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WHO LISTENS TO THREE D RADIO? In an Australian first, Community Radio stations across South Australia joined forces to commission respected market researchers, McGregor Tan Research, to carry out an identical type of survey to that used by Commercial Radio. The survey period was Monday 17 February to Sunday 23 February (2003) and included all people 10 years and older. The results were astonishing. At any time on average there are nearly a quarter of a million people listening to the 25 Community Radio stations across the state. The results for Three D Radio include: 8,353 - average number of listeners per session on any day 2.6% - 18 to 24 age group share 2.1% - 25 to 39 age group share 4.3% - male 18 to 24 age group share 3.3% - male 25 to 39 age group share
HOW DO I GET MY CD PLAYED ON THREE D RADIO? There's no way to guarantee you'll get played on-air, but you'll have a much greater chance if you send us your CD! Send all CDs, Bios and Release Forms to our mailing address marked attention the Record Librarian.
SHOULD I SEND CDs TO INDIVIDUAL ANNOUNCERS? No. Unlike just about every other radio station we know of, we strongly discourage you from giving our announcers a copy of your CD. With over 50,000 volumes, we have one of the best music libraries around and it's because we maintain a central communal library. This is the fairest system for announcers and artists. We feel it is unfair that artists have to send multiple copies to different announcers on the same radio station. Three D Radio is about supporting musicians, not riding on their backs. It's also unfair to newer announcers as they won't have had the chance to build up a stockpile of music like more experienced announcers.
SHOULD I SEND MULTIPLE COPIES? You don't need to do this and we don't have room to store extra copies. Our music library takes up over 25% of our floorspace and it's growing fast! We will normally give away any excess copies via on-air giveaways to subscribers as incentives for them to resubscribe. All material is engraved and/or permanently marked with the phrase "Stolen From Three D Radio" to prevent theft, so there's not much need to send a spare copy. Do give us your contact details so that we can get a replacement copy if your CD is accidentally damaged.
WHAT'S WITH THIS "STOLEN FROM THREE D RADIO" THING? Way back in 1979 when we started broadcasting (as Triple M FM) we needed a way of making music freely available to announcers, but keeping it safe from theft. Someone (we can't remember who) came up with the brilliant idea of "Stolen From Triple M" and when we changed our name in 1993 it became "Stolen From Three D Radio". By writing this phrase on everything in the Music Library (and everything in the station) it makes it pretty pointless to steal anything from us because the thief can't sell it or even show it to their friends (if they had any). We go on regular hunting expeditions to secondhand shops and record stores and when we see something with either of those phrases on it we let the proprietor know they're dealing in stolen goods. They soon become remarkably helpful and direct the police onto whoever sold them the stuff. We also get people ringing us up from time to time saying they've seen some of our stuff somewhere, which is nice. Ex girl/boy-friends of thieves are also remarkably helpful, sometimes returning the entire record collection of their ex-partners to us. So the system works quite well, really. If you see stuff around marked with the "Stolen From Triple M" or "Stolen From Three D" phrases, please let us know and we'll be eternally grateful.
HOW SHOULD I SEND MY CD? If you are posting from within Australia, put your CD in a "number two" padded POSTpak bag (215mm x 280mm). The bags cost about $1 each, but if you buy a box of 100 they only cost about 50 cents each - just great for that mass mailout to every radio station in Australia. The POSTpak bag, a standard 10mm thick jewel CD case containing an 8 page booklet, a single page A4 bio and a release form should come in at just under 125 grams which means it will cost you $1 for the postage. It also important to keep the whole thing thinner than 20mm (the bubbles in the bag squash up a bit). The POSTpak bags are much easier for us to open as they have an inbuilt opening strip in them. Always put a return address on the back of the bag. Address the package to Record Librarian, Three D Radio, PO Box 937, Stepney, 5069. If you are posting from outside of Australia, then the names and prices will change, but generally follow the same steps above. Just remember to use the bubblewrap padded bags as they seem to give the greatest protection. Always put a return address on the back of the bag. Address the package to Record Librarian, Three D Radio, PO Box 937, Stepney, 5069, AUSTRALIA.
