In the mid-1980s, before JJJ came to Melbourne, 3LO had Sunday Night Live, which was a youth-focussed music program including live performances.
A few significant radio milestones on this day (August 1).
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45 years ago (1980), 2MMM & 2DAY in Sydney went to air, the first commercial FM stations in that city. On that same day, FOX in Melbourne went to air.
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20 years ago (2005), Vega (now Smooth) went to air in Sydney.
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I remember hearing Vega Melbourne test transmissions in August 2005. Definitely on August 19, can’t remember when they started.
The funny thing is that Melbourne used to be ahead of Sydney in new radio & TV stations, e.g.
In the 1950’s
- Sydney got TV before Melbourne
From the 60’s to the 90’s
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Channel 0 Melbourne started before Channel 10 Sydney
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3MP started two years before 2WS (now MIX 106.5)
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EON-FM (now 3MMM) started four weeks before 2DAY FM and 2MMM.
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Melbourne stations converted to FM years before Sydney stations (though this was due to legal wrangling in Sydney).
However, in the 200’s and 2010’s:
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Nova 96.9 Sydney started over 6 months before Nova 100 Melbourne
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Vega 95.3 Sydney started before Vega 91.5 Melbourne
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Analog TV switched off in Sydney (and almost everywhere else in Australia) before Melbourne.
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i think Sydney and Melbourne were both meant to start at the same time but technical hitches ended up delaying Sydney IIRC?
Yes, both were meant to start on 11 July, but got delayed.. I think have posted this SMH article before, but here it is again…
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The article says that they were supposed to start at 4PM, but EON-FM started officially at 12:00 am or 12:01 am (with test transmissions from the day before), so they still would have beaten 2DAY and 2MMM LOL.
However, I was wrong about Melbourne always being first in the 80’s - Sydney got 2JJJ in 1980, 9 years before Melbourne.
Didn’t 2WS become Gold 101.7 (callsign 2UUS, very clever)?
That was on January 2 of this year.