Radio Adelaide is set to move from its home at 228 North Terrace Adelaide to new studios, co-located with Fresh 92.7, a few blocks down the road.
It will be the end of an era for the hundreds of volunteers and staff who have worked in the building since the station moved there in 1989.
The final show from the North Terrace studios will finish at about 2pm today, Friday 24 June, then after that, programming will emanate from the new studios at Fresh, located at 3 Cinema Place.
The station has told listeners and volunteers to expect some disruption as the move takes place, and program makers have been busily pre-recording shows over the past few weeks to ensure there is as little disturbance to the program schedule as possible.
As previously reported by radioinfo, the move takes place because the licensee, University of Adelaide, sold the building and required the station to move out.
At the same time the University decided it no longer wanted to run the station and began a process to hand the licence on to an “independent community group.” Shortly afterwards, youth community station Fresh 92.7 announced it had “entered into an agreement with the University of Adelaide to secure an independent future for Radio Adelaide.”
The decision was not universally accepted and a campaign to pressure the University to reverse its decision was mounted. The campaign ultimately failed, and the University has moved ahead with its intentions to transfer ownership and move premises.
A transition manager, David Grice, was appointed to oversee the premises move and to progress a new ownership model. Most of the facilities in the old building are now in the final stages of being dismantled.
While the physical move has been achieved on schedule, the new ownership issue has not been resolved.
A new board was set up, but currently that board is not in a position to hold the licence. The licence is still officially held by the university, which has responsibility for running the station, and the licence transition to another entity seems likely to still be some way off. radioinfo’s request for information from the transition manager was not answered at the time of publication.
An ACMA spokesperson has told radioinfo:
“The ACMA has not received an application from Adelaide University to transfer its community broadcasting licence to another entity and as such has not made a decision in relation to this matter.”
However, moves are underway to change key personnel to coincide with the physical station move.
It is expected that some existing management staff will be made redundant by the end of the month, and that a new General Manager will be appointed when the station moves premises.
The new GM is expected to be Rob Popplestone (right), although no official announcement has yet been made.
Popplestone is a former sports reporter, salesman and marketing manager. He previously worked for Channel Ten, 5DN, the SA Jockey Club, 5EBI and a web tv venture called AustraliaLiveTV.com.
Last week station staff and volunteers held a party to mark the end of an era for the station (facebook pic below), celebrating the contribution it has made to Adelaide and coming to terms with the physical move and the impending organizational changes.
With the bulldozers scheduled to get to work from next week, some of the volunteers expressed their feelings about the changes through graffiti on the soon-to-be demolished walls of the station.