ARE SOME TIMES OF THE YEAR BETTER THAN OTHERS? Yes. During October, November and December the number of CDs we receive increases dramatically - the xmas rush! So if you send your CD in during this time it will take longer to get into the Music Library and it will have a lot more CDs on the new releases shelf with it to keep it company (the record is 900). Sending your CDs in during the rest of the year is a good idea, but we know that inspiration is a fickle thing and doesn't keep to a timetable.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT GETS TO THREE D RADIO & HOW DO I MAKE IT STAND OUT FROM ALL THE OTHER CDs? There are usually about 600 CDs on our new release shelf (and also about 30 pieces of vinyl and the occasional minidisk). If you want to give your latest work of art the best chance of being broadcast, do this: 1. Send it on CD or Vinyl as each of our studios have two CD players and two turntables. Minidisks, cassettes & tape will take much longer to make it into the music library and are less likely to be chosen for playing. Don't send DAT as we don't have a DAT player - well we do, but we use it as a doorstop these days. Pianola roles are also right out… 2. Put the CD in a normal jewel case - the ones that are 10mm thick. Thin sleeves get lost in the crowd and are hard to handle. Unusual shaped cases are cute, but they tend to get lost easily. Round CD cases are right out - they just roll of the shelf and break. 3. If you are sending a double CD, try using the cases that fit both CDs into a 10mm width. Being wider does mean your CD will be more visible, but the cases are much more likely to be dropped and damaged, which means the CD goes in for repair and isn't available for use. 4. Make the writing on the jewel case spine as legible as possible, but leave a gap of about 15mm somewhere on the spine (or some material that doesn't matter if it's covered up). We need to stick some little coloured stickers on the spine to allow for easy identification. 5. Leave a gap (or some material that doesn't matter if it's covered up) about 35mm wide and 25mm high at the top left hand side on the front cover of the jewel case. The main ID sticker is put here, but if your artwork is just too beautiful to cover up, then it will be put elsewhere. Great for the person who did your artwork, but really bad for you as the chances of your CD being overlooked are much greater. All our CDs are stored in shelves, not on trays like in a CD shop, so this top left hand corner is the most visible part of the CD when announcers are browsing the Music Library. 6. Provide very clear track names, numbers and times. Many good CD's don't get played as often as they should because it's too hard to work out which track is what.
WHAT HAPPENS ONCE IT ARRIVES AT THREE D RADIO? It takes about two weeks for a CD to be processed and placed on the New Releases shelf in the Music Library. All new material is catalogued and marked up with the appropriate coding e.g. Local, Demo (independent release not available for sale), Female, Australian Composer or Performer and has the words "Stolen From Three D Radio" written all over it to prevent it being stolen.
WHAT'S WITH THE LOCAL, DEMO, FEMALE STUFF? Announcers at Three D Radio are free to play what they want (within Australia's very restrictive defamation and subjudicial laws), but they have to meet quotas. Over an average period of time an announcer should play 40% Australian, 25% Female, 20% Local and 10% Demo. Not all programs can meet this due to the nature of their specialisation, but most do. So we mark up the CDs with various symbols to assist the announcers in meeting quotas. Quotas help to define the sound of the station without telling people what to play. It also helps us remain true to the original ideals that were around when the station was set up.
WHY DOES THREE D RADIO HAVE "FEMALE QUOTAS" - IS IT REALLY NECESSARY OR JUST AN ATTEMPT TO BE FASHIONABLY POLITICALLY CORRECT? Our quota system was set up when the station started in 1979 - some 15 years before the term "PC" was popularised. Quotas are part of what we are and why we broadcast. It is part of our sound and makes for good radio. We've never seen a good reason to do away with quotas. The reason we have lots of female artists on radio these days is because radio stations like Three D pushed these quotas many years ago. That's what quotas achieved and that's pretty cool.
WHAT'S A NEW RELEASE? A new release is anything that has been in the Music Library for two months or less. There are usually about 600 CDs on the new releases shelf. Our main music collection holds over 50,000 items on CD, Vinyl and Tape so it can get a bit daunting trying to find something occasionally. The New Releases shelf makes it a bit easier for announcers to find out what's new into the station. We get around 50 CDs per week, so there's a fair bit of material available to announcers.
