Sydney’s 99.3 2NSB bites the dust
October 29th, 2009 at 12:54pm
Sydney’s 2NSB, 99.3FM across the north shore, has shut down due to financial problems, apparently. The station is currently relaying the BBC World Service instead of broadcasting local programming, fulfilling its licence condition that it must continue to broadcast until such time as the licence is cancelled or an agreement is reached with ACMA.
The Mosman Daily reports that the station’s board of directors decided to call in the administrators on Monday night, programs were quickly taken off the air in favour of the (cheaper) BBC World Service and the locks were changed. The station had been on the air for 26 years.
Unfortunately the news report is very light-on for details, and is in fact so vague on some points that one can’t help but believe the rumours floating around that there is a fair bit more to the story than what has been reported. If that’s the case, then I expect that we will hear more about this as time goes by.
I am quite disappointed by the closure of 2NSB as I liked the format, and I also enjoyed doing a media news segment with Oly Peterson on Tuesday afternoons.
I must thank reader Max who emailed me about this early this morning, albeit cryptically. Even though it’s bad news, I’m thankful that it was brought to my attention.
Farewell 2NSB.
Update 3pm: Radioinfo have now picked up the story, incorrectly describing the station as “silent” in the process, but have no more details than we have here except to say that some unnamed board members recently resigned. Instead they’ve done the usual “we have nothing but won’t be outdone” reporter’s trick of filling their article with a blow-by-blow account of the station’s history. End Update
Update 6pm: Now Radioinfo are getting somewhere. ACMA have informed them that they will wait “several weeks” for the voluntary administration process to take its course, before deciding whether the broadcasting licence needs to be cancelled. This means that there is a glimmer, albeit a tiny one, that something will eventually fill the role of “2NSB”, although considering that the current format proved to be thoroughly unprofitable, it is unlikely that this will be similar to the 2NSB that we knew. End Update
Update 16 August 2010: John Southgate, one of the people responsible for the revival of 2NSB has written in with the following comment. Thanks John!
Sydney North Shore’s FM99.3 has been operating successfully since February 2010 with a new board of directors and in August 2010 is ready to recruit a permanent station manager. Details of the position can be found on the station web site at FM993.com.au or through SEEK at seek.com.au.
End Update
Samuel
Entry Filed under: TV/Radio/Media
1 Comment
1. SLF | November 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 am
Radioinfo were correct, the station was silent for a period after its equipment was turned off by the administrator, reportedly worried about royalty costs. It was switched to the World Service after it was explained to the administrator that it could be streamed for free and thereby fulfill their licence obligations.