It would have been a bad thing indeed for Triple R community radio of Melbourne, Australia—a proposed six story development that would have blocked the link between the operation’s East Brunswick studios and its transmitter site up on Mount Dandenong. The station could have come up with a workaround, moving its radio mast, but at a cost of over $450k.
Fortunately, regional planners intervened. They set up an independent commission and concluded that the price tag was too high and Triple R too important a resource to allow the blockage. The development will now cap at four stories.
“Triple R lives in Brunswick but belongs to all of Victoria,” a Minister for Planning for the south Australian state told a newspaper after the settlement. “Whew,” said everyone else. Here’s the official Triple R statement on the call: “We’re relieved that the Minister intervened and a sensible decision has been reached to protect the community interest and allow Triple R to continue to operate from the premises the station owns in East Brunswick in the same way we have for the last 10 years.”
The station actually goes back to 1976 and now stands as Australia’s biggest community radio signal. It has almost 15,000
subscribers and 440,000 weekly listeners. Probably the most widely listened to Triple R show is Breakfasters, which airs Monday through Friday from six to eight AM and offers news, traffic, weather, quizzes, tech reviews, movie reviews, animal behavior observations, and pretty much everything else. Most of the rest of the shows serve up music of all varieties and are hosted by various individuals who appear to converge for The Graveyard Shift, a consistent potpourri of eclectic sounds streaming from 2 to 6 am.
Flush right there’s the transmitter view from Mount Dandenong, courtesy of the World Radio Map. Pretty beautiful, I’d say
