PBS Community Radion Station - Melbourne

From humble backyard beginnings, to our first home in St Kilda, to our current residence in Collingwood, PBS has played a unique and essential role in Melbourne's music landscape.

The idea of creating a cooperative, community radio station to support under-represented music in Melbourne was hatched in the mid-late 1970s. Music lovers Felix Hoffman and Peter Jetson were both acutely aware of Melbourne's desperate lack of quality, community-driven radio, and had separately tried to enlist support for a new station. These two enthusiastic individuals joined forces and began searching for more like-minded music-loving weirdos.

By December 1976 a group of 50 people had been rounded up in service of the Progressive Broadcasting Service. Attendees at the inaugural PBS meeting came from a variety of backgrounds - doctors, dentists, and technicians rubbed shoulders with punks and musos. These people were "dissatisfied with the 'Pops & Classical' approach of current broadcasters ... and decided to try a fresh approach" (Waves, April 1978). Their vision of the station was fleshed out through issues of Waves magazine, a newsletter launched in 1977 where these idealists could conceptualise PBS as a counterpoint to the "sea of banality" of the dominant mass media of the time ("Drowned in a sea of banality", Waves, April 1978).

"We are about to witness - are witnessing - the dawn of a new age in radio communication. No longer is it adequate, or justified to simply 'rubber stamp' all media as corrupt or running counter to the well-being of the community they serve."
- Allan Quirk, "RADIO: The 'Hot' Medium", Waves, Vol.1, No.5, October 1977.

 PBS was about to change Melbourne's music radio landscape, creating space for little-heard music and underrepresented voices, combating the isolation of living in a sprawling city.

After obtaining a broadcasting licence in October 1978, PBS began regular broadcasting at 4.30pm on the 21st December 1979, via a studio at the Prince of Wales hotel in St. Kilda and a transmitter on the roof of the Royal Women's Hospital in Carlton. Since then, the station has continued to grow as an integral part of Melbourne's diverse music industry. Championing Australian music since before it was cool, the PBS program grid showcases the diversity of contemporary music and supports emerging local bands and musicians. Countless musos and broadcasters cut their teeth at PBS, whether by presenting a graveyard show, volunteering on the front desk or being interviewed on air.

~(blurb from PBS)