With 15 days to go before the Olympics, Melbourne sport-talk station, SEN1116, officially launched its coverage of the Athens 2004 Games last night (Thursday 29th) with a Greek themed function at the Harbour Kitchen restaurant in Melbourne.
The station purchased the Melbourne commercial radio rights from Macquarie, after 3AW declined to pay the asking price.
SEN, 2GB and other rights’ holders are expected to be monitoring non-rights’ holders closely to ensure there are no breaches of the coverage rules, which limit non-rights holders to no more than 60 seconds of coverage per hour and a total of 10 minutes per day.
Macquarie Radio’s team, headed by Ray Hadley, will be supplemented by three broadcasters from SEN. Commentators will include Jane Flemming, Duncan Armstrong, Nicole Livingstone, Mark Doran and Cameron Thompson.
Macquarie News will also send a team of reporters, led by News Editor Justin Kelly, plus Anthony Clarke and Zoe Allebone.
SEN Communications’ Manager, Rita Buccheri, has told radioinfo there will be block coverage of the Olympics from 3pm (8am Athens’ time) until 5am. Other programming during the day will incorporate crosses to Athens as required.
Rival reporters from networks, such as Southern Cross and ARN, will be restricted to doing crosses from outside of games venues and from Athens city – they will not be allowed to report from inside games venues.
Southern Cross Network is sending a team of reporters including Murray Olds and Greg Burns from 2UE and Clinton Grybas from 3AW Sport. 3AW’s breakfast show will broadcast live from Athens city during the games.
ARN’s News Director, Glenn Daniel, will also be in Athens for his network, and will be joined by WSFM Sports’ Director, Travis Winks, and GOLD-FM Sports’ Director, Geoff “The Coach” Field.
The Olympic Games run from 13-29 August and will be followed by the Paralympics from 17-28 September.
The Macquarie Network has a $5 million advertising revenue target for the event.
Capital city stations taking the Macquarie coverage include:
SEN1116 Melbourne, 6IX Perth, FIVEaa Adelaide,
2CC Canberra, HO-FM Hobart, Hot 100 Darwin and
more than 50 regional and provincial stations.
ABC Radio is the non-commercial rights’ holder and coverage will be heard on all its local radio stations.