About 2SSR 99.7 FM

2SSR 99.7 FM

Overview

2SSR 99.7 FM is a community radio station serving the Sutherland Shire in southern Sydney, New South Wales. It broadcasts on 99.7 MHz FM under the tagline "The Sound of the Sutherland Shire" and is operated by the Sutherland Shire Community Radio Association Inc, a non-profit organisation run entirely by volunteers. The station describes itself as non-political and non-sectarian, and its purpose is deliberately local: to give Shire residents a station of their own, made by people from the area, covering subjects that metropolitan and commercial broadcasters rarely touch in detail.

That local focus shapes everything about the service. Programming ranges across music of many decades and genres, sport, parenting, business, motoring, disability community stories and local history, presented in the main by Shire volunteers. 2SSR calls itself a community access station, meaning the community does not just listen but broadcasts: local citizens are trained to go on air, and the station has put a special emphasis on training young people since its earliest years.

The station is based at Building F of the TAFE Gymea campus, on the Kingsway at Gymea, and it can be heard well beyond the Shire through its live stream, its on-demand program library and apps including TuneIn and Community Radio Plus.

History

The Sutherland Shire Community Radio Association was formed in 1984 with a nucleus of ten foundation members. Sutherland Shire Council backed the venture from the start as a foundation sponsor and remained a major sponsor, a relationship the station has long acknowledged. Building a station took the rest of the decade. The group developed a structured training course for broadcasters, introduced in March 1989 and revised and updated in the years that followed, and carried out a series of seven test transmissions while it worked towards a full licence.

The permanent licence was obtained in 1991, and permanent broadcasting began on 26 September 1992. From that point 2SSR developed the diverse schedule it still maintains, designed to suit the whole community rather than a single demographic or format.

The station's defining public-service moment came early. In January 1994, when bushfires devastated parts of the Sutherland Shire, 2SSR stayed on air across the weekend, including overnight hours when it would not normally have been broadcasting, carrying evacuation and fire information for residents. Its role was significant enough that other, larger stations directed Shire residents to 2SSR for the latest information. The New South Wales Government presented the station with a Community Service Award for its work during the fires, and the station came to be recognised locally as an official source of information in any disaster affecting the Shire.

Station histories also recall a run of notable live broadcasts from its earlier decades, including game calls from Toyota Park for Cronulla Sharks rugby league home games, live crosses to Canada during the 1994 Commonwealth Games, and progress reports following a local yacht in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. In a submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry in 2006, the association emphasised that its workforce was 100 per cent voluntary and described 2SSR as the only station in the geographical area of the Sutherland Shire providing local content to that community, which it then put at approximately 215,000 people. More recently, the station refreshed its visual identity in 2017, when a volunteer website officer redesigned the 2SSR logo, deliberately keeping elements of the old branding — including imagery of a wave, sun and palm tree drawn from the Shire's coastal landscape — so that listeners would still recognise it as it was phased in.

Programming and Content

The current program list on the 2SSR website runs to more than forty named shows, and its breadth is the clearest expression of the access model. Music programs dominate in number but not in kind. Listeners can hear classic rock on 12 O'Clock Rock and Reeling in the Years, which tours the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s through themes such as one-hit wonders and Australian classics; country on My Kinda Country and on Rock 'n Country, where country storytelling meets rock; jazz on Paul E's Smooth Jazz, a program strand the station says has run for more than thirty years and now honours its original host, the late Paul E. Routledge; and blues and roots on The Mystery Train, which ranges across soul, Cajun and zydeco as well. Home Grown is built entirely from Australian music, Saturday Arvo Madness showcases new releases, Rewind and Remember When and Reminiscing revisit particular years and eras, and Vinyl Revival celebrates the period when, as the station puts it, radio and vinyl ruled.

