Ian Grieve OAM died on Sunday March 16, 2025 after a battle with with cancer.
He is pictured here on receipt of his Medal of the Order of Australia in 2023, given for service to community and radio history. He was owner and manager of Australian Old Time Radio Shows and a founder of Old Time Radio Researchers, both filled with freely accessible audio, reading material and visuals from the golden years of radio.
By way of tribute for his contribution to radio and broadcast history below is an image, with further details from Ian, of just some of the radio club and station badges he had acquired:
“The book research continues. Over 700 clubs identified. Over 500 badges, though that doesn’t tell the story. Clubs that ran for years and decades had to reorder and they shopped around for contra deals or cheaper prices, so often you can have different manufacturers and that means different I.D.s on the reverse and even differences on the front, colour, fonts, Brooch, Buttonhole, Stickpin. We refer to these as variations and that means my actual number of badges including variations is between 1,000 – 1500.
Then there are over 100 badge images I have from other generous collectors, of badges I don’t have, that I can use on my website or in the book. Some of those collectors are members here. Then there is probably at least another 100 out there I have either seen or know from research, that do exist.
Currently I am sorting through all the membership cards and certificates and will make a collage of those.
Considering that I started this project thinking there were a couple of hundred clubs total and I wasn’t going to worry about anything after the 1950s, it has taken on a life of its own.
Then there are Station badges which will get their own section. I am still not including FM stations as it just gets too hard.
So here is the updated collage as of last night. The previous one I put together in August last year. I have removed duplicates and tried to tidy them up. The images are simply my working images, not the final quantity.”
And of radio postcards: https://www.australianotr.com.au/blog