About Jazz Radio 94.1

Jazz Radio 94.1

Jazz Radio 94.1 — callsign 4JAZ — is a community radio station broadcasting to the Gold Coast, Queensland on 94.1 MHz FM. It began in 1995 as a jazz-and-swing station broadcasting from Sanctuary Cove, and today trades as 94.1FM Gold Coast: a community station for the mature audience, run primarily by volunteers and supported by sponsors, members and government grants. It transmits at 25,000 watts ERP from Mount Tamborine. Directories list 941fm.com.au as its website; no website URL is set in this profile's frontmatter, the station's site and stream being best found through the radio directories that list it.

Overview

94.1FM Gold Coast is the Gold Coast's community station for the 50-plus listener: "for the mature audience still living life to the max." The station was set up to bring alternative programming for the Gold Coast's 50-plus community — targeting Baby Boomers through to the top end of Generation X — and surveys cited by the station show over 100,000 weekly listeners and growing. It is run primarily by volunteers, supported by sponsors and government grants, with over 800 paid-up members. Its general manager is Shaun Field; its CEO is Gary Field — the leadership team that has steered the station through its second decade and into its new Mermaid Beach home.

History

Jazz Radio 94.1 FM began broadcasting in 1995 from a small studio in Sanctuary Cove, playing jazz and swing 24 hours a day to an audience stretching from northern New South Wales to south Brisbane. Its 5 kW transmitter sat on Mount Tamborine "with our commercial friends." In June 2009 the station began a new era with a move to Marina Village in the heart of Surfers Paradise. It was a classic community-radio story: a niche format — jazz and swing, 24 hours a day — that no commercial operator would touch, kept alive by volunteers and the 800-plus members who paid their subscriptions to keep it on the air.

The station's first air date is recorded as 8 November 2001. On 1 April 2013, the service relaunched in its current form as 94.1FM Gold Coast — the community station for the mature audience, with a broader classic-hits format replacing the all-jazz schedule. It turned ten on 1 April 2023, celebrating with a combined Christmas party and birthday at the Northcliffe Surf Lifesaving Club, where more than 40 board members, staff, volunteers and family gathered. The Northcliffe — one of the Gold Coast's great surf lifesaving clubs — was a fitting venue: the station's beach and surf reporting has made it part of the coastal community's daily routine. CEO Gary Field cut the birthday cake alongside 10 Year Club original presenters Gary Boughen, Niven Walton and John Kerr. In 2026 the station moved again after a decade in its old studio — volunteers carrying the gear up the stairs to a new temporary home in Mermaid Beach, with Leigh the first announcer on air from the new desk — while planning a permanent new space. The station's May 2026 newsletter captured the move in all its community-radio glory: "After 10 years in the old studio there was a lot of unplugging and untangling going on" — technicians, announcers and volunteers hauling broadcast desks up staircases, "a bit fitter after carrying all that gear," the new space giving everyone "a renewed sense of excitement." New transmission technology for the Mount Tamborine link was part of the upgrade. It is the unglamorous, essential work of community radio — and the newsletter's pride in it is palpable.

Programming

The station's format is classic hits: hits of the 80s, classic 60s and 70s, and selected music of today — "local all day, every day." All shows and programs are produced by 94.1FM itself, except for the national news service AIR News. That localism is the station's selling point and its philosophy: CEO Gary Field has said that now is the time for community stations to truly offer alternative local services — the programming the networks don't do, for the audience the networks don't serve. The new year brought new shows and new personalities such as Craig Bennett and Tania Zaetta, alongside the 10 Year Club originals — Gary Boughen, Niven Walton and John Kerr — who have been with the station since the 2013 relaunch. The station keeps its listeners informed on local beach, surf and boating conditions with live crosses to the Seaway Tower, Volunteer Marine Rescue Point Danger and Gold Coast City Council lifeguards — a genuinely local service no network station provides. New personalities such as Craig Bennett and Tania Zaetta have joined the line-up alongside the long-serving originals.

The COVID years stalled many of the station's projects — the newsletter is frank about it — but the setback is behind it, and the move to new premises has given the team, in their own words, "a renewed sense of excitement about the future of the station." More than thirteen years after the 2013 relaunch, 94.1FM is still growing: new shows, new personalities, new technology, new studios. Community radio is often assumed to be fragile; 94.1FM's story is one of stubborn, cheerful, very local persistence.

Coverage & Audience

The station broadcasts on 94.1 FM with 25 kW ERP from Mount Tamborine (447 m HAAT), covering the Gold Coast RA1 licence area — and historically reaching from northern NSW to south Brisbane. Its audience is the Gold Coast's mature community: over 100,000 weekly listeners by the station's surveys, Baby Boomers to Gen X, the audience commercial radio largely ignores. A hundred thousand listeners would make 94.1FM one of the most-listened-to community stations in Australia — a remarkable figure for a volunteer-run operation, and a measure of how underserved the mature audience is. The Gold Coast's demographics work in the station's favour: it is one of the country's great sea-change and retirement destinations, and the over-50s are a large and growing share of its 600,000-plus residents.

Ownership

The station is owned by the Gold Coast Community Radio Association Inc., a not-for-profit community organisation. It is run primarily by volunteers and supported by sponsors and government grants, with over 800 paid-up members — the subscribers whose annual fees are the financial bedrock of community radio. The model is demanding: every presenter a volunteer, every dollar accounted for, the ACMA licence to maintain, the transmitter to keep on the mountain. That 94.1FM has sustained it for three decades — through format changes, studio moves and the COVID disruption that stalled many of its projects — is a testament to the depth of its community support.

Digital Presence

The station streams online and is listed across radio directories; directories list 941fm.com.au as its website, where the monthly newsletter keeps members and listeners in touch with the station's doings. From a jazz-and-swing start-up in a Sanctuary Cove studio to the Gold Coast's mature-audience community station, 94.1 has been on the dial for three decades — local all day, every day. The Gold Coast dial is crowded: Sea FM and Triple M Gold, Hot Tomato, Rebel and Breeze, the ABCs and the narrowcasters. But on 94.1, the volunteers of the Gold Coast Community Radio Association do the thing none of the others do: radio for the grown-ups, by the grown-ups, about the Gold Coast. Still living life to the max, on 94.1.