Welcome to Radio Adelaide

Radio Adelaide 101.5 FM provides a real radio alternative for people curious about new ideas, issues, sounds, music and culture. We broadcast innovative, thought-provoking talks programs interspersed with good music for all music lovers. Programs are diverse and varied with a strong focus on news and current affairs, local issues, lifelong learning, arts and culture and community access.

Music starts at the edge of mainstream/pop and expands into a realm of exciting world styles. As part of our commitment to supporting and promoting the arts in South Australia, we broadcast weekly specialist music programs not often heard on other stations - classical, jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass, country, Latin, indigenous and ethnic. Find out more here.

Listeners are linked by interests and attitude rather than age and are often involved in the arts, education and music.

With more than 400 volunteers Radio Adelaide brings a wealth of skills, talent and community networks to the airwaves. We produce high quality and imaginative programs and play a key role in Adelaide's cultural life. Our achievements have been recognised by over 70 broadcasting awards in the last 10 years. As a progressive broadcaster Radio Adelaide was the first community station to broadcast on the internet 24 hours a day via streaming audio.

Radio Adelaide is one of Adelaide's most popular community stations, over 85,000 people listen every week. There's two primary groups of listeners aged 18-24 and 40+. They are diverse like our programming and linked by interests and attitude, rather then age. They seek quality, depth and engaging programming.

Radio Adelaide is Australia's first community radio station; established by Adelaide University in 1972. We broadcast from high-profile street front studios on North Terrace, Adelaide. Our signal reaches across the Adelaide metropolitan area to - the Mid-North, the Yorke and Fleurieu Peninsulas, the Sourthen Barossa, KI, riverland and parts of the Eyre Peninsula.

Our reputation for providing quality radio industry training is unsurpassed! Radio Adelaide is a Registered Training Organisation providing nationally accredited training and in 1999 won Adult Learning Australia's Outstanding Training Provider of the Year Award.

In 2006 we were Australia's Community Radio Station of the Year.

Radio Adelaide was formerly known as Radio 5UV.

Our studios are situated at
228 North Terrace
Adelaide 5000
South Australia

Phone +61 8 8303 5000
Fax is +61 8 8303 4374.

Finance
Radio Adelaide is partially funded by the Adelaide University, with the majority of our income being raised from other community sources:

• Subscribers - listeners who support us by making an annual donation, click here.
• Corporate sponsorship
• Fundraising ventures
• Access Programming
• Audio Production Services
• Project grants from State and Federal Government schemes, philanthropic and other project grants
• Training Services

Management
Radio Adelaide has an Advisory Committee with members including University Staff, Community Representatives, Volunteers and listeners.

Technical Details
Radio Adelaide broadcasts with a power of 13 Kilowatts on 101.5 FM from a transmitter situated on Mount Lofty in the Adelaide Hills and streams online 24 hours a day in Windows Media Audio.

Reception
On 101.5 FM we're heard throughout the Adelaide Metropolitan Area, beyond to Gawler, the Fleurieu Peninsula, the Yorke Peninsula, lower Barossa, Kangaroo Island and across the gulf to the Eyre Peninsula.

A History of Radio Adelaide

Radio Adelaide has been the station name since 2003. Until then it had been known generally as 5UV, although the official name had evolved and changed over the years. On June 28th 1972, Radio VL-5UV was the first licensed community station to go to air in Australia. A donation of $100,000 in 1970 "for the establishment of an educational radio station within the Department of Adult Education" made it possible, and the main objective in those early days was the broadcasting of radio courses.

The station was initially granted a frequency of 1630 kHz and licensed under the Wireless and Telegraphy Act, not the Broadcasting and Television Act.

By 1974, negotiations began to get onto the medium frequency (AM) band. and on March 3rd 1975 5UV began broadcasting considerably expanded programs on 530 kHz. This frequency was subsequently changed slightly to 531 kHz. Programming included access for ethnic and student groups.

It was some time before the station was allowed to broadcast any kind of music - it was regarded as entertainment, and not within the station's brief to broadcast educational material. The first producers had to edit out the music in productions of Shakespearean plays and there was much debate as to whether bird-calls constituted music or not!

By 1976 the station’s average weekly broadcast time increased to 45 hours a week, with a staff of seven full time staff, thirteen part time staff, fifteen course contributors and twenty three volunteers. By this stage, due to his untimely death, it had become known that Kenneth Stirling was the station's anonymous benefactor.

The first Radiothon was held in 1976 with the modest target of $2000. This was important in that it established a model for future fundraising efforts for all community broadcasters, and underpinned the concept of 'listener support'.

The station was broadcasting 103 hours weekly by mid 1977 and bringing local music performance to the airwaves including fine music, folk, jazz, rock and a good smattering of live broadcasts, broadcasting well above the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal's 20% Australian content requirement.

Broadcast hours grew to 120 per week by 1979 with the introduction of Fine Music programs into weekday mornings and the extension of Student Radio. Over Sixties Radio (now Radio of the Third Age) blossomed in 1979 as an access group when a community meeting of more than 200 people saw it officially launched as a community radio group.

A major programming reshuffle in 1979, saw the exit of the 33 ethnic groups and the establishment of 5EBI-FM. Fine Music increased to 21 hours a week and a Breakfast program was introduced.

The University Review of the Department of Continuing Education in 1982 saw the role of 5UV strengthened and the station given autonomy as a separate unit.

Having nursed the fledgling station through its formative years, Producer/Manager Keith Conlon left in 1984, and was succeeded by Jill Lambert.

