘merger’, I could not locate any references to Greg’s broadcasts or the participation of other former Myall Coast Radio presenters on the Great Lakes FM website, nor could I find any mention of the merger with Myall Coast Radio on the website, and the huge Myall Coast Radio billboard in Tea Gardens still hadn’t been altered to direct the Myall Coast community to the GLFM station.

From the 2021 announcement of the launch of Myall Coast Radio with its $100,000 funding to the devastating loss of its licence for playing music of a ‘broad and general appeal’, the gutting of its Tea Gardens on-air and production studios, and the loss of all its broadcast equipment and initial capital, culminating in a minimal and unremarkable merger with GLFM, it certainly has been a short walk from the penthouse to the outhouse for Myall Coast Radio.