TAMWORTH’S community radio station 2YOU FM is celebrating three decades of bringing the city the latest in local information.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Tomorrow the station will mark its 30th birthday with a group of past and present personalities to be part of the celebrations.
The radio station’s team said they were proud they’d made it to 30 years.
2YOU began test broadcasts in 1974, but began full broadcast operations on July 16, 1983.
Their first studios were in an old administration building, then offices in a laundry on Dowell Ave.
2YOU now operates from studios and offices on Darling St.
“Thirty years is a milestone in local community service by the station,” president Tim Gaynor said.
“It represents the true spirit of the Tamworth people that have supported 2YOU FM by giving their time. We have received support from council, business and the community over the 30 years and we’re looking forward to the next 30 years.”
Founding member Alec Noble said he’d been a member for 30 years, but only joined the committee in 2002 and joined because he wanted to associate with the early members.
He said radio was very restricted early on and he’d seen plenty of technological developments.
“They had to introduce special legislation to encourage the public to have community radio stations,” he said.
Mr Noble said, in a musical sense, radio presenters had gone from using vinyl right through to CDs and digital music now.
“They didn’t have the facilities that they have now,” he said.
2YOU FM began as a mono station as 95.5FM and went stereophonic in the late 1990s when it moved to 89.9FM.
Presenter Noel Victor said the station had evolved over the years and come a long way from when it was established as a classical station.
“Most musical genres have been played and most age groups involved in the station,” he said.
“Quite a lot of people have gone through to commercial and government radio and television from here.
“The whole idea is to be the voice of the community and it’s about radio as a whole and access for the whole community.”
Lorraine Pfitzner started at the station in 1987.
The country music program presenter said one of the highlights was lasting this long at the station.
“I’m a country music person, so I want to do the best I possibly can for country music and this is my way of doing that,” she said.
“I’m able to get really well-known people to come in and want to be part of this station and have had international people, too.”
Lorraine said the toughest interview she’d done was her first interview with John Williamson, but since then they had become friends.
She said it had been great talking to Slim Dusty, but he always did what he wanted to do.
Errol Bourne has been there 10 years and was trained by Tamworth radio legend Bob Lipman.
The station’s team said they were proud of many achievements over the years, including being able to broadcast three hours of the John Laws Show for seven years and one hour of the Alan Jones breakfast show, and the station still took the 2UE radio news.
Announcers used to panel the ad breaks of the John Laws Show.
When that show moved to the Super Radio Network, 2YOU FM started Tamworth Today opened by former member for Tamworth Peter Draper and member for New England Tony Windsor.
This is a magazine program to get local people in to talk about things happening around town.
George Frame said they had done a survey looking at where the station had been over the past 30 years.
“We’re looking at the next stage and where we’re going for the next 30 years,” he said.
