About Nova 93.7

Nova 93.7

Nova 93.7 is Perth's Top 40 commercial radio station, broadcasting contemporary hit radio on 93.7 FM as the Western Australian member of the national Nova Network. Launched on 5 December 2002, it was the first new commercial FM licence in Perth in more than two decades — and only the second commercial FM station in the city never to have been an AM station. Jointly owned by Nova Entertainment and ARN Media, it pairs a local Perth breakfast show with the Nova Network's national drive and evening programming, targeting the young mainstream audience with current chart hits.

Overview

Nova 93.7's format is Top 40 (CHR) — contemporary hit radio: the current charts, high rotation, and the pop, hip-hop, dance and rock hits dominating streaming and sales. The station's presentation is bright, fast and youth-focused, built around the Nova brand's national identity as the disruptor that broke the heritage stations' grip on Australian FM radio in the early 2000s. Each Nova station carries its own local breakfast show, with workdays, drive, nights and weekends shared across the network — a model that gives Nova 93.7 a Perth voice in the mornings and the network's star power through the rest of the day. The station broadcasts at 40 kW on 93.7 MHz across the Perth metropolitan area, with the callsign 6PER — 6 for Western Australia plus PER for Perth — and streams nationally through Nova's digital platforms.

History

The Nova story begins with a visionary and a bidding war. DMG Radio, the Australian radio division of Britain's Daily Mail & General Trust, was founded by Paul Thompson — the man who had previously built the Austereo network — with the explicit aim of disrupting Australian metropolitan radio. DMG spent close to $400 million acquiring new FM licences, going up against entrenched heritage stations in every market. The rollout became a landmark in Australian radio history: Nova 96.9 Sydney on 1 April 2001, Nova 100 Melbourne on 3 December 2001, Nova 93.7 Perth on 5 December 2002, Nova 919 Adelaide in August 2004 and Nova 106.9 Brisbane in April 2005.

In February 2002, Nova Entertainment (then DMG Radio) and ARN Media purchased the Perth FM licence from the Australian Broadcasting Authority for A$25 million. Nova 93.7 commenced broadcasting at 3 pm on 5 December 2002 with presenter Tim Blackwell, and the first song played was the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Can't Stop — a statement of contemporary intent. The station was only the second commercial FM station in Perth not to have previously been an AM station, the first being ARN's 96fm; every other commercial FM frequency in the city was a converted AM licence. Daniel Underhill, who joined the station in November 2002 and later became program director, has described the radio markets of 2002 and the late 2010s as "chalk and cheese" — at launch there was no Facebook or Twitter, just a website the team knew was important without fully understanding how to deploy it. The commercial side changed just as profoundly: where the launch team once had two or three weeks and a studio full of beanbags to develop a creative idea, the modern station turns integrated campaigns around in 24 hours, with every staff member expected to think across content, commercial and digital. Underhill's longevity — one of the station's originals still programming it more than fifteen years later — is itself a measure of Nova 93.7's stability in a volatile industry.

The ownership structure evolved with the company. In November 2009 Lachlan Murdoch's investment company Illyria acquired a 50 per cent stake in DMG Radio from DMGT; in September 2012 Illyria bought the remaining half to become sole owner, and DMG Radio was renamed Nova Entertainment. The Perth station itself remained a joint venture between Nova Entertainment and ARN Media — a partnership that persists today. Perth was also at the forefront of digital radio: on 4 May 2009 the city's commercial stations, including Nova 93.7, began the first permanent DAB+ digital radio services in Australia, an industry milestone driven by seven years of work with the federal government and ACMA.

The station has had its controversies. In April 2010, announcer Hans Bruechle tipped off his friend Ashlea Reid about when he was about to play a competition's secret song; alerted by a mutual friend, the station gave the prize to youth suicide prevention charity Youth Focus and fired Bruechle — a swift response that underscored the regulatory seriousness with which rigged competitions are treated.

Programming

The Nova 93.7 schedule follows the network's proven structure: a local Perth breakfast show setting the city's morning agenda with humour, celebrity guests and listener interaction, then network programming through the day. The national lineup includes the Joel Creasey Show, the Chrissie Swan Show, the powerhouse drive team of Fitzy, Wippa & Kate, Ricki-Lee & Tim in the evenings, and specialist night programming including Nova's new-music and Australian-music shows. Weekends carry network shows alongside local content. The music policy is pure contemporary hit radio: the current Top 40 in high rotation, with pop, dance, hip-hop and crossover hits dominating and recurrents cycling through as they fade from the charts. The presentation is built for the under-40 audience — fast-paced, socially fluent, and deeply integrated with the artists and influencers its listeners follow.

Coverage and Audience

Nova 93.7 broadcasts across the Perth metropolitan area on 93.7 FM at 40 kW, with streaming and on-demand audio extending its reach nationally through Nova's digital platforms and the Nova Player app. Its audience is the young mainstream: the under-40, chart-driven listeners who are the most contested demographic in commercial radio, prized by advertisers for entertainment, retail, technology and lifestyle categories. In Perth the station's direct rival is Mix 94.5, with the two stations fighting one of Australian radio's most intense head-to-head battles for the contemporary audience — Nova's younger Top 40 energy against Mix's broader hot adult-contemporary appeal. The station's headquarters on Rokeby Road in Subiaco place it at the heart of Perth's media precinct, alongside its commercial rivals.

Ownership

Nova 93.7 is jointly owned by Nova Entertainment (50 per cent) and ARN Media (50 per cent), held through Nova Entertainment (Perth) Pty Ltd. Nova Entertainment — formerly DMG Radio — is the national operator of the Nova Network's five metropolitan stations plus the smoothfm network and a large podcast and digital-audio business; ARN Media is one of Australia's other major commercial radio groups, owner of the KIIS and GOLD networks. The joint venture is unusual in Australian metropolitan radio, pairing two rival network operators as partners in a single station, and it has endured since the licence was purchased in 2002. The station operates under a commercial broadcasting licence from the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Digital Presence

Nova 93.7 streams live through Nova's digital platforms and the Nova Player app, with full podcast catch-up of network shows and on-demand audio extending the broadcast day. The Nova Network's digital operation is among the most sophisticated in Australian radio: video content, social-first moments from breakfast and drive shows, artist interviews and the interactive competitions that define the brand. For a station launched as a disruptor in 2002 — when, as Daniel Underhill recalled, the team had a website but no social media and weeks to ponder a creative brief — the transformation into a multi-platform entertainment brand mirrors the transformation of the medium itself. The 93.7 frequency remains the FM home, but the audience the station was built for increasingly meets it on the phone first.