5MU and Power celebrate major milestones

Murray Bridge’s two stations celebrate major milestones this year, with 5MU clocking up 75 years on air and Power FM celebrating its 10th birthday. Both stations, owned by Grant Broadcasting, are strongly connected to their community, which is seen as a big part of their success. 5MU and Power have been acknowledged in a feature article and photo shoot for the prestigious Adelaide Hills Magazine this month.

 

Program Director Mel Dee has told radioinfo the photo shoot was fun and it was good to cooperate with the local print media for the feature:

“It’s always wonderful when different forms of commercial media  cooperate with local interests in mind, that way the local community is the winner.

“Stephen and I had so much fun dressing up for this article….. giving our Radio Station a face…and that face is fun! With the onset of the Digital Radio era it was fabulous to be able to celebrate our station’s heritage and be able communicate our exciting future.

“We feel honoured to be representing our dynamic team, as well as the awesome industry that we are a part of. As Stephen said in the article, ‘we’re not changing the world, we’re just connecting with people’.”   

 

The article highlights the station’s connection with many elements of the community, such as the local abattoir, where staff working in the noisy boning room wear earmuffs with built-in radios so they can listen to Power FM.

Grant Broadcasting owns 28 stations and shares in more than 40 radio licences around Australia. In the article, the company is acknowledged as “allowing each station to develop its own identity, without centralised decision making or programming.”

PD Mel has worked at Triple M and Mix in Adelaide, and returned to Power FM two years ago in the program director role. She told the Adelaide Hills Magazine: “We offer the same sort of features as city stations, but we also offer local interest.”

 

Manager Steve Walker (pictured below from the photo shoot) says Power FM is very much a music station, with songs from the 70s, 80s and at least one new song every hour. “Everyone has a song that takes them to a time in their life where they discovered who they were… We’re not changing the world, we’re just connecting with people.”

The article also canvasses digital radio, which will in time come to regional areas such as Murray Bridge, when spectrum, cost and transmission issues are sorted out.