About 7BOD 93.7 FM Star FM

7BOD 93.7 FM Star FM

Overview

Star FM (callsign 7BOD) is a not-for-profit community radio station serving the Break O'Day municipality and the wider east coast of Tasmania. Its main signal is on 93.7 MHz FM from St Helens, the largest town on Tasmania's north-east coast, and the same program is relayed on two further frequencies — 100.3 MHz for the St Marys area and 98.5 MHz for Bicheno — giving the station a footprint that runs the length of the Break O'Day coast and inland to the Fingal Valley.

In a region of small, scattered towns separated by farmland, forest and mountain roads, Star FM is the local voice: a volunteer-run station whose presenters are drawn from the communities it serves, playing a broad mix of music and carrying national news bulletins. It describes itself simply as a not-for-profit community radio station situated on the beautiful east coast of Tasmania.

St Helens, its home town, sits on Georges Bay and is known as the game fishing capital of Tasmania; it is also the gateway to the Bay of Fires, one of the state's best-known coastal attractions. The other services on the local dial are relays of networks based elsewhere — the ABC's national services and commercial stations from Scottsdale and Launceston — which makes Star FM the only station actually produced in the Break O'Day area for the people who live there.

History

Star FM's documented public record is thinner than that of many community stations — it has never published a detailed station history, and no founding date is recorded in the sources available for this profile — but its licensing footprint tells the story of a service that has grown beyond a single town.

The station holds a community broadcasting licence under the callsign 7BOD, a callsign built on the initials of the Break O'Day municipality it serves. ACMA's register of broadcasting stations records 7BOD transmitting at 200 watts on 93.7 MHz for the St Helens area and at 200 watts on 100.3 MHz for St Marys, with a third service on 98.5 MHz listed for Bicheno. Building a three-transmitter network is a significant undertaking for a small volunteer organisation, and it reflects the geography of the licence area: no single site can cover both the coastal towns and the inland Fingal Valley communities.

Listener accounts from as early as 2009 describe Star FM broadcasting to St Helens and St Marys with an eclectic music mix, and the station has streamed online since at least that period. Its program team has been refreshed over the years while keeping the same local, presenter-led format documented in its current schedule.

Programming and Content

Star FM's schedule is built from named volunteer presenters hosting their own shows in blocks of about three hours, mostly across the daylight and evening hours. The current published team numbers around fourteen presenters, led by station director Blitz Greig.

Breakfast and morning programs include the Fruity and Loopy Show on Monday mornings, Tazz on Toast on Tuesday and Friday mornings, Kimmie's Wednesday breakfast program, Pugs on Wednesday mornings and Mary-Anne's In The Mood on Monday mornings. Weekend listening is anchored by presenters such as Astro on Saturday mornings and Dr Dave on Saturday afternoons, with the Sunday lineup running from The Tone's four-hour 80's Show at noon to Dave Barker's Blues Mix later in the day. The presenters mostly broadcast under first names or nicknames — Flash, Astro, Tazz, Haze, Jaxster, Pugs, The Tone, Jonno, Julz — in the informal style typical of small-town community radio, where announcers and listeners are likely to know each other. Music specialist shows fill much of the rest of the grid: Dave Barker's Spoonful Fridays and his Sunday Blues Mix; The Tone's 80's Show on Sundays and Rhythm and Soul on Wednesdays; Dr Dave's Travelling Medicine Show on Thursdays and A Dose of Dr Dave on Saturdays; Jaxster's Music Box on Mondays; Jonno's Fusion Show and Astro's 2 for Tuesday; Julz's Eyes Wide Open on Tuesday mornings; Haze's The Night Phaze on Wednesday evenings; and Neville's Country Corner on Tuesday nights, representing the country music strand in the schedule.

The overall mix — spanning the 1960s to today, with blues, soul, country and specialist programs — is deliberately broad, matching the tastes of a small community where one station has to serve every listener. For news, Star FM is listed as an affiliate of AIR News (Australian Independent Radio News), the news service supplying bulletins to community stations around Australia.

Audience and Reach

Star FM's three frequencies divide the Break O'Day coast between them. On 93.7 MHz it serves Pyengana, Binalong Bay, St Helens and Beaumaris; on 100.3 MHz, Scamander, Falmouth, Four Mile Creek, St Marys and the Fingal Valley; and on 98.5 MHz, Bicheno, Swansea, Coles Bay and Lake Leake. Together the transmitters cover the main settlements of Tasmania's east coast between the Bay of Fires and the Freycinet Peninsula, including St Helens, whose population was 2,206 at the 2021 census, and the smaller townships strung along the Tasman Highway.

The coverage pattern follows the settlement pattern of the coast: a chain of small coastal towns along the Tasman Highway — Bicheno, Swansea and Coles Bay to the south, Scamander and Beaumaris either side of St Helens, and Binalong Bay at the southern end of the Bay of Fires — plus the inland farming and former coal-mining townships of St Marys and the Fingal Valley, about 36 kilometres from St Helens over St Marys Pass. These are small audiences in absolute terms, spread across a large and sparsely settled area where the nearest alternative local services are ABC and commercial relays from elsewhere in Tasmania. Star FM is not measured in commercial ratings surveys and publishes no audience figures; its significance is as the only radio service produced within, and specifically for, the Break O'Day community. Its online stream extends listening beyond the coast to former residents and visitors anywhere.

Digital Presence

The station's website, starfm.org.au, is a simple, functional site: it presents the station's three frequencies and the towns each one covers, offers a Listen Live stream for each frequency, and profiles its team of broadcasters with their program names and times. The streaming links make the station available worldwide, and the site serves as the station's main public point of contact alongside its St Helens premises.

Ownership and Organisation

Star FM operates as a not-for-profit community broadcaster under a community broadcasting licence issued by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), transmitting under the callsign 7BOD. The station is run by its volunteers, with a station director — currently Blitz Greig — heading the on-air team listed on its website. Like other Australian community licensees, it is required to encourage community participation in its operations and programming, and its presenter roster is drawn from the Break O'Day area it serves. Its office at St Helens is staffed on weekday hours, listed as 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, Monday to Friday.

Contact and Availability

Star FM's studio and office are at 3 Hall Street, St Helens, Tasmania, and the station can be contacted by phone on (03) 6376 1306. It broadcasts on 93.7 MHz FM in the St Helens area, 100.3 MHz FM around St Marys and the Fingal Valley, and 98.5 MHz FM around Bicheno, with live streaming of each frequency available through starfm.org.au.