Popularizing Satellite Imagery
31 October 2008
The first spot, a three-hour rock magazine program, hosted by Richard Wilkins of MTV fame, went to air last month on regional radio stations and will soon be taken by metropolitans as well. “We’ve had very good reaction to it,” Day says in the offices of his company, Associated Communication Enterprises (ACE), in West Scotland. “That is not to say its (Sky/ Ace’s) birth has not been without complications.” Technically, Sky/ Ace is simple. Based at radio station 2WL Wollongong, it sends out music programs on four stereo channels and one mono on the sidebands of Sky Television.Stations on the receiving end put a dish on their roof and tune in, the same way pubs and clubs have been doing with Sky Television. Sky/ Ace, which Day operates with his partner Owen Thomson, also enables stations to operate without announcers, weekdays, between 6 pm and 6 am, and will soon be offering an around-the-clock, remote-control bed of music across the weekend.There are two imperatives driving him down this road. One is the proliferation of new regional stations around Australia, which is forcing old and new players to run leaner businesses and accept smaller market shares. The other is the drift of national advertisers to television, which offers buyers easy access to viewers via networking.”Commercial radio is not a charity,” Day says. “It is commercial and if it can’t make a profit, there is no rationale for it. Overheads have to be slimmed down and satellite radio provides one way of assisting in this downsizing process.” Day applies this pragmatic commercial argument to the running of his radio stations: 2WL, 3HA Hamilton, 3SH Swan Hill, 3CS Colac and 3WM Horsham. He also uses it to defend his publication of Truth.It sells, he tells critics, and therefore it is worth printing. While extolling the virtues of remote-control radio, he is also a staunch defender of regionalism and stresses the flexibility of Sky/ Ace. If stations take the 24-hour weekend package, for example, they can switch the system on and off and insert sports previews and descriptions or local news and weather satellite images at will.