In an effort to compete with the superior sounding FM music stations, the Australian government introduced AM stereo. Many capital city music stations on the AM band began broadcasting in AM stereo from January 1 1984. There was only one problem...new AM stereo receivers were expensive, and most models were made for cars. Only the high end domestic models sounded any good. The marketing was rather low key also.
Secondly, the FM stations were rapidly increasing in popularity. The first commercial FM stations around Australia went to air around mid 1980. Within a few years they dominated the market, with FM 104 (later Triple M) in Brisbane peaking at a massive 35 share in 1985. A figure never achieved by any station since.
Legendary Brisbane powerhouse Top 40 AM station 4IP became Radio 10 in 1982 and invested heavily in new state of the art studios and relocated to a new building on Coronation Drive in early 1984. In fact they spent so much they even had the studio desk and cart machines customized in blue which can be seen in the video.
Culture Club began their fist Australian tour in July 1984 at the peak of their success. Boy Georges first official duty was to open the new Radio 10 studios. It was quite a big event.
However, despite mostly owing the teen market, they could never compete with the giant that was FM 104, whose positioning statement was 'Rock In Stereo'. In another effort to slow down 104, Radio 10 became Stereo 10 in 1985. It didn't work. By 1988, Stereo 10 gave up the FM fight and was no more. They changed format to become the short lived 'Lite & Easy 1008'. Then when that didn't work, they tried to recapture their former glory as the new 4IP with a fairly nondescript format. Bizarrely, the first record played was The B52s 'Channel Z'. 4IP too was very short lived rating only a 3 when Brisbane's second FM station B105 (the former 4BK) rated 26 in its first survey, toppling the then Triple M down to a 16 share.
It was all over for 4IP/Radio 10/Stereo 10. Owned for many years by the Catholic Church (as was 2SM & 3XY) it was sold to the TAB and became a racing station as it still is today. Unsurprisingly, they now broadcast in AM Mono.
In fact, all AM music stations eventually switched their AM stereo transmitters back to mono, mostly because mono increased the transmission reach.
