Station History
EON FM: The Birth of Commercial FM Radio
In late 1979, a consortium, members of which included recording entrepreneur Bill Armstrong, band manager Glenn Wheatley and stockbroker Bill Conn, successfully bid on one of two Melbourne FM licenses and set about creating a commercial FM radio station. Armstrong headed the consortium, having seen the commercial opportunities of FM radio in
the US and the UK. Despite what their license application read, they had no blueprint at all with regard to marketing, programming, administration or promotion. The next six months was then spent building a radio station from scratch. A makeshift studio was set up in Bank Street, South Melbourne, draped with hessian to deaden the noise. Late-night dummy runs were performed a week before the on-air date to test the equipment. On 11 July 1980, Australia’s first commercial FM radio station, EON FM, began broadcasting on 92.3 MHz, beating Fox FM to the title by two weeks. Behind the microphone at the momentous occasion was DJ Peter Grace, a former deejay for 3XY, a popular radio station at the time (now defunct); he later said he was given that late night spot by default. "It's one past midnight and this is 92.3, E-O-N FM, I'm Peter Grace and this is the beginning of a long, long time..." The first song was "New Kid in Town" by The Eagles. SourceDescription above from the Wikipedia article EON FM, licensed under CC-BY-SA full list of contributors here. Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.
