Bankstown-Auburn Community Radio Inc (ACMA call sign CONNECT FM 100.9) is a

community radio Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popula ...

station broadcasting on 100.9 FM from

Padstow, New South Wales Padstow, a suburb of Local government in Australia, local government area City of Canterbury-Bankstown , is located 22 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and is a part of th ...

. The licensed broadcast area covers Silverwater to Picnic Point, Villawood to Mount Lewis in Sydney, New South Wales. Programs are produced for the local community and include sports, music, talk back and local news.

History

As 2BCR

The Bankstown City Radio Co-operative was one of the first groups to receive a community radio broadcasting licence. Awarded the licence in 1983, the station began broadcasting as 2BCR from studios in a building at the former site of Georges Hall Public School in Birdwood Avenue,

Georges Hall Georges Hall, a suburb of local government area City of Canterbury-Bankstown, is located 24 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and is part of the South-western Sydney regio ...

. Its programming included music and community interest programmes including weekend sports shows, youth-oriented request programmes, religious programming and for many years hosted a weekly police round-up. In the mid-1990s, the station had a media booth at Belmore Oval to enable live broadcasts of home games by the

Bulldogs The Bulldog is a British breed of dog of mastiff type. It may also be known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog. It is of medium size, a muscular, hefty dog with a wrinkled face and a distinctive pushed-in nose.rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 11 ...

team. A mobile studio allowed the station to broadcast from local events. Brendan "Jonesy" Jones got his start at 2BCR, when it was at Georges Hall. He famously got his father's car bogged on the oval after his shift "Jazz beat". Jones now works on Breakfast radio as the Jonesy part of Jonesy and Amanda on WSFM. In 1999 BFM moved to new permanent studios at 104 Cahors Road,

Padstow Padstow (; kw, Lannwedhenek) is a town, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately northwest of Wadebridge, northwest of Bodmin and ...

. By the early 2000s, the station's focus had shifted to community language programming almost exclusively. On 21 June 2007 the Australian Communications and Media Authority announced that it would not be renewing BFM's community radio broadcasting licence when it expired in July. The reason stated was

Most of the licensee's members are from communities outside of the licence area and a significant proportion of its programmes are directed at communities that are largely resident outside the licence area.

The station was then required to apply for a temporary licence to start from the day the previous licence expired. While successful in its application, BFM now shares its frequency with three other licensees. The current licence expired on January 1, 2010.

As a TCBL

Three operators shared the 100.9FM frequency between January 2008 and November 2011. They were BACR, a sub-group of the incumbent; CAMS RADIO FLAME FM and BSACR. FLAME FM was by far superior, and was expected to be granted the licence, but due to incorrect information being passed onto ACMA by the other licence holders (thus giving the other TCBL an advantage) CAMS FLAME FM was not granted the licence to the great disappointment of a large portion of the community. On 15 November 2011, 2BACR was awarded the licence to broadcast a community radio service to Bankstown. In October 2021 the licence was successfully renewed by Bankstown-Auburn Community Radio Incorporated, then in May 2022, the on-air identifier (call sign) was changed from 2BACR 100.9 FM to Connect FM 100.9 FM, with ACMA.

References

External links

{{Coord, 33.950067, S, 151.030214, E, format=dms, display=title Radio stations in Sydney Community radio stations in Australia Radio stations established in 1983