Radio

The NFSA’s radio collection includes a range of programs across a wide variety of genres from drama serials, variety and quiz shows, jingles, news and current affairs, talk shows, documentaries, sport, inaugural broadcasts as well as recordings of significant events and natural disasters.

The size of Australia’s radio industry means that the NFSA can only acquire a fraction of the programs that are available across digital and analogue broadcasting platforms. In determining priorities for collecting radio, the aim is to obtain a selection illustrating the diversity of Australian radio production, developments in the radio industry and its history.

Initiatives to collect radio recordings and documentation rely on the cooperation of radio producers and station management to provide recordings to be preserved in the national collection such as The Slice of Life project, during the Bicentennial of 1988, which encompassed geographic sampling of 24 hours of broadcasts from 60 radio stations.

Contemporary radio is also preserved. Triple M Melbourne provided a collection of breakfast radio shows from 2009 to 2012 which includes an exclusive interview with visiting American music legend, Prince.

The NFSA also collects material from the community radio sector, not only from individual stations and producers, but also networked programs from the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia.

Australian radio can also be explored at the NFSA through scrapbooks, scripts, photographs and significant Australian radio recordings in the National Registry of Recorded Sound.