HOW DO I GET ON YOUR PLAYLIST OR ROTATION? We don't have play-lists or rotations as they represent just about everything Three D Radio is against. Our announcers are basically free to play what they like. Play-lists and rotations are devices used to capture large audiences with mindless repetition of music that lulls them into a state where they will accept whatever the advertisers tell them. So don't ask us to be put on our play-list as we will cringe and become quite uncomfortable.
CAN I RING UP AND REQUEST MY SONG? Yeah, sure. We currently do not have a request program, but there are some announcers who are only too happy to play a request. However, some announcers won't play requests because they put a lot of work into selecting the music they broadcast and requests don't necessarily fit in with their plans. If you think about it, it would be a bit pointless of Three D to say announcers are free to play whatever they want if they then had to play every request everyone made of them. Our advise is to listen to our shows, and if the announcers says they are taking requests - then go for it!
CAN I RING UP THE ANNOUNCER AND ASK THEM TO PLAY MY SONG? It's probably best not to. They've got a job to do - they're broadcasting a show to an audience of between 5,000 and 15,000 listeners.
WHAT IS THREE D RADIO? It's a major metropolitan community radio station (callsign 5DDD) that broadcasts to Adelaide and surrounding country areas. It is owned and operated by the Progressive Music Broadcasting Association Incorporated (the PMBA).
WHAT IS 5DDD? That's our official callsign. All radio stations have them, but they usually don't broadcast them. For instance, SAFM's callsign is still 5SSA even though they stopped using the "double s" bit in their name ages ago. The number five indicates what state the transmitter is broadcasting from - 5 for SA, 3 for Vic, 4 for Qld, etc.
WHERE DO YOU BROADCAST FROM? We beam our signal from the studios in Stepney up to Mount Lofty where we our main transmitter is sited. This transmitter has 2 very big valves in it - for that smooth warm sound - and has been working almost continuously for 25 years now. Our antenna is about 40 metres up a mast next to the transmitter hut and we transmit about 4,000 watts of energy in a circular pattern at a frequency of 93.7 MHz.
HOW FAR DOES THE SIGNAL REACH? How long is a piece of string? We have been heard as far away as Hawaii and we often get reports from Mildura and Bordertown. Driving in you car, you should pick us up at least 100km away from Adelaide in most directions We don't direct our signal at the Adelaide metro area like most stations do, so you will sometimes find you can still pick up Three D Radio in the country when the other stations have faded away. We have subscribers who listen in from Whyalla and Port Augusta, so you never can tell where we'll pop up.
I LIVE IN THE FOOTHILLS AND I HAVE TROUBLE PICKING UP THREE D RADIO This is a fairly common problem and is the reason why some radio stations have extra transmitters located on the top of buildings in Adelaide pointing towards the foothills. It wouldn't be cost effective for us to have an extra transmitter. You can try hooking your radio into the TV antenna as that sometimes helps.
WHAT IS THE PMBA? The Progressive Music Broadcasting Association Incorporated is a not for profit incorporated association that was set up in 1978 with the purpose of applying for and holding an FM radio licence for the broadcast of progressive and alternative music and arts. So it's a pretty good name really, as it tells you exactly what we do. These days we are a completely volunteer run organisation with no paid staff. All of our 140+ volunteers are members of the PMBA and are trained in various aspects of making a radio station happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
CAN I BECOME AN ANNOUNCER? Yes, but you might have to be patient. The waiting list is very long. Check out the news page and come along to one of our information sessions.
HOW DO I KNOW MY CD HAS BEEN PUT IN THE MUSIC LIBRARY? If you send us your email address and ask us to notify you, we will send you an email when the CD has been processed.
CAN YOU TELL ME WHEN MY CD WAS PLAYED? Our logging system is paper based and we don't have play-lists or rotations, so during the average week we play about 2,200 songs and most of them are different. This makes it nearly impossible to reasonably find out when your song was played. The best way is to listen to us.
WHY DON'T YOU WEBCAST? We have the technical capacity to do it, but it's quite expensive to pay for the data usage unless you have a connection that only 3 or 4 people can listen to at once. So we don't plan to webcast until it becomes viable for a reasonable number of people to listen cost effectively.
