SAFM suddenly HIT 107 in 2014 and sister of Adelaide's Triple M with shared heritage from 5KA of the 1970s
Andrew “Cosi” Costello, who previously worked for SAFM, and Channel 10 newsreader Rebecca Morse took over Hit 107 breakfast show in 2019, replacing a team including Berri-born Amos Gill who in turn was part of a team that replaced the last SAFM breakfast team in 2014.
Images courtesy HIT 107.
Adelaide’s first FM commercial radio station in 1980, SAFM died in 2014 but was reborn overnight as HIT 107. SAFM’s dominance in the 1980s, with Paul Thompson’s innovative on-air vision plus promotions from the Skyshow fireworks (1985-2006) to the jukebox from hell hitting the mark, eroded in the early 1990s.
KAFM and then 102FM, launched in 1990, targeted older FM listeners while the ABC’s Triple J arrived in Adelaide for the younger age group. In 1992, former SAFM announcers and staff were poached and launched X102 – a direct SAFM-targeted rock station. In 1993, X102, being simulcast with AM station 5AD, was shut down but 5AD gained from the exercise and began to beat SAFM for the first time in a decade. SAFM kept producing quality announcers such as Kate Economou, Scott McBain, David Bruce, Jason Stevely and Zoe Sheridan.
SAFM (without Thompson who’d moved to DMG Radio) shifted from its adult-rock format to CHR (contemporary hit radio) music. SAFM’s demise in 2014 was sealed when its breakfast team finished last among the major commercial stations with an audience share of 7.5. The replacement HIT 107 breakfast team included Berri-born comedian Amos Gill.
SAFM’s fate also was influenced by the corporate manoeuvrings interstate. SAFM’s owner, the Austereo network, had seen its main competitor Village Roadshow buy KAFM, get the Triple M callsign from an Adelaide public station, and thus complete the Village Roadshow National Triple M network in 1994. Within a year though, the Austereo and Village networks had merged – and Triple M moved into the SAFM building on Greenhill Road, Unley.
In 2011, Austereo merged with Southern Media to form Southern Cross Austereo. This conglomerate, also involving television interests, organised its radio station into two streams: the Hit network and the Triple M Network. In 2015, HIT 107 and Adelaide’s Triple M both moved moved from SAFM and Austereo’s birthplace on Greenhill Road into new studios on the 13th floor of 70 Franklin Street, Adelaide.
The new studios looked down on 43 Franklin Street – the site of Paul Thompson’s 5KA Life Station of the 1970s that helped give birth to them both.