Speech and specialist programs sit alongside the music. Enterprise, presented on Monday afternoons by Jo Ryan, covers news and information for and about local businesses and community organisations. Babies On Air offers practical parenting advice for the parents of children up to five, covering newborn care, development, behaviour, health and starting school. Amplify features music by artists with disabilities together with interviews and stories from the disability community. Autos and Apexes covers cars and motoring, and Wavelength mixes conversation with guests — musicians, community figures and local identities — alongside new Australian music.

Sport has a permanent place in the week. Sideline Eyes, hosted by Stu and Harvey, covers local and global sport from rugby league to surfing, The Bandwagon provides Thursday drive-time sport updates and interviews ahead of the weekend, and Scotty and Dave's Big Drive Home combines local stories and football talk at the end of the Friday working week. The Weekend Preview looks ahead to events around the Shire, while Maori Voice, on Sunday afternoons, connects listeners with Maori music, culture, stories and news from across Aotearoa, presented by Ani Waenga-Worsley and Tukaha Ngatai; Waenga-Worsley has been broadcasting on the station for close to two decades after first joining a Maori program as a guest contributor.

Audience and Reach

2SSR's intended audience is the population of the Sutherland Shire, the large local government area in Sydney's south bounded by national parks, beaches and bays. In its 2006 parliamentary submission the association explained why a local station mattered there in particular: the Shire's size, its areas prone to flooding and bushfire, and communities that could be isolated in an emergency all made locally gathered information valuable, a case the events of January 1994 had already demonstrated in practice.

The station's alliances reflect that geography of need. The association has described close working relationships with local government, cultural groups including musical societies and local bands, ethnic groups, TAFE, primary and secondary schools, learning difficulties support groups and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Programming such as Amplify, Babies On Air, Maori Voice and the training courses open to all ages shows those relationships translated into airtime.

On FM, the audience is whoever can receive the 99.7 signal across the Shire and surrounding districts. Online, the reach is unrestricted: the station streams live, publishes on-demand versions of its programs — with episodes dated through October 2026 on its show pages — and is available through the TuneIn and Community Radio Plus apps. The station also takes its presenters out of the studio, promoting outside broadcasts at community events such as the Loftus Public School Spring Fair and the Breakfast Torque motorcycle event at Heathcote Oval.

Digital Presence

The station's website at 2ssr.com.au carries a live program guide, a full shows library with listen-on-demand episodes, station news and presenter features, and an email-the-studio facility. The on-demand archive is substantial and current, with individual program pages holding dated episodes week by week, which allows listeners to catch up on a missed show rather than relying on the broadcast schedule alone.

2SSR is active on social media, particularly Facebook, where it promotes individual programs, outside broadcasts, sponsor news and community information from bodies such as Transport for NSW. Its programs are also distributed as podcasts, with the station's podcast feed carrying its history and program material to podcast platforms.

Ownership and Organisation

2SSR is owned and operated by the Sutherland Shire Community Radio Association Inc, the community association formed in 1984. It is a non-profit, volunteer-run organisation and, in its own words from its parliamentary submissions, its workforce has been 100 per cent voluntary. It is a member station of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia.

Support comes from the community it serves. Sutherland Shire Council was a foundation sponsor and has remained a major sponsor of the station, and local businesses and clubs sponsor the station in return for on-air acknowledgement; the station actively promotes its sponsors and invites new ones through its website. Membership, presenting and volunteering are the practical routes by which Shire residents take part in running the service, and its structured training course, in place in evolving form since 1989, is the entry point for new broadcasters.

Contact and Availability

Listeners in the Sutherland Shire can hear 2SSR on 99.7 FM, and anyone with an internet connection can listen live or on demand through https://2ssr.com.au or via the TuneIn and Community Radio Plus apps. The station's studios are at Building F, TAFE Gymea Campus, Kingsway/Hotham Road, Gymea NSW 2227, its postal address is PO Box 997, Sutherland NSW 1499, and its phone number is (02) 9545 1800, with office hours listed as Monday to Friday, 9am to 3pm. The website also offers an email-the-studio link for contacting programs while they are on air.