I’ve been trying to write about Bob Dylan for a Songs of 75 piece (Hurricane is the song) but where do you begin with Dylan? The start, middle or work backwards from now?
I couldn’t decide, so I put Dylan down to instead focus on the Sydney radio station 2UE. Ironically the issue is the same.
We wish 2UE Easy Music, The Modern Station, Macquarie Sports Radio, Talking Lifestyle, 954 2UE or, if you want to go way back to the beginning, 2EU 1025 KHz AM (the EU stood for Electrical Utilities) a very happy 100th birthday. You are so much more than a frequency. An entity full of life, laughs, sport, stories, music, news, dramas and whistles. I’ll come back to the whistles.
2UE today is a far cry from Cecil ‘Pa’ Stevenson’s home in Maroubra in 1925 where he would broadcast from his dining room using an 80-foot transmitter he and his son Murray had built in the back yard.
The current iteration is owned by Nine Entertainment but leased to the ACE Radio Network. While it is technically broadcast from Pyrmont, where Nine Radio’s 2GB lives, the 2UE announcers are a far-flung bunch with some broadcasting from home (and possibly their dining rooms too) and others from Melbourne. We can now broadcast from anywhere.
Switching between songs, ads and programs is also automated, and far smoother. Pa Stevenson had to change the 78 RPM record, or the player piano roll when they concluded. Already with a strong sense that dead air was a bad thing, Pa would whistle while he changed things over, which perhaps inspired Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
A local butcher was so put off by the whistling, which clearly wasn’t Pa’s forte, that he went as far as visiting Pa and offered to pay him a shilling to instead speak about the quality of his meat. Thus began advertising, and for a long while one shilling was the going rate to have Pa talk on products rather than purse his lips and whistle.
I should also mention that the 2EU was short lived too. The Postmaster General’s Department who issued the broadcast license decided that 2EU didn’t roll off the tongue. 2UE was far more ‘euphonious’ (delightfully ironic seeing as euphonious starts with EU!).
2UE moved from the Stevenson dining room to Pa’s business address on George Street in Sydney city. Stevenson sold the station in 1934 and in 1938, in a partnership with 2GB, it moved to Savoy House on Bligh Street. The transmitter too left Pa’s back garden with a new one installed in Lilli Pilli.
The next period saw the production of dramas and serials, live music both classical and contemporary and cricket, where the overseas results of Don Bradman and the Australian team was shared via cablegrams. Showing that they weren’t averse to a fusion of the above Bradman would even play the piano on a weekly 2UE program Call To Youth.
In September 1939 a 2UE radio drama was interrupted by then Prime Minister Robert Menzies announcing that Australia was at was with Germany. In ’41 Menzies opened a new 1000-watt transmitter at Concord, wired with explosives so the enemy couldn’t use it in an invasion and in ’43 the Savoy House studios burned down, leaving 2UE to bunk in with 2CH for a while.
The 50s saw John Lamb purchase the station, rebrand it as The Modern Station and bring Gary O’Callaghan over from 2SM. Gary, and his on-air character Sammy Sparrow (main picture), topped the breakfast ratings for 28 years.
2UE also started counting down the Top 40 daily with presenter Pat Barton (that’s Pat on the right above at 2HD in Newcastle, which turns 100 tomorrow). The first No 1, one of my Mum’s favourites, is below:
The 60s saw future radio royalty like John Laws and Bob Rogers (pictured below) join 2UE, and the station become very competitive with 2SM over the youth audience. 2UE also broadcast the first (legal) talkback program, on April 17, 1967, alongside 3DB in Melbourne, presented by Ormsby Wilkins.
John Lamb died in 1978 and son Stewart took over. The family sold in the early 80s to Kerry Packer, who then sold to Alan Bond, then as Alan’s empire was crumbling in the early 90s, the Lamb family bought 2UE again. Stewart Lamb died in 2001 with Gary O’Callaghan and others reflecting on his legacy to Radioinfo.
The 80s saw Phillip Adams and Alan Jones join the station, the latter when John Laws briefly left for 2GB. At one point in the 90s Alan has a 22% audience share which, paired with the regional listeners, made him the most listened to person and show in Australia, albeit divisive. In 2002 Alan switched to 2GB. Laws ‘retired’ on November 30, 2007. That year also Fairfax Media bought 2UE, 3AW and 4BC.
When Fairfax’s radio arm merged with the Macquarie Radio Network in 2015 2UE lost its local newsroom and then, because of its similarity to Macquarie’s 2GB talk format. It became Talking Lifestyle then Macquarie Sports Radio. When they both didn’t work just prior to the start of the pandemic 2UE returned to a classic hits format alongside Melbourne’s Magic 1278 and Brisbane’s 4BH.
With other successful classic hits stations 4KQ and 2CH being lost, in October 2021, the Macquarie Radio Network, now acquired by Nine Entertainment, shook on a deal with the ACE Radio Network to lease 2UE, 4BH and Magic 1278 from them. That multiyear arrangement, with a classic hits music formula, and presenters including Trevor Sinclair, Gareth McCray and Cathy Jubb who recently took over 2UE Breakfast from Trevor, marked three years on January 14.
That’s the potted version, with additional reading and listening below:
Hear the first sounds of 2UE relaunched as a Lifestyle destination
‘A bridge has collapsed on top of a train at Granville railway station’
Radioinfo wishes 2UE a very happy birthday. You can listen on 954AM, DAB+ and stream via LiSTNR. You can also check out 2UE’s own 100 Years of 2UE show. They promise there is no whistling.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.