6IX has been on the air in Perth since 1933, which makes it one of the longest-running commercial radio stations in Western Australia. Getting there in one piece meant surviving a television takeover, a brief identity crisis as a bird-branded rock station, and enough ownership changes to fill a corporate history textbook.
Opened by a Legislative Council President
6IX launched on 27 November 1933, switched on by John Kirwan, then President of the Western Australian Legislative Council, under the ownership of W.A. Broadcasters Ltd. It began on 1240 kHz AM before settling onto 1080 AM in 1935, the frequency it has held for nine decades since. Getting a formal political figure to inaugurate a commercial radio station says something about how significant a new broadcast license was in 1930s Perth, a genuine civic event rather than just a business opening.
Absorbed by Television, Then Set Free Again
In 1970, TVW Enterprises, the company behind Perth's first television station which had launched in 1959 with Rolf Harris fronting its opening night variety show, bought 6IX and folded it into its Tuart Hill studios. Radio stations getting swallowed by television companies was a common pattern in mid-century Australian broadcasting, as newly dominant TV operators used their capital to snap up the AM stations that had once been the only game in town. 6IX spent the mid-1980s under the Bell Group at studios in East Perth before the next, stranger chapter of its history began.
Briefly a Bird Called The Eagle
In 1988, national network Austereo bought 6IX and rebranded it entirely, dropping the historic callsign for 6GL and relaunching as "The Eagle 1080 AM." The rebrand did not stick. After Austereo failed to secure the AM-to-FM conversion licenses it needed, it sold the station on to RadioWest, which restored the original 6IX name and callsign, undoing a rebrand that had barely had time to become the station's identity. Southern Cross Broadcasting took over in 1996, and since 1998 the station has run as a joint venture between Capital Radio Network and Grant Broadcasters, each holding half.
Still on 1080, Still Playing the Classics
Today 6IX broadcasts a classic hits and oldies format from studios in Osborne Park, still anchored to the 1080 AM frequency it moved onto in 1935, now supplemented by FM repeaters in Rockingham and Wanneroo and a DAB+ digital signal. The format fits the station's own history well: a station built in the earliest days of Australian commercial radio, still playing music from across the decades to a city it has served, under one name or another, since before television existed in Western Australia at all.
A Survivor by Any Name
Few Perth institutions can claim nearly a century of continuous operation through outright ownership changes, a television buyout, and a failed rebrand as a completely different station. 6IX has done all three and still ended up back where it started, on 1080 AM, under its original callsign, playing the kind of music that first defined commercial radio in Western Australia.