List of Australian AM radio stations

Program material was supplied by the amateur, and included talks, recitations, readings from books and newspapers, and live or recorded music (in those days no copyright fees were payable).

The Postmaster-General's Department took over responsibility for provision, maintenance and operation of technical facilities of their studios and transmitters, giving the Government an ultimate veto over ABC broadcasts, a situation which would endure until the 1980s.

Most of the commercial and ABC broadcast transmitters were manufactured and installed by either AWA or Standard Telephones and Cables with one or two by Scott and Co of Sydney.

[9] In October 1937 the roles of the two arms of the NBS were reversed in Sydney and Melbourne: 2BL took over the No 1 National programme from 2FC; 3AR from 3LO, and the newly commissioned 5AN from 5CL.

In the mid-1980s some operators, including capital-city ABC stations, elected to have stereo modulation (to the Motorola C-QUAM standard) implemented on their transmitters.

A major program of frequency changes, imposed on broadcasters by the Post Master General, came into operation on 1 September 1935[19] following the licensing of another seven "B class" stations.

[20] Some were to standardize all frequencies to a multiple of 10 kcs/sec (10 kHz); some to resolve technical problems such as interference from nearby transmitters (in some cases from New Zealand), and a few in an effort to aggregate "A class" stations to the low-frequency (long wavelength) end of the dial, though there remained many exceptions to this policy.

In the following decades many broadcasters moved to the FM band, trading long distance reception for less expensive transmission equipment and clearer sound.

A later development was the provision of small AM repeater stations, both National and commercial, at a different frequency but bearing the same call sign as the primary transmitter.