When I got into music in the early 80’s, 2SM was the only station I’d listen to even though the top 40 was on high rotation - like every 3 hours you’d hear the same songs. When they went “Lite’n’Easy” in April 88, there was no top 40 radio station at all, and until 2Day FM started trying to fill that gap while still playing old songs (not too different to what they are trying to do now), alot of new commercial music at the time just was not played on any radio except for the Top 40 which Triple M played on Sunday nights once 2SM dumped it. Triple J was always very selective with what they’d play leaning mostly to alternative and non-mainstream music.
April 88 was when I discovered community radio and never looked back! Found shows to listen to every afternoon after school/uni/work - including 2RDJ 88.1, RRR 88.5 (I won an album off them in 1989!), 88.7 Bankstown (now gone?), 88.9 Redfern, 89.3 Liverpool, 89.7 Eastern suburbs and the one around the corner from where I lived at the time 2NBC 90.1. Of course there are alot more now.
I still have multiple cassettes of what I recorded off community radio back then - some of my DJ friends did shows on some of these stations. I was on the waiting list for 2NBC to do a show but it never happened.
I could list 100’s of songs lost to radio - just heard on WS-FM here at work “One Night In Bankok” - which they play all the time - and thought of so many other songs in 1985 that you just don’t ever hear at all on any radio station except for the likes of SWR and community radio.
Songs like “Love and Pride” by King come to mind, “Icing on the Cake” by Steven Tintin Duffy (the follow up single to “Kiss Me” - slightly more popular but still hardly played anywhere). “Obsession by Animotion”. I could list heaps of songs lost to radio from 1985 alone!