Melbourne’s ‘voice of classical music’ turns 50, and this presenter has been there from the start

In 1975, when classical music radio station 3MBS first broadcast from a suburban flat, the walls were so flimsy that the flushing of a toilet next to the studio was sometimes heard on air.

Cigarette ash would be brushed off the consoles, and the vinyl records were played by volunteers wearing knitted jumpers and safari suits.

A lot has changed for the mostly volunteer-run community station – it now broadcasts digitally from soundproofed, state-of-the-art studios at the former Abbotsford Convent.

But one constant, apart from music by Mozart, Bach, et al, has been the presence of volunteer presenter John Worcester.

Worcester was already a volunteer when the first record was played at 3MBS, Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana, on July 1, 1975.

Community radio became a lifelong joy for Worcester, and today, at 84, he still co-presents a choral and organ music program. There’s a studio named after him.

On Tuesday, Worcester was a guest at 3MBS’s 50th anniversary party.

The Age played a key role in the station’s creation.

In July 1968, businessman Brian Cabena and his supporters wrote a letter to the editor proposing they create a listener-owned co-operative station playing “serious music”, to be financed by subscription.

The letter complained that ABC radio had to share its music airtime with areas such as politics and sport.

Worcester said governments feared community radio would give people too much of a voice, but after years of lobbying, 3MBS was granted a licence.

3MBS broadcast from a studio built above Cabena’s radio and television repair shop in Cotham Road, Kew, until its move to Abbotsford in 2007.

Worcester said management at first banned jazz and overly avant-garde music.

Presenters had to give curt introductions to pieces, such as “This was written in Czechoslovakia”, as a fundraising ploy: listeners who subscribed would be mailed a schedule of composers and titles in advance.

Instead, said Worcester, subscription numbers dived, and the policy was scrapped in the early 1980s.

Today’s general manager, Gail Southwell, said 3MBS had become “the classical music voice for Melbourne”, but it also plays opera, film scores, baroque music and, yes, jazz.

It is funded by sponsorship, events, grants, subscriptions and philanthropy. Five years ago, a volunteer bequeathed the station $1.1 million.

Volunteers are aged from 19 to 92, and have professions ranging from a judge to a crane driver.

Worcester, a retired teacher who used to play classical music over school PAs at lunchtime, now records his program and emails it to the station from Canberra, where he moved seven years ago to live near his children and grandchildren.

But he couldn’t bear to part from his beloved 3MBS.

“I get the greatest joy when I put a program together, and I think, ‘That’s a good collection of pieces,’” he said. “I had given so much of my life to 3MBS. It’s very important to me. I just love it.

“I’ve always felt very much at home whenever I’ve stepped in the front door.”

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