Power FM 103.1 is Ballarat's contemporary hit station, but its most memorable moment on air had nothing to do with a chart countdown. In 2009, the station briefly turned itself, and much of the city, pink in a campaign built around one very specific goal: getting a pop star's attention.
Turning Pink for a Pop Star and a Cause
According to The Courier's coverage of the campaign, Power FM's hosts staged a Pink-themed campaign at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat's famous gold-rush heritage museum, hoping to lure singer Pink to town. The station paired the stunt with a genuine fundraising push, the Pink Cancer Challenge, teaming up with the Ballarat Cancer Research Centre and asking locals to dress in pink and donate five-dollar notes over a single week. Organizers were explicit that it was never just a publicity stunt for the singer's attention, it doubled as a real push to put Ballarat on the map and raise money for cancer research.
From Grant Broadcasters to ARN
Per Wikipedia's entry on the station, Power FM broadcasts under the callsign 3BBA and was originally run by Grant Broadcasters before Australian Radio Network acquired it in a deal announced in November 2021 and finalized in January 2022. That sale folded the station into ARN's iHeartRadio footprint, giving a regional Victorian station access to the same national syndication network used by ARN's metro stations.
Will & Woody and a Younger-Skewing Format
The station's current format targets an under-35 audience with contemporary hits spanning the 1990s through to today's top 40, and it carries the nationally syndicated Will & Woody show alongside its local breakfast, workday, and afternoon programming. That mix of local hosts and syndicated national content is typical of how ARN runs its regional network post-acquisition, blending Ballarat-specific talk with programming shared across sister stations.
Why It's Worth Tuning In
Power FM Ballarat offers a contemporary hit format with a real sense of local mischief behind it, a station willing to turn a whole city pink for a good cause and still keep its top 40 rotation moving for a city built on gold rush history.