On March 29th, 1985, Radio 5UV began broadcasting from the correct size 450 foot antenna - the difference in sound clarity and quality was marked after so many years of poor reception from the old 120 foot mast.

The excellence of station programs was recognised with a Pater Award as the best community radio station in Australia in 1985. The Paters were awarded annually by the Australian Academy of Broadcast Arts and Sciences.

In 1986 the Open Mind Network was established, a joint venture of five educational community stations across the country. 5UV also played a prominent role in the introduction of Australia Wide, a program of Australia's fine music community stations which enabled the best of Adelaide's fine music performances and compositions to be heard nationwide.

In March 1989, the station ventured out from the gloomy depths of underground studios into arguably the best radio studios in Adelaide. With the move came a new logo and identity, increased community visibility and a more congenial and creatively inspiring working environment for station workers, who by this time numbered around 200. Jill Lambert then moved into the tourism industry and Dr Jeff Langdon was appointed Manager in September 1989.

Programming began moving towards a more seamless overall sound with the major changes being an emphasis on a magazine format and jazz across the five weeknights. In December 1989, the station began broadcasting 24 hours a day, running the BBC World Service overnight live via satellite.

In 1990 as part of restructuring to a leaner paid staff, focused more on management than program making, the new position of program manager was created. Laine Langridge filled the position for almost 10 years , finishing with a 6 month term as Acting Station Manager.

1991 saw two major programming changes. The BBC offered the sector a 'window' in the satellite used to distribute the BBC World Service around Australia. And so the first daily national current affairs program on community radio was born. "Undercurrents" was produced in Melbourne and Sydney with contributions from community stations across Australia. In the same year Radio for the Print Handicapped, a long time access broadcaster on 5UV, was finally granted its own licence and began transmitting as 5RPH.

In 1993 5UV access user, Alta Mira, later to become LIFE FM, was given a community licence, bringing to seven the number of community broadcasting licences in Adelaide, the other six all being outgrowths from 5UV.

The previous year, in 1992, 5UV took its first step on a long held dream to broadcast as an FM station. It was commissioned by the Adelaide Festival to provide the programming for the Festival's own FM station. For a month it simulcast most of its programming on 531 AM and 101.5 FM, meeting with enthusiastic response from listeners and providing yet another spur to the campaign for an FM licence. The station held a test broadcast on FM (99.9 MHz this time) again in October 1994 and significant community support was shown for the conversion of 5UV to FM.

The 90's was a decade of great change for the station. It became one of the first Australian stations to broadcast 24 hours a day on the internet. There was a steady reduction in University of Adelaide funding. Several other Australian universities simply relinquished their community radio licenses. It became imperative to "improve productivity" by restructuring staffing and developing other means of raising income. This was achieved in several ways.

A fulltime Sales Manager, Lindy Reid was appointed to sell sponsorship. Project funding for substantial broadcast projects was sought and won, enabling staff to be employed on special projects. The most notable of these projects in the 90's were Talking Training and Ear To The Ground.

The station began to explore how to raise revenue from its Training Office, building on the station reputation as the training ground for the radio industry, with well over 100 graduates in prominent positions in the commercial and national media. Training for journalism students at the University of South Australia was integrated into the station news and current affairs programming.

In 1996 Radio Adelaide Training became a Registered Training Organization, with authority to deliver nationally accredited radio training. Our standard in this work was acknowledged in 1999 when we were awarded the national Adult Learning Australia Award for Outstanding Training Provider. Radio Adelaide began delivering accredited courses not only to our station workers, but to secondary students around the state. This has been done through the SA Community Radio Trainers Network, which supports partnerships between regional schools and community stations to maintain a high standard of radio training.

Project funding has become an integral part of the Radio Adelaide funding mix. This is possible because of our capacity to produce high quality programming, such as the series Wetlands, Drylands and The Federation Files.

Audio Production services had always been an integral element of station activity, notably through the recording and distribution of concerts and talks. This work was developed to run as an income generation unit within the station, eventually employing a full time producer.

Throughout the 90's the campaign to move onto the FM band underpinned the development of the station. The next phase involved using the energy of our Fine Music team and applying for a license to run parallel to our AM signal. This group was called 5MBS, and broadcast from our studios sporadically from 1995 ­ 1998 and then on a fulltime temporary license from 1998 till 2001. They eventually went the way of many other program groups and set up their own studios. In 2001 they received a permanent license to broadcast on the frequency of 99.9FM.

By this stage Station Manager Dr Jeff Langdon had moved on, and Deborah Welch filled the position in 1999. Deb had worked for the station as Training Co-ordinator and Acting Program Manager. One of her first projects was the move to the FM band on the frequency 101.5 kHz, finally approved by the ABA in 2001.

As part of a plan to emphasize the greater community reach of the station and to refresh the station image as we completed our 30th year on air in 2002 we made the move from 5UV on 531 AM to Radio Adelaide 101.5 FM. This became our formal name from 1st January 2003.

In 2005, now with over 500 station workers, was awarded national Community Radio Station of the Year, along with winning 12 other broadcasting awards.

In 2006, Radio Adelaide installed a new 5kW transmitter which increased our broadcast power to around 13kW, providing a signal strength on a par with all metropolitan stations and giving us a backup transmitter for the first time since we moved to the FM band.

A History of Australian Radio

Click here to download as a PDF (97 KB).

A History of Community Broadcasting

Click here to download as a PDF (113 KB).

Further information about Community Radio (including its history) can be found at: http://www.cbonline.org.au/