Radio Adelaide broadcasts on 101.5 FM as Australia's first community radio station, a title it has held since 1972. Getting to hold that title for more than fifty years took a fight the station almost lost in 2016, when the university that founded it moved to shut the whole thing down.
Funded by an Anonymous Donation, Built for Education
The station began broadcasting on June 28, 1972, from small rooms beneath Hughes Plaza on the University of Adelaide campus, launched under the call sign 5UV on a special one-off license, according to its documented history. It only existed because of an anonymous $100,000 donation from Kenneth Stirling, a mining company accountant whose gift stayed secret until his death in 1973 revealed who had funded it. The station's mission from day one was education, carrying university lectures and discussions on science, the arts and public affairs out beyond the lecture hall.
From 5UV to Radio Adelaide, AM to FM
5UV's license became a formal public radio license in 1974, part of a wave of eleven similar stations launching across Australian states that year. The station rebranded from 5UV to Radio Adelaide in 2002 and moved from AM to the 101.5 FM frequency it still uses, followed by a new antenna in December 2003 to maximize that signal's reach and a jump in transmitter power in 2006.
The University Announces Closure After 43 Years
In December 2015, after Vice-Chancellor Warren Bebbington had already announced funding changes redirecting resources toward a new Medical School, the University of Adelaide released a discussion paper openly considering shutting the station down after 43 years on air. Staff and volunteers responded with social media campaigns and grassroots resistance, pushing the university to explore keeping the station alive under different ownership instead of closing it outright.
Saved by a Community Campaign and a New Owner
On February 18, 2016, the university partnered with Fresh FM 92.7 to spin Radio Adelaide off into an independent not-for-profit, and by December 19 that year the Australian Communications and Media Authority had approved transferring the broadcast license to Educational Broadcasters Adelaide Inc. The station returned to live broadcasting on August 1, 2016, from new studios in Adelaide's East End, run today by more than 500 volunteers airing programming in nine languages including English, Mandarin, Spanish and Farsi.
A Fight Over Its Own Name
The station's name became a battleground again that same December, when ABC's local station 891 Adelaide rebranded itself as ABC Radio Adelaide. Station chairman Iain Evans accused the ABC of appropriating an identity the community station had already spent decades building, and Radio Adelaide pursued trademark applications and legal action, securing a temporary federal court injunction that held through April 2017.
Fifty-plus years after an anonymous mining accountant's donation got a set of rooms under Hughes Plaza on air, Radio Adelaide is still broadcasting, still run largely by volunteers, and still carrying the name it had to fight in court to keep. Australia's first community radio station spent 2016 proving it also knew how to survive being one.