96.5 Inner FM streams easy listening, nostalgia music and volunteer-presented community programs live from Heidelberg, in Melbourne's inner north-east. It plays free on Radio Shuffle, no account or app required.
A Station Born From a 1987 Town Hall Meeting
96.5 Inner FM traces its beginning to a meeting of local residents in November 1987, who set out to build a community station under the working name North East Community Radio, according to Wikipedia's history of the station. Early test broadcasts went to air from the Heidelberg Town Hall in 1988, years before the station had a permanent frequency of its own.
That original effort was actually part of a bigger proposal covering both Heidelberg and the Plenty Valley area further out. The Australian Broadcasting Authority split the territory in two, and the group covering the inner area became Inner FM while the outer group became ONE FM, now known as Plenty Valley FM. The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal granted Inner FM a general community licence in March 1990, one of eight sub-metropolitan community licenses issued around that time, and regular broadcasts finally began on December 10, 1990 under the call sign 3INR, standing simply for Inner.
A Studio in a Shopping Centre, a Transmitter at a Hospital
The station still broadcasts at 96.5 MHz with 200 watts of power, reaching Melbourne's Banyule, Manningham and Darebin areas from studios inside the Warringal Shopping Centre, with its transmitter mounted at the nearby Austin Hospital, an arrangement that has stayed essentially unchanged since the station went permanent. Internet streaming arrived in late 2008, extending a local FM signal to anyone listening from outside the immediate broadcast footprint.
Volunteers Who Stayed for Decades
Unlike a station built around a fixed playlist, Inner FM runs almost entirely on volunteer presenters choosing their own music and talk content, and several of the people who helped start the station in the late 1980s are still on air presenting shows today. According to the station's own website, presenter Ron Lopes is currently marking 35 years on air, and Rob Morrison's long-running Musical Theatre Melodies has brought in guests including Priscilla, Queen of the Desert stage actor Tony Sheldon. The station also shows up at local events, from the Manningham Family Festival to community mental health walks, keeping its ties to the neighborhoods it was built to serve.
Press Play
From a 1987 town hall meeting to a shopping centre studio still staffed by some of its own founders, 96.5 Inner FM has spent nearly four decades proving a volunteer station can outlast almost anything. Stream it free on Radio Shuffle and hear Melbourne's inner north-east on air.