3AW streams news and talkback radio live from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia's dominant talk station and the market leader in its home city. You can stream it free anytime on Radio Shuffle, hearing exactly what has made it Melbourne's most listened-to station for decades.
On Air Since 1932
3AW first broadcast on February 22, 1932, launched by a company jointly formed by Allans Music, JC Williamson's, and David Syme, publisher of The Age newspaper, as Melbourne's fifth commercial station. According to the station's own history, its call sign is a direct acronym of its founders, the A from Allans and The Age, the W from Williamson's, and it remains the only one of Melbourne's original eight commercial stations still broadcasting under its original name.
The station spent decades as a general entertainment broadcaster before live talkback was legalized in Australia in 1967, a shift that let 3AW turn into the conversation-driven format it is known for today. Before that legal change, calls could not go to air live at all, so when the station tested its first talkback segment in 1963, producers were nervous enough to have an employee, secretary Barbara McFarland, place the very first call themselves.
The Host Who Reinvented Talkback
No single figure shaped modern 3AW more than Neil Mitchell, who hosted the station's Mornings program for 34 years before stepping back. Across that run, Mitchell racked up 184 number-one survey results and 222 total survey wins in the Mornings slot, numbers that helped build 3AW's current market-leading share of 13.6 percent, more than double its nearest talk radio rival in Melbourne. He remains the only person inducted into both the Melbourne Press Club Hall of Fame and the Australian Commercial Radio Hall of Fame.
What You'll Actually Hear
Expect Melbourne and national news, live talkback conversation, and the kind of agenda-setting interviews that have kept 3AW on top of Melbourne's ratings survey after survey.
3AW is free to stream on Radio Shuffle alongside thousands of other stations from around the world. Press play for Melbourne's longest-running talk radio institution.