About Triple M Cairns

Triple M Cairns

Triple M Cairns is a commercial radio station broadcasting to Cairns, Far North Queensland on 99.5 MHz FM. Operating under the callsign 4RGC, it is part of Southern Cross Austereo's Triple M network and plays a greatest-hits format under the network slogan "Good Times, Greatest Hits." It began life as 99.5 Sea FM and was rebranded to Triple M in December 2016 as part of SCA's national realignment of its regional stations. Its studios are at Level 1, 232 Mulgrave Road, Westcourt QLD 4870. Wikipedia lists triplem.com.au as the network's official site; because the inventory flags the domain as unverified, no website URL is asserted in this profile's frontmatter.

Overview

Triple M Cairns broadcasts an adult contemporary/greatest-hits format to Cairns and the surrounding Far North Queensland region on 99.5 FM, with a repeater in Mossman on 88.5 FM. Its breakfast program is produced locally, with the rest of the schedule combining local and networked Triple M programming. The station's published contacts are +61 7 4050 0800 and 1333 53, and its newsroom email is news-cairns@sca.com.au. It is the Triple M-network stablemate of Hit 103.5 Cairns (4HOT) — SCA's two-station Cairns duopoly.

History

The station's history is the history of the Sea FM brand in regional Queensland. The Sea FM name and logo were created by Gold Coast Broadcasters for 90.9 Sea FM, which began broadcasting in 1989. Gold Coast Broadcasters became RG Capital, backed by media tycoon Reg Grundy, and expanded the Sea FM brand across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania through station purchases and new supplementary FM licences. In 2004, RG Capital sold its regional stations to Macquarie Regional Radioworks, which through successive mergers became Southern Cross Austereo.

The original 90.9 Sea FM launched with a lineup of experienced announcers drawn from capital-city radio — a sign of how seriously the new FM licences were taken — and the brand's expansion mirrored the consolidation of Australian regional radio itself: from local owners like Gold Coast Broadcasters, to Reg Grundy's RG Capital, to Macquarie Regional Radioworks, to the Southern Cross Austereo of today. Along the way, some Sea FM stations were sold to meet media ownership rules — Townsville's to Prime Television, Tasmania's to Grant Broadcasters — and the Sunshine Coast stations were offloaded to EON Broadcasting for $17.7 million in a forced sale after the Austereo–Southern Cross merger left the company owning too many assets in overlapping markets. The Cairns station broadcast as 99.5 Sea FM through this era — "Cairns' live and local radio station," as general manager Gina Hogan described it in 2013, when the station ran a tourism-support campaign distributing "Welcome" stickers in Chinese, Japanese, German and English to Cairns businesses, recognising that tourism is the city's lifeblood. In the 2015 Cairns radio survey, SEA FM placed third with 14.8% of the most-listened-to vote, behind HOT FM and Star 102.7.

On 26 September 2016, Southern Cross Austereo announced that its Sea FM stations would be rebranded in December 2016 — the regional Sea FM stations becoming Triple M, aligned with the metro Triple M network, while the younger-skewing stations became the Hit Network. The Cairns change took effect in December 2016: 99.5 Sea FM became Triple M Cairns, its first name change in the station's history. The logic, as SCA explained it, was alignment: the regional stations would fully align themselves with the metro Triple M stations, sharing brand, attitude and network programming while keeping their local breakfast shows — the one daypart no network has ever dared to take away from a regional market.

Programming

Triple M Cairns' flagship is its local breakfast show, "Tammy & JB for Breakfast," hosted by Tammy Barker and Justin "JB" Bell since 2023 — "locals who live and love Cairns," in the program's description. The show is a prolific content engine: its Omny podcast feed carries more than 1,800 clips, including the long-running "Weather Kid Wednesday" segment, community interviews (FNQ Legacy, St Vincent de Paul's Community Sleepout), and local event coverage from the Cairns Show to record fireworks displays. Daytime features include "Beat The Bowser," a fuel giveaway, and the station carries Cairns local news daily.

In October 2026, breakfast co-host Justin "JB" Bell was taken off air after being charged with sexual assault and assault offences over an alleged incident at a licensed venue in Smithfield in August; SCA confirmed he was off air from 9 October, with the matter before the Cairns Magistrates Court. The station has continued its breakfast programming with Tammy Barker.

Beyond breakfast, the station carries the Triple M network's greatest-hits music format and networked programming, with national news from SCA newsrooms.

Coverage & Audience

Triple M Cairns serves Cairns and the Far North Queensland region on 99.5 FM, with the Mossman repeater on 88.5 FM extending coverage north. Its audience is the 25–54 mainstream: the greatest-hits format targets the same broad demographic that made Sea FM a fixture of the Cairns dial. In the competitive Cairns market — contested by SCA's own Hit 103.5, Grant/ARN's 4CA and Star 102.7, and the ABC — the station trades on local breakfast and the Triple M brand's national identity.

Cairns is one of the most competitive regional radio markets in Australia, and Triple M Cairns sits at the centre of it. The city's economy runs on tourism — the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree — which means its radio audience swells and shifts with the visitor seasons, and its stations compete fiercely for the local ear. SCA fields two stations in the fight: Triple M Cairns for the greatest-hits mainstream and Hit 103.5 for the younger end. Against them stand ARN's heritage 4CA — the longest-running station in Cairns, which marked 90 years on air in May 2026 — and Star 102.7, plus the ABC's Far North service, the community stations and the Indigenous voice of Bumma Bippera Media. It is a crowded dial for a regional city, and the reason SCA keeps both of its stations live and local at breakfast: in Cairns, localism is the price of admission.

Ownership

Triple M Cairns is owned by Southern Cross Austereo, one of Australia's largest media companies, and is part of the Triple M network — one of the two largest commercial radio networks in the country alongside SCA's Hit Network. The Triple M network spans every state, from the metro flagships in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth to regional stations like Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Bundaberg and the Fraser Coast — more than 40 stations carrying the "Good Times, Greatest Hits" identity, with digital extensions on DAB+ and LiSTNR. Its sister station is Hit 103.5 Cairns (4HOT). The pair operate from the Mulgrave Road studios in Westcourt.

Digital Presence

The station streams via the LiSTNR platform (triplem.listnr.com/cairns) and maintains an extensive podcast presence through Omny, with the Tammy & JB breakfast show's 1,800-plus clips available on demand. It is active on Facebook, X and WhatsApp. Wikipedia lists triplem.com.au as the network's official site; the domain is flagged unverified in the inventory and no website is asserted in this profile's frontmatter. From Sea FM's 1989 Gold Coast origins through the RG Capital and Macquarie years to the Triple M rebrand of December 2016, the Cairns station has been a constant on 99.5 — the greatest-hits voice of the Far North.