The Frankster Archives

A milestone in anyone’s language!

Tomorrow morning at 8.10am, June 1st 1993, after 15 years on 1224 AM, 2WS converted to the FM band at 101.7 FM – and tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of this event!

From that ol’ triangular array out at Prospect, through to the shiny new transmitter and associated equipment at Artarmon, this ol’ girl is still pumping out the hits and memories as WS-FM – and come November 23rd this year, they will be celebrating 45 years on air.

So I thought I’d put up a compile track I made some time ago.

This contains the various loop announcements on the FM side, what was going on on the AM side in the leadup to June 1st, the special broadcast by Hans ‘n’ Kayley that morning, a retrospective of the first 15 years of 2WS, and then finally the AM to FM changeover.

Audio credit for all tracks lies with ARN.

2WS 1224 –> 2WS FM 101.7: June 1st 1993, 8.10am AEST
Dur: 22’06”, Mono/Stereo, 27.3 MB approx

We’ve lost Mike Drayson overnight folks. Terrible news. News of this started coming through around 9pm-ish but it was unconfirmed then – it didn’t take long for confirmation to also come through though.

What an absolute bummer. One of the good blokes of the industry who recently picked up where he left off on 99.3 FM Sydney (Northside Radio). We’ve been through the vault and here are four audio pieces of Mike.

The first two are airchecks from 5AD from February 1973 recorded a few days apart (with thanks to my good mate Les Cook – tapes are a little worn but we still managed to get some signal out of them), and following that, two reels recorded in December 1989 two weeks apart containing voiceovers by Mike for KA-FM.

5AD with Mike Drayson – February 22nd 1973
Dur: 30’33”, Mono, 42 MB
Audio credit: ARN

5AD with Mike Drayson – February 26th 1973
Dur: 30’28”, Mono, 42 MB
Audio credit: ARN

KA-FM voiceovers Reel 1 of 2 with Mike Drayson – December 6th 1989
Dur: 5’04”, Mono, 11.9 MB
Audio credit: SCA

KA-FM voiceovers Reel 2 of 2 with Mike Drayson – December 18th 1989
Dur: 10’13”, Mono, 23.4 MB
Audio credit: SCA

**Aircheck audio supplied by David Rogerson and Dave D Whitcomb

Here are the September dubs from the Dave Rogerson collection! This collection is relatively smaller than the last couple, so I’m combining other audio with them. Each week we’ll have two from the Dave Rogerson collection, two from the Dave D Whitcomb collection (ex-2WS, 4KQ and others), and then two tapes from a collection of reels discovered in a storage area in 2003 that once belonged to 2UW Sydney.

David Rogerson Collection

Dave D Whitcomb Collection

2UW Master 1/4″ Reels

2UW Promo Master #2
Dur: 20’32”, Mono, 28.8 MB
Audio credit: ARN

**No cuesheet for this reel but it mostly consists of various versions and mixes for the 2UW Supaloo competition

2UW Promo Master #57 – Recorded June 16th to July 7th 1986
Dur: 30’03”, Stereo, 42.1 MB
Audio credit: ARN

**Cuesheet here