By the beginning of the following academic year, they realised that this was perhaps overly ambitious as a starting point, and instead focused on the idea of a short term broadcast, taking advantage of the Radio Authority's new Restricted Service Licence scheme.
With support from the Edinburgh Enterprise Centre, ESR recruited prospective presenters and ran a training course with the help of John Gray,[3] formerly of BBC Scotland.
The final hurdle, finance, was cleared by the procurement of a grant from the Edinburgh University Development Trust to supplement advertising income: together this represented sufficient funding to cover the costs of a two-week RSL broadcast.
At the invitation of Glasgow sister station Subcity Radio, Fresh Air FM ran the Edinburgh end of an ambitious three-site RSL broadcast for the T in the Park festival in the summer of 1997.
The refinancing process took two years, but the society was successful in its efforts, and returned with a positive bank balance to broadcast on FM in April 2004.
A 40-strong delegation from the station attended the awards ceremony in November of that year, where it was announced that FreshAir had won the top prize of the night for the first and, so far, only time.
[4] The prize included the chance to pre-record a freeform, two-hour music-based show for BBC Radio 1, to be broadcast on Christmas morning.
2004 proved to be a bittersweet year for FreshAir, as changes to Edinburgh University's academic calendar that autumn forced the station to fall back to an annual 28-day broadcast schedule, usually conducted in February or March.
[9] The society organises a number of fundraising events at local venues around Edinburgh, and provides training to third parties, most notably as part of the European Union Vienna Project.
As part of the Edinburgh University Students' Association's £6 million investment in The Pleasance, subsequent renovations forced FreshAir.org.uk's studio to be moved twice between 2015 and 2017, though broadcasting continued as normal.
The new design included features allowing listeners to message presenters directly, and there was a more user-friendly approach when it came to reading the site's published content.
Members were given the opportunity to begin recording shows from home and on Sunday 26 April 2020, the station began broadcasting again with entirely pre-recorded material.
Highlights of home-recorded content have included interviews with Inhaler (band), Fickle Friends, Jack Garratt and the Mother of Chanel the grey parrot.
The successful broadcast of 2006/2007 meant that Fresh Air was in a position to start covering the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2007, the only Internet radio station to do so.
Notable guests have included Isy Suttie, Arj Barker, Boy with Tape on his Face, Reginald D Hunter and Mark Watson.
The late Scott Hutchison from Frightened Rabbit performed an exclusive session in the studio as part of the 24-hour broadcast in 2012, helmed by Finlay Niven and Christian Illingworth.