6PR

6PR, known as 882 6PR, is a commercial radio station based in Perth, Australia. Its focus is on news, talk and sport, and is Perth's only commercial talkback radio station. 6PR is owned by Fairfax Media, an Australian media company that owns television and radio businesses throughout Australia and New Zealand. It commenced broadcasting on 14 October 1931.

History

Radio in Australia was just twelve years old when 6PR commenced broadcasting on 14 October 1931. 6PR was founded by Electrical and Music warehouse company Nicholson's Limited, which operated the station from a studio above its music showroom at 86 Barrack Street, Perth. The signal was broadcast from the Applecross Wireless Station. In October 1939 their first relay station 6TZ came on air at Waterloo, 108 miles from Perth, using overhead landlines. This station had to generate its own power, so the on site technicians had to be familiar with diesel power generating plants.

During the Second World war 6PR set up a triple diversity receiving station at the home of George Moss, their only studio technician at Mount Lawley. This was to receive the BBC nine o'clock news from London. George would record this via a landline to the studio on to an acetate disk for replay first on 6PR and then it was taken by bike to 6WF for rebroadcast on the ABC at 9.30pm. After the World War 2, AWA's first Broadcast Transmitter was installed at Collie with 6CI relaying the 6PR programme. 1955 saw the building of new studios at 340 Hay Street East with three studios this enabled the station to program the country Radio stations separately.