ABC Local Radio stations broadcast across the continent using terrestrial transmitters and satellites. Its programming consists of news, current affairs, talkback, entertainment, sport, music and local affairs. They are usually reckoned as the flagship ABC radio stations in their areas.
Depending on the time of day and the day of the week, programming can either be purely local (typically on weekday mornings), broadcast from the state or territorycapital city ABC station, or simulcast across all ABC Local Radio services across the country (typically overnight, public holidays, in the summer months and on weekends).
History
Originally, Local Radio was known internally as ABC Radio 1 in metropolitan regions and ABC Radio 3 in regional areas. Radio 1 was a largely local format while Radio 3 was more networked and included content from the national programme, Radio 2.[citation needed]
In the 1980s, Radio National emerged from Radio 2, and Radio 3 dropped its Radio 2 content, with Radio 1 becoming ABC Metropolitan Radio and Radio 3 becoming ABC Regional Radio. The Regional Radio stations provided local programming in Breakfast and Drive, but networked common content for most of their broadcasting hours. Some different, local market formats emerged, including the Darwin Metro 8DDD on FM105.7[1] and Gold Coast Regional, ABC Coast FM (4SCR), 91.7. Up until the mid-1990s, the majority of the local radio stations identified on-air by frequency and callsign. In the 1990s, a different convention was used, generally as ABC Radio (region) or (region) FM.[citation needed]
In 2000, these two almost identical networks merged as ABC Local Radio. From this point all ABC Local Radio stations ceased to identify themselves according to their callsigns or other existing names, and instead use the format (frequency) ABC (region), or ABC (region) where there are multiple frequencies broadcasting the same service. However, as the callsigns were used continuously for up to seventy years and are much shorter than the new names, many long-term listeners still use these callsigns to refer to ABC Local Radio stations.[citation needed]
In January 2017, ABC Local Radio rebranded with a new logo, dropping the frequency number of each local radio station as part of the network's multiplatform philosophy.[2]
In April 2019, ABC Local Radio began a rollout of branding updates for its 44 regional bureaux, ten regional stations dropping call signs from their names and two undergoing a significant name change to better identify their local region.[3]
The metropolitan and regional stations originate most of their own programming.
Until 2015, the regional stations usually simulcast one of the metropolitan stations when they were not airing local programming. Usually, they simulcast their state's capital city station; an exception was 999 ABC Broken Hill, which simulcasts 891 ABC Adelaide because Broken Hill is on Central Time. In 2015, the ABC formed a Regional Division to again split its regional stations from the metropolitan counterparts.[4] 1233 ABC Newcastle (2NC) was transferred from the metropolitan network to the new regional division [5] and 14 of the regional network's member stations began streaming.
In October 2015 a slight restructure of programs was announced. From 2016, Morning programs will be folded into longer Breakfast programs, followed by a new one-hour program, Local Life. There would be a loss of four local radio news bulletins; instead, headlines would replace two afternoon full news bulletins.[6]
There are local news websites for each station.[7]
Some programmes are aired first on ABC Radio National, then on the Local Radio network. For example,
Speaking Out, hosted by Larissa Behrendt, broadcasts (as of September 2020[update]) on Radio National on Fridays at 8pm and on Local Radio on Sundays at 9pm.[8]
