I still listen to classic AT40 on a certain lovely radio streaming service. Takes me back and there’s lots of “never heard that since the 80s” songs.
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Do tell, what’s the streaming service?
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There’s a live station on iHeartRadio: Listen to the Best Podcasts & Shows Online, Free | iHeart
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Yeah, 2Day FM was what now many radio insiders now call an “experiment”. I recently had some dialog with Adrian Zoric who worked around the traps during the 1980s and from memory did visit 2Day in it’s first incarnation. He noted that the station was one of the first to have a automated playout system, with all cartridges encoded in some special dbx noise reduction. He noted the stations running during conception was rather expensive, due to the technology and programme scheduling techniques used at the time.
What I personally remember is the era from 1982 onwards when they had the Barry Crocker promo IDs “2Day FM, listen easy for a wile, 2Day FM come and stay with us a while”. I’ve digitized these promos to wav, have to try and put them up on youtube one day. But during this time Brad Marsh, Tim Webster, and Grant Gouldman were the stations staple announcers, George Moore joined in 1983, where through to 1984 the lineup was Gouldman for Breakfast, George Moore for mornings, Dave Norman for Afternoons, Bob Hughes for Drive, and John Carroll for Evenings. News readers were Terry Madd in the Mornings, and Frank Avis in the arvos. This line up continued through 1985 into 1986, Were Lee Wallis, and Warren Burne read the afternoon evening bulletins. Late 1986 Saw George Donikian and Debbie Spillane join as newsreaders with John O’Donnell taking over Brad Marsh’s Sunday night album show.
At the end of 1986, 2Day FM introduced the CD hour between 7:00 and 8:00 pm, and by March 1987, Sunday nights became the CD show and by July 1987 2Day FM’s first running of the top 30 CD countdown. By the end of 1986 into early 1987, the playlist became rather eratic with a ton of baby boomer rubbish thrown in, and by 1988 the station playlist was heavily trimmed down, but still somewhat listenable.
In Early 1989, Austereo bought 2Day FM alongside Melbourne’s FOX and Brisbane B 105. July 1989, AUstereo implemented its CHR format, and pretty much trashed every last element of the old 2Day. The new format included announcers to the likes of Keith WIlliams, Mike Hammond, Nick Bennett, and Malcolm Paul (Party Hard). A station that once had at least 5,000 to 6,000 tracks in it’s playlist, was now reduced down to about 80 to 100 tracks. June 1990 saw the first running of Shadoe Steven’s American Top 40, with the CD Countdown retired by July 1990. Michelle Alexandravix (spelling) read the morning news with Glenn Daniels reading evening news. By the end of December 1991 2Day FM became a repetitious trash pot. This was just before Paul Holmes and Wendy Harmer Joined with Agro in January 1992. I haven’t listened to the station eversince.
Again, this is all old 30+ memories, so some of this may need to be confirmed. Particularly from me going off on a 2 am sentimental trip.
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Great memories. The CD Hour reminded me that FM104 Brisbane used to do this in 1986 too, and also they used to schedule “all-CD weekends” where every song for the weekend was from CD. Good times.
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Interesting. I wonder if Sydney’s 2Day and Brissie’s 104 shared programming staff and resources at the time, as they both had a somewhat similar sound. I may have to google this, but I think they were both owned at this stage by the lamb family.
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FOX FM in Melbourne also had a CD countdown show in 1987-88
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To my recollection, 2Day had a more relaxed soft rock feel about it (a bit like Smooth FM is now) and that FM104 was more rock skewed (a bit more like what Triple M Sydney used to be in the 80s).
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Happy Birthday to one of the grandest old dames of Australian commercial radio … 2UE. 97 years old today having commenced 26 Jan 1925. That hallowed callsign has been really beaten up in recent years with rubbish formats including Talking Lifestyle and the biggest dud of all time Macquarie Sports Radio. This year the old girl 2UE has some spring in her step finally through ACE and I think has real purpose again and sounding great.
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IMO 2UE won’t be back to it’s former glory until it either returns to hard-hitting talkback, or goes number one (or somewhere better than at present) with their current format.
Wow you have brought back memories for me. I was the Operations Manager. the person who got the automation going, it was called a Cuerack which could hold 1,000 cartridges, we then did an interface with the advertising scheduling computer where we were able to schedule music, id’s, promos and even when the announcer could speak which was then linked to the Cuerack so there was very little input from the operator. This was a world first and is the basis for how stations operate today except for cartridges it is now gigabytes on a hard disk drive.
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Here’s a recording of SAFM from the 15/09/1988:
This was from a cassette I found at “The Green Shed” in Mitchel, Canberra.
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He had to say “last chance to dance” in that South Australian accent 
Great upload, thanks for sharing. Might have to check out The Green Shed for myself.
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Undated image, probably mid-late 1960s? of the 3DB studios then located next door to the Herald and Weekly Times (and HSV7 OB van!) on Flinders Street. Eventually 3DB would shift to the less prominent location at Flinders Lane in the basement at the rear of the H&WT building. The station stayed there until December 1988 when the sold and newly-renamed 3TT made the move to modern digs on Queensbridge Street, South Melbourne.
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The company cars out the front are EK Holdens (1961-62 model) and there’s an XK Falcon (1960-62 model) and no EH Holdens (1963-64 model) in the photo, so I’d date the photo as late 1962 or early 1963.
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Funny that, as they are now WAY BEHIND (ranked last at 6% in the most recent Newcastle survey).
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The magic of Bill.
The top lines of the old Melways used to (and probably still do) have ads for radio stations in them. References to ‘3MP Stereo 1377’ I remember seeing from editions of that vintage
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Found an old aircheck of Triple M Sydney’s ‘Club Veg’ breakfast show from December 1992 online (PM me for the details if you want to hear it’; it’s password protected). They played this tune which I have honest-to-goodness not heard since 1992:
I only remembered one lyric from the song and it’s been bugging me for years. Not available on streaming services either.
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