On the 26th of January 1988, while most Australians were gearing up to celebrate the country’s bicentennial year, a new FM radio station started full time broadcasting in Perth. Australia Day 2009 marked the 21st anniversary of 98.5 Sonshine FM and the official opening of the brand new studios in Como.
An opening ceremony was held at South Perth Church of Christ (adjacent to the new facilities) bringing together community leaders and listeners of the radio station.
Around 500 supporters attended the ceremony, featuring a message from Western Australian Premier, Hon. Colin Barnett, before touring 98.5 Sonshine FM’s new home. Perth media personality Graham Mabury officially opened the complex, reprising the role he undertook 21 years ago when Sonshine FM began on-air.
The new building houses state of the art digital broadcasting equipment as well as the Sonshine FM CareLine, a confidential help line that provides a listening ear to the community.
The video in this post, put together by Sonshine FM’s Ash Wright, gives a short history of the radio station. It runs about 19 minutes and don’t worry about seeing a black screen for the opening seconds of the video … it’s meant to start that way. (Look out for a somewhat younger Rodney Olsen at about the 10:30 mark.)
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That was an awesome video, I loved it and the music was so perfect for it!!
Happy Birthday Sonshine fm and Congratulations to all.
Proud to say I listen to Sonshine fm 89.5!!
This was wonderful, Rodney! Congratulations to Sonshine fm on your years of making a difference in the lives of Australians. Thanks for sharing this!
By the way, Rodney…are the carts and reel-to-reels from bygone days? Are you still using those? We’ve pretty much gone entirely to computer…
Happy Birthday Sonshine…still the best place I ever worked! 😀