3AK
These were provided free of charge by a number of progressive Melbourne music teachers who believed that radio would help promote both them and their students.
[1][7] At this time Palmer changed the style of the station by introducing a format that mainly consisted of dance music,[6] then very popular.
[10] Because of 3AK's low power, 2BS was given the same wavelength (1500 kHz) and, within a few years, both stations suffered from interference during the few hours when they were simultaneously on the air.
However, unsubstantiated rumours about both drunkenness and the poor wages of the staff led to some referring to the station as "3AK - The Voice of the TIGHT".
In the 1930s, the postmaster general gave one station in the Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide markets a licence to broadcast 24 hours a day.
3AK moved from its small St. Kilda studio into GTV-9's Television City premises at Bendigo Street, Richmond, broadcasting a revised format from Easter Monday, 3 April 1961.
Therefore, overnight, 3AK changed from a station with a young and virtually unknown announcing staff, to one featuring some of Australia's best-known television personalities, including Philip Brady, Geoff Corke, Tommy Hanlon Jr., Geoff Hiscock, Graham Kennedy, Jack Little, Bert Newton, Eric Pearce, Brian Taylor, Hal Todd, Eric Welch, Arthur Young and Frank Zepter.
Arthur Young was also heard on 3AK at weekends - he was the leader of GTV-9's studio orchestra and presented a classical music program on 3AK.
(This was an era when commercial radio stations were easing out of broadcasting classical music, but a small amount of it was still usually considered de rigueur at weekends.
Peter Cavanagh was to make a name for himself as a TV actor, particularly in a number of Hector Crawford Production's police dramas.
During this period there was a head-on battle for the lucrative Top 40 market between 3XY (managed by Rod Muir) and Rhett Walker's 3AK.
Use of the words "Beautiful Music" was finally discontinued after marketing research indicated that a high percentage of the male audience wasn't entirely comfortable with the term.
However, despite this successful transformation and solid ratings, another much more dramatic change took place early in the following year when the station went adult contemporary.
Ratings plummeted as rival station 3MP decided to pick up the Easy Listening concept and the relevant audience simply switched from 3AK to 3MP.
In 1986, after just one disastrous ratings period, 3AK and Sydney's 2UE embarked on a shared talk-back format, called the CBC Network, which featured selected Melbourne and Sydney-based programs being broadcast across both stations.
Other programs being produced at the station were presented by well-known local personalities such as Ernie Sigley, Wendy Harmer, Jane Clifton, Fabian Datner, David Lentin and Adam Joseph.
From 1988 to 1990, 3AK again become a purely talk format station with such high-profile names as Darren James (with Bruce Mansfield as "Uncle Roy"), Margaret Peacock, Don Chipp, Peter O'Callaghan (a former 3XY and EON FM DJ), Keith McGowan and Bill Howie (a former 3AK program director).
This period also saw the introduction of regular Saturday broadcasts of VFL (now AFL) with a football team headed by Graham Dawson.
3AK was included in the deal, even though Bond made no secret of the fact that he wanted the TV stations but was not interested in radio.
In 1989 the federal government invited bids from all capital city AM commercial radio stations for a number of FM licences.
Because of the dire financial position of Alan Bond (he was soon to be declared bankrupt), 3AK defaulted on the payment for its FM licence, which then went to the third highest Melbourne bidder, 3TT who paid only $11 million.
The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal knocked back the application, firstly on the grounds that it could not allow the leasing of stations, and secondly because of questions raised as to the suitability of Newton's partner.
Corso was keen to sell 3AK because he had just obtained one of the first of the new narrowcast licences then being offered by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal.
3AK was sold to a Christian organisation, Fusion Media, who switched the format to a mixture of talk-back and magazine programs and easy listening music.
Controversial radio broadcaster Derryn Hinch took over 3AK's morning time-slot after twelve months as evening presenter at 3AW.
Some unusual programming decisions and lack of promotion led to 3AK failing to lift from the bottom of the ratings ladder.
While initially, ratings were steadily rising, the station's financial position took a turn for the worse in early 2005, with several employees, including Dermott Brereton, Mark Doran and Robert Shaw not being paid.
