It originally began as two stations based in Melbourne and Sydney, set up to provide pre-recorded information about the then-new Medibank health care system in languages other than English.

[4] The history of SBS Radio goes back to the 1970s when the government started considering the demand for broadcasting in languages other than English after a mass-influx of foreign-born populace post World War Two.

[citation needed] In January 1975, Al Grassby, the Commissioner of Community Relations at the time, approached future members of the SBS executive board about his intention to start up two experimental radio stations in Sydney and Melbourne, which would almost always broadcast in non-English languages, on a budget of around $67,000.

[citation needed] The amount was sufficient to pay for two broadcasters per program and rented studios in the two cities.

[5] After some months of planning, on 9 June 1975, 2EA (EA standing for Ethnic Australia), opened in Sydney by Al Grassby, with the first language heard on 2EA being Greek.

The initial purposes of the stations were to inform ethnic communities about proposed changes in the healthcare system via the new Medibank scheme.

By the end of the year the two stations were broadcasting in Arabic, Cantonese, Croatian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Maltese, Mandarin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish.

That same year, four new languages, Dutch, French, Polish and Romanian were added to 3EA's schedule; this pales in comparison to the nineteen languages added to 2EA's lineup, which included Armenian, Assyrian, Bangla, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, French, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Slovak, Tamil, Ukrainian and Urdu.

In April a soccer match from Yugoslavia was regarded as the very first live overseas broadcast on 2/3EA, and in June, 2EA moved from Five Dock to 257 Clarence Street in Sydney.

Eleven new languages were also added to the two station's schedule; six, Cantonese, Indonesian, Khmer, Mandarin, Sinhala and Tamil on 3EA, and five, Danish, Fijian, Korean, Norwegian and Swedish on 2EA.

The 1980s saw a new-look SBS executive board appointed, with former rugby captain and Lord Mayor of Sydney Sir Nicholas Shehadie as its Chair.

At the same time, SBS Radio Melbourne relocated to its current premises in the Alfred Deakin Building in Federation Square.

Ten years later, a similar review was undertaken, introducing programs in Malayalam, Pashto, Swahili, Dinka, Hmong, and Tigrinya.

Seven new languages were subsequently introduced in podcast form, including Hakha Chin, Karen, Kirundi, Mongolian, Rohingya, Telugu, and Tibetan.

In November 2022, SBS once again reorganised their radio services based on the 2021 national census, intending on dropping the Albanian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Romanian, Slovak, and Slovenian programs, and replacing them with Bislama, Malay, Oromo, and Tetum.

[6] Most programs contain a mix of news, current affairs, sport, community information and music relating to a specific ethnic or language group.

The national service (branded simply as SBS Radio) is available throughout the rest of the nation through FM broadcasting (except in Newcastle, where it is available on AM) and on the Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) satellite service, and is composed of material from Radios 1, 2 and 3.

[11] Radio 1 also broadcasts segments of SBS Chill, either to fill up schedule gaps or to replace a program in recess.

Data is provided real time for DAB+ clients, and a forward schedule for DTV, by "Aim Rapid 2", from All In Media, see [www.digitalradioplus.com].