About Triple M Sunraysia

Triple M Sunraysia

Triple M Sunraysia is a commercial radio station broadcasting on 97.9 FM to the Sunraysia region on the Victoria–New South Wales border from Mildura, Victoria, Australia. Operating under the callsign 3RMR at 12 kW, the station is owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo (Radio 3MA Pty Ltd) as part of the Triple M network, with Hit99.5 Sunraysia as its sister station. Its lineage stretches back to 25 May 1933, when it commenced broadcasting as 3MA — making it one of Australia's oldest regional radio stations, now in its ninth decade on air.

Overview

Triple M Sunraysia broadcasts mainstream rock on 97.9 FM across Sunraysia — the irrigation district centred on Mildura, extending into the Mallee, the Riverland fringe and across the Murray into New South Wales. The 12 kW signal gives the station a commanding regional footprint: Sunraysia is flat, open country, and a high-power FM signal travels a long way across it — from the vineyards and citrus groves around Mildura to the Mallee wheat country and the river towns downstream. Local programming is produced and broadcast from the station's Mildura studios from 6 am to 12 pm weekdays: a three-hour breakfast show presented by Matt Jonsen and a three-hour mornings show presented by Silco. Networked programming originates from Triple M studios in Townsville, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney. The callsign 3RMR — Radio Murray River — carries the heritage of the original 3MA into the FM era, a reminder that this is the same station that first crackled onto the Sunraysia airwaves in May 1933.

History

The station commenced broadcasting on 25 May 1933 as 3MA, initially on the AM band at 1360 kHz — a Depression-era regional station serving the Murray River irrigation settlements. In 1978 it moved to 1467 kHz in the national AM restack. For 64 years, 3MA was an AM voice of the Sunraysia — through the soldier-settler expansion, the post-war migration that transformed Mildura's demographics, and the district's growth into one of Australia's great horticultural regions.

The 3MA callsign encoded the station's identity: Radio Murray River — though the official callsign meaning recorded today is Radio Murray River, a name that tied the station to the great river that made Sunraysia's irrigation possible. For six decades, the AM signal carried the district's life: the fruit-growing news, the river levels, the market prices, the community fundraising, the serials and the hit parades. Generations of Sunraysia residents grew up with 3MA as the background of their working days.

On 20 November 1997, the station converted to the FM band as Sun FM — part of the great 1990s migration of regional AM stations to FM stereo. On 15 December 2016, it was relaunched as Triple M, adopting the mainstream-rock format and network branding of Southern Cross Austereo's rock network.

The Sun FM years (1997–2016) were the station's contemporary-hit era: nineteen years of FM pop radio, competing head-to-head with the market's other FM stations for the younger audience. The 2016 conversion to Triple M was part of SCA's national strategy of pairing a Hit Network station with a Triple M station in each regional market — Hit for the young, Triple M for the rock audience — and in Mildura it created the Hit99.5/Triple M duopoly that dominates the market today. Nine decades after 3MA's first broadcast, the station remains Sunraysia's rock leader.

Programming

Weekday local programming runs 6 am to 12 pm from the Mildura studios: Matt Jonsen's three-hour breakfast show and Silco's three-hour mornings show. Outside those hours, the station carries Triple M network programming from Townsville, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney — the rock format, the comedy, the sport and the networked drive shows that define the Triple M brand nationally.

The six-hour local window is the station's shopfront: the hours when Sunraysia hears its own voices, its own news, its own weather and its own conversations. In a market where the community station's 2006 submission complained of networking hollowing out local content, Triple M Sunraysia's breakfast-and-mornings local block — backed by the 2026 survey's commanding figures — shows that local still wins when it is done well.

The Triple M format centres on mainstream rock — the heritage rock library, new rock, and the network's signature sports and comedy content — tailored to the Sunraysia audience through the local breakfast and morning shows. The networked hours bring the national Triple M personalities and the AFL coverage that is the network's sporting crown jewel — a natural fit for a football-mad irrigation district.

Coverage and Audience

Triple M Sunraysia transmits at 12 kW on 97.9 FM, covering the Sunraysia region — Mildura, Red Cliffs, Irymple, Merbein, Robinvale and the surrounding irrigation districts, with spill across the Murray into New South Wales. It is one of the most powerful FM signals in regional Victoria, and its reach matches the district's own scale: a horticultural powerhouse whose produce travels the world, served by a radio station whose signal travels the district.

The 2026 Mildura commercial radio survey (Xtra Insights Survey 1, conducted 20 April to 17 May 2026) showed Triple M Sunraysia in commanding form: breakfast at 31.6 per cent (up 11.2 points), mornings at 31.4, afternoons at 32.6, drive at 33.0 and weekends at 31.8 — leading sister station Hit99.5 (breakfast 30.0) and River 1467 (breakfast 14.4) in most sessions. The double-digit gains across the board marked a striking survey for the heritage station.

The survey tells a story of a station hitting its straps. Gains of eleven points in breakfast and mornings, nearly twelve in drive — these are the kind of movements that reflect a settled, confident local lineup backed by a network format at full strength. That the gains came against a strong sister station — Hit99.5 itself at 30.0 in breakfast — shows the SCA duopoly working as designed: the two stations dividing the market between them, with Triple M taking the rock audience and Hit the contemporary-hit audience, and both leaving the AM and ABC competitors far behind.

Ownership

Triple M Sunraysia is owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo through Radio 3MA Pty Ltd, as part of the national Triple M network of 40 AM and FM stations. Its sister station is Hit99.5 Sunraysia (3MDA), the contemporary-hit station sharing the Mildura operation. The broadcaster's registered address is Level 2, 101 Moray Street, South Melbourne VIC 3205 (care of Southern Cross Austereo).

The Mildura duopoly is SCA's regional model in miniature: two FM stations, one rock and one hit, sharing studios, sales and back office, dividing the commercial audience between them. It is a model that has proven remarkably durable — and remarkably profitable — across regional Australia, and Mildura's 2026 survey figures show it working at full power.

Digital Presence

Wikipedia lists www.triplem.com.au/sunraysia as the station's website; the domain could not be independently load-verified for this profile, so it is recorded here as an attributed claim rather than a confirmed official address. The station is listed on radio aggregator directories for internet listening. As part of the Triple M network, the station's digital footprint extends through the network's app and online platforms — the modern distribution channels for a station whose lineage stretches back to the 1360 kHz AM signal of 1933. From crystal sets to smart speakers, 3MA's descendants have followed every wave of radio technology across nine decades.