About SpudFM
Broadcasting our Story
Spud came about in 2021. It had its genesis in several areas, firstly, the restricted
playlists of commercial stations and the endless playing of the same single from the
same artist (especially when the artist has much more than just one single), the
same old formats – music, ads, talk, repeat.
I have to add in here that recently a large SE Qld radio station started to advertise a
single artists, single song – being paid to push something that in all reality sounds
just like everything else – there is no independence in mainstream media. Spud
doesn’t push opinions, you’ve got yours, you don’t need ours.
The same old format of bunging 2 or more people in a room, have them talk absolute
crap for a few hours and tag it as breakfast radio, drive radio or prime time radio. No
one is listening to this it’s just a bunch of big named no talent wombles trying to be
funny / trendy / make ratings, it doesn’t work.
Currently the whole media industry is stuck in the same old routine but with their very
obvious biases at play.
Now, on a tangent, one must remember that amateur & ham radio operators
worldwide were the pioneers of broadcast radio for the last 100 years. Have a read
up on Howard Armstrong and FM radio or take a look at this Youtube link,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1RiAmB1J5k . This is one of the reasons
Spud is on the air in a back to the future type of way. Amateur radio station
VK4ZEN/VK4IV owns and runs Spud, ham radio going back to the community by
taking self-education and skill and doing something with it.
Anyway, Spud came about because it is noise for your day, its technical, it provides
a clear and quality signal.
After a two-year process to obtain a licence to broadcast to our little town. We gained
our licence on March 26 th , 2021, and started intermittent broadcasts at around
200mW in mono FM.
By June 2021 a high-quality FM stereo transmitter and antenna was installed with a
much better coverage and sound quality.
December 16 th , 2021 hailed the commencement of a stereo streaming service world
wide via the Shoutcast platform. Listeners are streaming Spud FM from all round the
world – USA, Russian Federation, Brazil, Australia, England, Canada, Egypt, Ireland,
Italy, and Poland to mention the top listeners.
To understand the concept of Spud FM some credit must go to Brian FM in New
Zealand. Brian runs a network that plays music and has no DJ’s and plays targeted
ads, which are usually hilarious, to the area they are broadcasting in. You can listen
to it for hours.
Spud FM is like this, but a bit different. If you are working or at home, you’re not
going to be doing the 1940s thing of specifically sitting down at the radio. Its going to
be on background whilst you do what you want to do. In the home, workplace, in the
shed or garden whilst you’re doing whatever. Whist we have no DJs we do have
some programming produced exclusively for us. One day the Chief Spud might
even fire up the microphone and get on the air.
We provide special interest programming with the focus of ‘different’. Pam & Justin
(Saturdays at 7pm) provide the information about the background of music and it’s a
show that’s produced around a kitchen table.
We have a country music show that is quality, not trendy or flash, but just plain
quality.
And with that in mind Spud is set to promote our little towns businesses and be the
background to your day without out the braindead celebrities that inhabit the big
networks of Australia.
Spud FM has an ever-expanding library of music, and this is still being refined. It
plays 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The station is running state of the art software
and the playlists are totally random, totally computer generated so we don’t even
know what has been scheduled.
Spud is plain and simple. We focus on a huge range of music, and you might get
Enya followed by Metallica followed by something you’ve never heard of. It’s the
music in the background of your day. It is us from our little spot in the world.
If you would like to contact us, please do so on info@spudfm.com.