I remember the words fondly; "I'm Gene Hunt. Your DCI. And it's 1973. Nearly dinner time."

1973 was another country and they did things differently there, with apologies to Leslie Hartley. One of the things that they did differently was listen to an AM radio station called 2SM, which was at or near the top of the ratings through the 60's and 70's and which gave many media personalities (for certain values of "personalities") their start in the limelight.

The station was founded by the Catholic Church just as the depression was kicking in in 1931, though it was never a primarily religious broadcasting station and has long since been sold. Many times, in fact.

By the 1960's it had adopted a "popular music" theme and retained that (with only brief departures) through the 70's with mostly music and a little talk. The then station logo of a vinyl record being partly exposed through a metal zipper on a denim cover should give you heaving waves of nostalgia. Or just heaving waves, depending on how well you remember the '70's. It was the rock station du jour, with promotions like "Rocktober".

But then came the 80's and the first wave of the new FM stations which began to eat 2SM's breakfast, lunch and dinner. It began to slide down the ratings from great to good to acceptable to struggling and by the late 1980's the writing was on the wall. In a change of strategy it dropped the top 40 format (which was by that time dominated by 2MMM FM, as I recall) and went for a "Light & Easy" one.

It worked about as well as the centre propeller on the Titanic did, and increasingly desperate attempts were made to find a new format over the next few years. Country music (I kid you not), back to easy listening, over to country / rock / blues... and as far as I can tell from its web site it's now all talk. Oh gods, it even has the John Laws show. Laws, in my opinion one of the most egregious shock jocks ever to (dis)grace the airwaves, retired a couple of years back but I'd guess that relevance deprivation syndrome drove him back onto the airwaves. He looks to me like he died about 5 years ago and certainly I think that his act did long before that.

Of course none of us know who, if anyone, is listening because after scoring half a percent in the ratings (yes, 0.5) in the early 2000's 2SM withdrew from the ratings book. I have no idea why anyone would still be advertising on it, but apparently a few are. At some time in the last couple of decades it also had to abandon its luxurious glass palace in North Sydney and head out to this nondescript building in Pyrmont, where old media companies go to die. (With the notable exception of Google, which is also out there.)

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