ABC Local Radio - History

History

Originally, Local Radio was known internally as ABC Radio 1 in metropolitan regions and ABC Radio 3 in regional areas. Radio 1 was a largely local format while Radio 3 was more networked and included content from ABC Radio 2.

In the 1980s, Radio National emerged from Radio 2 and Radio 3 dropped its Radio 2 content with Radio 1 becoming ABC Metro Radio and Radio 3 becoming ABC Regional Radio. The Regional Radio stations provided local programming in breakfast and drive but networked common Local Radio content for most of their broadcasting hours. Some different, local market formats emerged, including the Darwin Metro 8DDD, FM105.7 and Gold Coast Regional, ABC Coast FM (4SCR), 91.7. Up until the mid 1990s, the majority of the local radio stations identified on-air as (frequency) (callsign). In the 1990s, a different convention was used, generally as ABC Radio (region) or (region) FM.

In 2000, these two almost identical networks became known as "ABC Local Radio". From this point all ABC Local Radio stations ceased to identify themselves according to their callsigns or other existing names, and instead use the format (frequency) ABC (region), or ABC (region) where there are multiple frequencies broadcasting the same service. However, as the callsigns were used continuously for up to seventy years and are much shorter than the new names, many long-term listeners still use these callsigns to refer to ABC Local Radio stations.