Forty Years of 2SER

In the early 1980s Nicola Joseph helped build some incredibly important parts of 2SER. Drawing on her experience at 4ZZZ in Queensland, Nicola established 2SER’s newsroom - only the second of its type in the country at the time. In this clip Nicola talks about that time, but she’s contributed much more including the important eventual break away of Radio Redfern and Radio Skid Row. For more of the story look for our extended interview series.

Long time volunteer and presenter for 2SER Greg Poppleton has given us so much over the years, presenting every week since May 1985. This piece is “Wordsports”, a quiz show Greg produced and hosted that allowed comedians, great talkers and thinkers to play. Here is a clip from the Wordsports OB at Central May 1991 for Open Mind - there is also an accompanying piece from Greg explaining the show more broadly.

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Long time volunteer and presenter for 2SER Greg Poppleton has given us so much over the years, presenting every week since May 1985. This piece is “Wordsports”, a quiz show Greg produced and hosted that allowed comedians, great talkers and thinkers to play. Here is a clip from the Wordsports OB at Central May 1991 for Open Mind - there is also an accompanying piece from Greg explaining the show more broadly.

Long time volunteer and presenter for 2SER Greg Poppleton has given us so much over the years, presenting every week since May 1985. This piece is “Wordsports”, a quiz show Greg produced and hosted that allowed comedians, great talkers and thinkers to play. This is Greg’s introduction to the show - there is also an accompanying clip of the 1991 OB as a seperate episode.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Long time volunteer and presenter for 2SER Greg Poppleton has given us so much over the years, presenting every week since May 1985. This piece is “Wordsports”, a quiz show Greg produced and hosted that allowed comedians, great talkers and thinkers to play. This is Greg’s introduction to the show - there is also an accompanying clip of the 1991 OB as a seperate episode.

Between midnight and 2am on the 13 March 1986 Greg Poppleton made a one hour live recording in the old studio 2 for The Phantom Dancer (though it wasn’t called The Phantom Dancer then). In the band was James Morrison playing double bass, his brother John on drums, Ian Date on guitar and Andrew Speight on sax. The quartet played an hour of standards and improvised two original blues on the spot - Have A Banana Blues and the 2SER Blues. The sound recordist was Helen Bucknall, using only the room (which acoustically was excellent) and the desk mics to create with these musicians a recording that went straight to ancient quarter inch tape without any further editing. Then dubbed to a second quarter inch tape for the announcement inserts, then to cassette (tapes needed to be re-used) and then I dropped it onto CD in 2015. A 7 minute snippet of the“2SER Blues” has been edited by Greg Poppleton and used here with permission. John wrote of the piece, "I can say with no hesitation that you are free to use any (and all) audio and photos etc for the exhibition. Indeed we would be honoured if 2SER saw fit to include our work. Please also extend our congratulations to everyone on the team at the station on reaching this incredible milestone."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Between midnight and 2am on the 13 March 1986 Greg Poppleton made a one hour live recording in the old studio 2 for The Phantom Dancer (though it wasn’t called The Phantom Dancer then). In the band was James Morrison playing double bass, his brother John on drums, Ian Date on guitar and Andrew Speight on sax. The quartet played an hour of standards and improvised two original blues on the spot - Have A Banana Blues and the 2SER Blues. The sound recordist was Helen Bucknall, using only the room (which acoustically was excellent) and the desk mics to create with these musicians a recording that went straight to ancient quarter inch tape without any further editing. Then dubbed to a second quarter inch tape for the announcement inserts, then to cassette (tapes needed to be re-used) and then I dropped it onto CD in 2015. A 7 minute snippet of the“2SER Blues” has been edited by Greg Poppleton and used here with permission. John wrote of the piece, "I can say with no hesitation that you are free to use any (and all) audio and photos etc for the exhibition. Indeed we would be honoured if 2SER saw fit to include our work. Please also extend our congratulations to everyone on the team at the station on reaching this incredible milestone."

Taking a punt on a new venture shows quite a bit of courage. John Tebbutt, who would end up working in as a radio scholar, started in those very early days in the tower. Here he talks about the volunteer roles he held during the station’s early days, and his meeting with Keith Jackson one week into the station’s life.

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Like all contemporary broadcasting we’ve needed to properly upgrade our systems in the last few years. In this piece the station’s technician, Lachlan Cole, talks through some of that process in recent times. As part of the upgrade we’ve also been able to make some custom-designed podcasting studios too – nothing’s too good for our award-winning pod teams.

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There are few places that country music has consistently received support in Australia. One of those rare gems is the work of Barbara Morison. On air since 1981, when she began broadcasting as a school girl along with her mum Irene, the two would walk to the Broadway studio from home in Annandale. Soon they became a dream time, providing essential female voices on air, as well as some very fantastic mother/daughter crate digging services. Ever since Barbara has championed local talent tirelessly and with an unequalled energy – you can still hear her on air every Saturday morning. Referenced here too are founders of 2SER country, Maurie Taylor and Gary Coxhead, and if you listen closely you’ll hear Barb’s regular broadcasting companion, Diesel the dog, on record here too. So many more stories in the extended interview edition to come.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.