DO I HAVE TO FILL OUT A RELEASE FORM WHEN I SUBMIT MY CD? No, but filling out a release form gives us a legal record of what you want done with your material. It allows you to choose what you would like to happen to you material if it becomes popular. Other radio stations might ask us for a copy, or we might like to put a track on a compilation CD that we release. It also gives us some protection against people who plagiarise other peoples work or other nasty things. It also clarifies our right to broadcast the material so that when you become a rich and famous glam-rock star you can't stop us from broadcasting your original works because you don't like them anymore. Signing the release form will not affect any royalty payments you might receive from APRA for broadcast of your material (you are a member of APRA aren't you?)
CAN I PROMOTE MY MUSIC/GIG ON THREE D RADIO? Sure can. That's one of the ways we make enough money to pay the bills. Simply phone the station on [08] 8363 3937 during office hours or email us your details.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THREE D RADIO AND THE ABC OR COMMERCIAL RADIO? OK, here's the dice (in 369 words or less): Commercial Radio - Their job is to make money by selling audiences to advertisers. The bigger the audience for sale, the more they can charge for their advertising spots, the more money they make. Simple really, and most of them do a good job of it - if they didn't, they wouldn't be there. One way to get a big audience is by having a tight format (or sound) and sticking to it. So the music oriented commercial stations have a music programmer who decides what gets played when and sets the playlist (sometimes called the rotation). Announcers have no real say in what they play, their main role is to act as a personality that will encourage people to listen to the station. Announcers are heavily promoted as personalities. ABC - Aunty's job is to provide a sense of national identity. It does a pretty good job of this too, but they have to decide on what the national identity is. So it may not be relevant to what's going on in your town. While they don't have the same pressure to get the large audience numbers as commercial radio, there is still a moderate amount of pressure to "do well in the ratings". Because of this pressure, they also have some playlists and as such announcers are somewhat restricted in what they play. Announcers are also promoted as personalities in an effort to encourage people to listen to the station. Three D Radio - We broadcast progressive, alternative music to Adelaide and surrounding areas, with a strong emphasis on promoting local music. So we're not about making money or getting large audiences. In fact, if we ever got an audience as large as a top rating commercial music station, we'd wonder if we were doing the right thing! We have no playlists and announcers are essentially free to play whatever they like (we will never force an announcer to play a particular artist or song, but sometimes state and federal laws means we can't allow them to play a particular song). What we want to achieve is to broadcast music of maximum diversity that entertains, challenges, inspires and even occasionally frustrates our listeners. We want the music to tell the story and we want the announcers to be in the background as much as possible. We are definitely not into promoting them as personalities. We are parochial and we unashamedly support local music above all else.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO RUN THREE D RADIO EACH YEAR? About $90,000 plus GST! Most other large radio stations cost between 10 and 1,000 times this amount. We would have to be the cheapest major metropolitan broadcaster around.
WHERE DO YOU GET THE MONEY FROM? Our biggest customer group is our subscribers - about 850 people who pay a subscription each year to help keep us on the air. After that comes money we get from promoting and supporting local, interstate and international bands & artists. For a copy of the subscriber form, please click here.
WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO? Our main expenses are rent and electricity for our studios and transmitter site - together they eat up about 40% of our budget. The next biggest cost (about 25%) is replacing studio and equipment. After that comes telephone bills, stationery, tim tams, etc.
WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH DIGITAL RADIO BROADCASTING - WILL THREE D RADIO GO DIGITAL? When you know what's happening, let us know. Digital radio is a long way off yet and the uptake of digital television hasnt exactly knocked us off our feet yet has it? We kinda like FM and we'd be sad to see it disappear. Digital radio vs FM radio is a bit like Digital Mobile Phones vs Analogue Mobile Phones - sure digital phones have more fancy features, but try using them in the country or in the hills!
IS THREE D RADIO RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT? No. We are probably the most independent radio station around. We receive no regular funding from any government and we tend to shy away from government money in order to ensure our independence.
For more information on Three D Radio, contact us during business hours on (08) 8363 3937 or e-mail us.