In 1981, a former Australian Broadcasting Control Board member and a former ABC engineer pulled together a band of volunteers and broadcast for two days straight from Caulfield Town Hall, just to prove a local station could work (Wikipedia). That test run grew into 88.3 Southern FM, the community station now serving Melbourne's bayside and south-eastern suburbs from Bentleigh East, broadcasting in more languages and more genres than almost any commercial station could justify, and still entirely volunteer-run.
From a Town Hall Test Broadcast to a Bayside Institution
Southern FM was founded by Dom Iacono and Jack Burgesson, who built the station from scratch with volunteers rather than industry backing, eventually moving operations into the store room of the now-demolished East Bentleigh Community Hall before settling into its current Bentleigh East home (Wikipedia). It's operated by Southern Community Broadcasters Inc, a not-for-profit established in 1986, and it runs on a modest 200 watts ERP out of Moorabbin, enough to reach car radios across most of metropolitan Melbourne (Wikipedia).
Today it's licensed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and supported by the Community Broadcasting Foundation (Southern FM), serving a population base of over 470,000 across the south, south-eastern, and bayside suburbs.
Jazz, Soul, Dance, and Whatever the Volunteer Roster Decides
Southern FM doesn't program around a single format. Its own schedule spans jazz, soul, classical, rock, pop, dance, and country, plus regular live music spots (TuneIn), all curated by the volunteer presenters who each bring their own specialist interest to the air.
- 100% Aussie Music, a recurring slot dedicated entirely to new and independent Australian artists.
- Genre specialist shows, from jazz and classical through to dance and country, each hosted by a long-serving volunteer presenter.
- Talk and lifestyle programming, covering health, parenting, DIY, and local and international sport.
- Multilingual programs, including shows in Fijian, Indian, Croatian, French and Spanish, reflecting the diversity of the suburbs it serves (TuneIn).
No identified-song data has accumulated yet on Radio Shuffle, which tracks with a station built less around a fixed playlist and more around whichever specialist show happens to be on air.
A Snapshot of Melbourne's Bayside, in Every Language It Speaks
Southern FM's territory covers some of Melbourne's most demographically varied suburbs, and the schedule reflects it directly rather than treating multicultural programming as an afterthought. That's the broader story of Australian community radio: stations like Southern FM exist specifically to give airtime to the languages, genres, and local issues that commercial FM in a major city has no commercial incentive to cover (Wikipedia). Independent audience research has found more than half of Australians aged 15 and up tune into community radio at least monthly, a figure that's been climbing (Streema).
A Station You Can Actually Join
Southern FM doesn't just take listeners, it actively recruits them into the operation. The station invites locals to become members, local businesses to sponsor programming, and anyone interested to get involved directly in production (Online Radio Box). Recent on-air content has included a sitting Glen Eira mayor discussing local council matters and a live in-studio performance segment with local musicians (Southern FM), the kind of access a city-wide commercial station simply doesn't offer.
Why It's Worth Your Time
Southern FM has survived more than four decades on volunteer labor and a genuine commitment to its listening area, and that shows in a schedule no algorithm would ever assemble: jazz next to dance music, Croatian-language programming next to a sports show, a council mayor next to a candlelight tribute concert recap. If you want radio that actually sounds like the neighborhood making it, this is a rare working example.
Stream 88.3 Southern FM Free on Radio Shuffle
Tune in to 88.3 Southern FM on Radio Shuffle, no account, no app, no fee. Press play and you'll catch Melbourne's bayside suburbs talking to themselves, in whatever genre and language the volunteer on shift decided to bring today.