96FM (call sign: 6NOW) is a commercial FM radio station broadcasting in Perth, Western Australia owned by ARN since January 2015. It was formerly part of the Fairfax Media and Village Roadshow networks. History 96FM began broadcasting on 96.1 MHz on 8 August 1980 as Perth's first commercial FM radio station. The first record played at the 4 pm launch was FM (No Static at All) by Steely Dan, with Gordon O'Byrne the first live disc jockey to air. Gary Roberts was its first Program Director. Throughout the 1980s, 96FM provided groundbreaking innovation for Perth radio listeners. In 1981, the highly successful Gold Pass was launched. This provided holders access to obtain discounts at retailers for goods such as CDs (Compact Disks), clothing, concert tickets, car audio and security to name but a few. The rationale for launching the Gold Pass was so the station could raise extra revenue (minimum was a $5,000 spend) without doing outside broadcasts. In 1982, 96FM became the first radio station in Australia to play music from CD. The song was Toto's Rosanna. From then on the station's old library of vinyl records and carts (cartridge tapes) were replaced with CDs. Radio announcers were quick to spruik their use of CD's, often using the term "...from compact...". Amongst some of the most successful radio promotions in the stations history include 'Rockwords' where listeners could win $10,000 cash for correctly completing a cross-word in The West Australian newspaper. The station broadcast the clues on an hourly basis. Another hallmark promotion was the 'Top 96 Albums of alltime' and what was then the annual Skyshow. By 1985, 96FM had reached number one in the Perth radio ratings for the first time although 6PM on the AM band continued to be a strong number two for the remainder of the decade until 6PM converted to FM in 1991 as 92.9 6PMFM, then PMFM and now Triple M. 96FM was the sole commercial FM station in Perth until 1991. 6PM and 6KY successfully bid for the right to convert from the AM band to FM in the early 1990s. In 1993, Village Roadshow, owners of the Triple M network in the eastern states, took over the financially stricken FM Australia (formerly Hoyts Media). No more than six months later 96FM was relaunched as a Triple M, albeit with the Today Network Top 40 (CHR) music format, as opposed to