Nova Adelaide now On Air

Australia’s newest FM radio station, Nova 919, has gone on air in Adelaide from its new Hindmarsh Square studios (click below to listen).

Merrick and Rosso opened the station on Wednesday at 3pm central time, and were followed by the breakfast team, Jodie, Jules and Tony, “the professional lunatics, who are so keen to get on air, they turned up to work 15 hours early.”

As a ‘spoiler,’ SAFM was in Rundle Mall, doing a promotion called “Who Gives a Toss” at the same time as the Nova launch. It has a series of other promotions running all this weekend.

In an election environment, the new DMG station promises to ‘restore voter trust with never more than two ads in a row’.

Aussie artists, including Missy Higgins and Nessa Morgan, and local performers, Foreshore and Special Patrol, performed live as part of the launch.

From today, Nova 919 will also be rolling out the popular $10 000 ‘Wheelie Bin of Fortune’ – a promotion which has worked well for the network in other states.

The full on air line up is:

Breakfast: Jodie, Jules and Tony, with Ryan.

9am-1pm: Lisa Fernandez, originally from Perth, but has worked for Triple M Brisbane and, most recently, STAR FM in Port Macquarie.

1pm-5pm: Hayden Else, most recently at Triple M Adelaide.

5pm-6pm: Merrick and Rosso

6pm-7pm: Michelle Murphy, has worked for SAFM and also produced Jonathan Coleman in the UK.

7pm-11pm: Gemma Clark, from Adelaide community station, FRESH FM.

As for the earlier announced breakfast team, Jodie J Hill is a stand up comedian, who was born in Adelaide. Tony Moclair and Julian Schiller have worked together before at Triple J and as ‘Crud’ for Triple M in Melbourne.

Schiller says: “Now, we’re all contractually obliged to like each other!”

Moclair says he was told of his new job by a skywriter in Melbourne: “It said: ‘You’ve got the job Tony, but let’s just make it our little secret’.

“We tried to get Nova to let us live in New York, start work in the afternoon and broadcast from there. But, they wouldn’t go for it.”

Adelaide’s Nova is the first of four new capital city stations to be launched by DMG, after its auction victories this year in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.