About Radio Fremantle

Radio Fremantle

Radio Fremantle is the community radio station of the port city, broadcasting on 107.9 FM to Fremantle, Cockburn and Melville under the callsign 6CCR. Established in 1987 — with Icehouse's 'Electric Blue' as the first song ever played — it is one of Western Australia's longest-running community broadcasters: a not-for-profit, volunteer-run station with more than 70 individual programs, broadcasting in over 10 languages, and a remit that spans local music, youth, ethnic communities and the everyday life of the Fremantle region. Its tagline is "The sound of Fremantle."

Overview

Radio Fremantle programs a deliberately diverse community format: music spanning jazz, classical, folk, country and West Australian artists, talk, news, sports and specialist shows, with Sundays dedicated to the station's large ethnic audience — including African, Portuguese, Brazilian and Serbian communities. The station's emphasis is on local programming tailored for nearby, youth and ethnic listeners, and it provides extensive outside broadcasts covering local events. With over 70 individual programs active, the station aims to ensure there is something for everyone — a breadth that reflects Fremantle's own diversity as a working port with a strong arts culture, a large migrant heritage and a young, alternative population. The station is run by volunteers and offers training courses and development for new broadcasters, giving community members the chance to host their own shows, showcase local music and talk about local issues.

History

Radio Fremantle launched on the morning of Saturday, 3 October 1987, from studios in the former East Fremantle police station — a heritage-listed building that gave the young station a characterful home. The first song played was 'Electric Blue' by Icehouse, an Australian band at the height of their powers — a fittingly local choice for a station founded to serve its community. The station commenced as the community radio service for Fremantle and twenty adjacent suburbs, operated by Creative Community Radio Incorporated. Its 1987 launch placed it in the second great wave of Australian community broadcasting: the sector had been formally established in the 1970s, but the late 1980s saw community licences granted across the country as the regulators recognised the demand for local, access-based radio. For Fremantle — a working port with a fierce civic identity and a suspicion of Perth-centric media — a community station was a natural fit. The heritage-listed former police station in East Fremantle gave the station not just studios but a story: the community's radio, broadcasting from one of the community's own historic buildings.

In 2000 the station moved to more permanent studios in Hamilton Hill, the suburb adjacent to East Fremantle — today at 153 Rockingham Road — where it broadcasts alongside 91.3 SportFM. The move gave the station room to grow its program lineup and its volunteer base. Across nearly four decades the station has maintained its core mission: providing the community with music, news and local information through multicultural and specialist programs, while giving the community itself a voice. The station's longevity — approaching 40 years on air — makes it one of the enduring institutions of Fremantle's cultural life, alongside the port, the markets and the arts festival.

Programming

The Radio Fremantle schedule is a mosaic of more than 70 programs. Specialist music shows cover jazz, classical, folk, country and West Australian music — genres underserved by commercial radio — while talk, news and sports programs address local interests. Sundays are dedicated to ethnic programming, serving the African, Portuguese, Brazilian, Serbian and other communities that make up Fremantle's multicultural population, in more than 10 languages. The ethnic programming continues one of community radio's founding missions in Australia: the sector grew in part from the migrant communities whose languages and cultures had no place on commercial or ABC radio, and stations like Radio Fremantle remain among the few places where those communities hear their own languages on air. For older migrants in particular — the Portuguese fishermen, the Serbian families, the newer African arrivals — the Sunday programs are a lifeline to language and culture, presented by broadcasters from within the communities themselves. Youth programming gives young presenters a platform, and the station's outside broadcasts take its microphones into the community for local events — festivals, markets, civic occasions. The volunteer presenters research and present their own programs, bringing personal passion rather than professional polish, and the training courses ensure a pipeline of new voices. That training function is one of community radio's most important and least celebrated roles: across Australia, community stations are the entry point for hundreds of media careers, the place where a teenager with an interest in music or a retiree with stories to tell learns to operate a panel, structure a program and speak to an audience. Radio Fremantle's open door — training courses, development opportunities, the invitation to host a show — keeps that pipeline flowing for the Fremantle region, and many of its 70-plus programs are presented by broadcasters who started as trainees. For listeners, the station describes itself as "the most diverse radio you'll get in the area" — a claim the program grid supports.

Coverage and Audience

Radio Fremantle broadcasts on 107.9 FM at 1,000 watts to the Fremantle RA1 licence area — the cities of Fremantle, Cockburn and Melville — from its Hamilton Hill studios, with online streaming at radiofremantle.com.au extending its reach worldwide. Its audience is the Fremantle region's community in all its diversity: the port's working families, the arts and alternative scenes, the migrant communities served by the ethnic programs, young people finding their voice on air, and the music lovers who follow the specialist shows. Fremantle's identity — proudly distinct from Perth, with its own civic culture — is the station's natural constituency, and "the sound of Fremantle" is both a tagline and a programming philosophy. The port city has always seen itself as different: the working waterfront, the cappuccino strip, the markets, the arts festival, the football tribalism of the Dockers — a dense, walkable urban culture quite unlike the sprawling suburbs to the north. A community station that reflects that identity back to itself, in dozens of programs and more than ten languages, performs a civic function no networked station could: it tells Fremantle its own story, in its own voices, every day.

Ownership

Radio Fremantle is a not-for-profit company trading as Creative Community Radio Incorporated, which owns and operates the station under the ACMA callsign 6CCR. The chairman of the board is Dr Ted Walker, with Margaret Morellini responsible for day-to-day operations alongside him. The station operates under a community broadcasting licence from the Australian Communications and Media Authority for the Fremantle RA1 area. Funding comes from the community-radio mix of sponsorships, memberships, donations and grants. The governance reflects the station's community roots: a volunteer board, volunteer presenters, and an open door for new volunteers through training and development.

Digital Presence

Radio Fremantle streams live through its website at radiofremantle.com.au — "everywhere else in the world right here on our website," as the station puts it — carrying the full 107.9 schedule to the Fremantle diaspora and the globally curious. Social media channels (@RadioFremantle) promote programs, presenters, outside broadcasts and community events, extending the station's community-building work online. For a station founded in a heritage police station in 1987, the digital presence is the latest expression of an unchanged mission: the sound of Fremantle, made by the people of Fremantle, available wherever they happen to be.