If you’ve ever driven past 386 Fitzgerald Street, North Perth you might be excused for not knowing what goes on behind the glass-brick fronted premises. In fact it contains the studios of “World Radio” 6EBA-FM 95.3 Mhz, Perth’s only fulltime community owned and operated multilingual radio station.

Over 82 languages are broadcast over the airwaves to metropolitan Perth, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, come rain or shine. Over 550 trained volunteers and their guests come to the studios every week (in total approximately 1,000 people).

6EBA-FM gained its own broadcasting licence and began broadcasting from North Perth. Multilingual broadcasters commenced on the airwaves through Curtin Radio 6NR in 1979. 1990 saw it broadcasting in its own right from rented premises at 20 View Street, North Perth.  A few years later the station purchased its current location in Fitzgerald Street.

The station is owned and operated by the Multicultural Radio & TV Association of WA Inc. (MRTA) and is administered by a 16 member council, elected every two years by the Association’s membership. The current chairman of the MRTA is Mr Nikola Nikolich JP.  The member groups are always encouraged to fully participate in all aspects of the Association/Station’s work.

6EBA has seen a significant increase in youth participation with some 20 hours per week produced and presented by young people.  For more information about our Youth activities and programming, please contact the Station Manager at North Perth on (08) 9227 5958 or Project Officer at our Maylands Studio on (08) 9371 3325.

Technical:

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6EBA-FM holds a Community radio broadcast licence from The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to broadcast ethnic programming to the whole of the Perth metropolitan area. Our licence allows 16 Kilowatts of peak effective radiated power to be broadcast on 95.3 mHz from the Broadcast Australia site in Television Road on the Darling Scarp at Bickley WA. The station operates a NEC5kW single tube FM transmitter with a EAV 5kW solid state FM transmitter in standby mode.

An NEC coaxial switch is employed to delegate the transmitters to antenna or dummy load and is remotely controlled by a Burke status and control system. The transmitting antenna consists of a bank of four phased circular-polarised dipoles with a gain of 5 dbi.

Our main studio complex is in Fitzgerald Street North Perth and boasts two state-of-the-art on-air studios, a production studio, a listening booth and master control room.

The program chain consists of an Elan Delegation switcher and delay controller, a TC Electronic 7.5 seconds delay unit, Elan monitor/switcher, Aphex Compeller and Dominator processor feeding two RVR stereo generators.

The composite signal from one stereo generator is fed to an RVR 850 mHz Studio to Transmitter link (STL). The other stereo generator feeds a Mitec 10.5 gHz microwave dish (STL) giving us complete redundancy in the delivery of our program to the transmitter site.

We operate subsidiary studios for youth and indigenous broadcasting in Maylands WA. This complex is permanently on-line to the main studios via a TCP/IP internet link using Barix encoders and decoders. The studio at Maylands is configured with identical equipment to our main studios.

Technical History of the Station:

Ethnic broadcasting in Perth began in 1977 as an access user group broadcasting evenings for 16 hours a week on the AM Community station 6NR. This arrangement endured until 1989 when the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA– now ACMA) called for expressions of interest in a community licence on 95.3mHz FM.

Our governing body the Multicultural Radio and Television Association of WA Inc. (MRTA) was successful in applying for that licence and then set about raising funds and finding suitable studio and transmitter locations.

An old fibro house in View Street North Perth was peppercorn rented from the City of Perth in 1989. We began to fit-out the building into two studios including sound proofing and constructing our own consoles using volunteer labour. 

      

Finding a transmission site was a real challenge but we eventually pulled some strings in Canberra resulting in the ABC television tower at Bickley being offered to us at a reasonable rental.

The first test transmissions went to air in December 1989 and the Station officially opened on Australia Day 1990 with a grand opening party attended by all the ethnic groups.

In 1993 the station bought the premises it currently occupies at 386 Fitzgerald Street North Perth giving us a huge improvement in location and spaciousness while reducing recurring costs. The technical equipment move was completed and we were broadcasting from the new location in September 1993.