This week marks 30 years since Hitz FM’s equivalent of “the difficult second album“. Yes, it’s the week when Hitz broadcast 4 began. It was the first time the station had been onair since the history-making Summer 93/94 transmission. And so much had changed.
After 379 days of waiting…
In the months following the final night of Broadcast 3, we lobbied politicians to try to get a full-time license. Unfortunately this was unsuccessful. Hitz FM had exhausted our ‘yearly airtime allocation’ in broadcast 3. So we could do nothing except wait 9 months to return. During this time the Hitz team grew up, did a lot of nightclubbing and listened to lots of other stations. Kiss 90 was high on the list.
Kiss 90 was the brainchild of two other former Hitz volunteers – Michael Hughes and Nigel Slater. It was inspired by the British station of the same name and dedicated to club/dance music. Kiss sounded great and there was respectful competition with Hitz over the years.
Time to hit the clubs…
Hitz returned in December 1994 with a different sound to the Moorabbin era. Fewer novelty or ‘cheese’ tracks – more ‘cool’ clubby tracks and adult/indie songs. The music balance was tweaked over the next 45 days… heading back towards the pop style, but never to the extent of broadcast 3.
Hitz FM also had a new home. Their previous studio building in Moorabbin was no longer available, and after a search moved into 505 St Kilda Road. This new permanent location had dedicated rooms for all the various departments and was much more comfortable.
And on December 15th, 1994…
Adele Cookson started proceedings at midday on December 15th. Some of the tracks in the first few hours included Big Time Sensuality (Bjork), If I Only Could (Tom Jones), Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden) and Raise (Hypergogo). Other songs featured included Aint Nobody (Gwen Dickey & KWS), No More Tears (Jocelyn Brown & Kim Mazelle) and Captain of the Ship (Ratpack).
And you can listen to it right now:
(Note: If an audio player doesn’t appear below – click this audio link instead)
CDs and Celebrities
Just a few weeks later, the station released their first ever CD. The Original Hitz volume 1 was very successful, hitting number 1 in the Victorian compilation charts. You can read much more about the tracks and stories of Hitz’s first CD in this post.
Day one of Broadcast 4 also included a number of celebrity appearances including Siobhann & Melanie from Girlfriend/GF4 who came in to be interviewed by James Ash for “James’ House” – the weeknight Hot 20 program.
The girls were in studio to promote their first GF4 single ‘Sooner or Later‘. And Nick Barker (Nick Barker and The Reptiles”) was interviewed by Adele Cookson. You can hear this in the audio above.
The 4th Hitz broadcast featured lots of excitement and outside broadcasts, but I’ll put them all together and tell you more about them in my January post.
Until then – have a great Christmas/holiday season!
