Fact Check: History and Details of B105 and TripleM Brisbane Studios

So, I'm standing outside a big empty piece of land with a pond in the middle of it. And it smells terrible. And you

might be wondering, what was here before? What was in this space that used all this land? Was it a building? Was it

a tennis court? Was it a pool? Who knows? If only we had some footage from 3 years ago that we could go back and

look at. Oh, wait. >> Brisbane's number one >> hit music station B 105.

What you're looking at right now is the building that housed two of the biggest radio stations in Brisbane. B105 and

TripleM. They both operated from this building for over 18 years. Located on the first floor of 309 North Key, right

by the Brisbane River, is where the studios used to operate. As of 2019, however, both studios have moved down to

the barracks at Petri Terrace. After both stations left the building, the offices remained abandoned for several

months. Shortly after this, a new business moved into the old offices and I was given access to see the inside. I

saw an opportunity to document this building before it was destroyed. So, I decided to bring you guys along with me.

Here we go. So, as we make our way through the building, I'll be showing different interesting clips as I talk

about the area, just to try and give you an idea of what it was like to work here. I did actually work in this

building for about a year, but not for B 105 or M. It was a different company. So, we'll start by heading out to this

balcony, which I did actually get to use when I was working here. But when B 105 was running from here, it was a lot more

interesting because fans would always group up outside whenever there was a big star in doing an interview or

whatever. As we continue around the office though, we'll see it's pretty ordinary looking. We got a handful of

desks, a bunch of meeting rooms, and the usual stuff you'll find in an office. But if we travel back a couple of years,

this is what it looked like. And of course, you've got the larger office area.

At the moment, we're heading towards the two main studios that we use dayto-day. These studios are all completely

soundproof. It is amazing how quiet it is once you get inside. All you can hear is the air conditioning.

This is on air studio number one which used to look like this Tuesday. >> This is bloody This is ridiculous. Look

at this. How cool is that? >> It's all desk. >> And leaving studio one. Right next to it

is studio number two, which seems like it was the main studio used for the majority of the shows. And when I was

doing research for this video, I actually found that a ton of the social media clips were from this room. There's

been dozens of different artists and actors that have come in here to be interviewed for all the different shows

that B105 did. Doesn't seem like a lot of time and you can hear they didn't mean to. You stay on that line for as

long as you can. >> You can even see where the old LED strips were on the windows.

As we make our way out of the studio, we come into the big long hallway that goes all the way down basically the whole

office. And there's so much footage of things going on in here. And we enter what used to be the conference room

where they used to run all the daily meetings. They also ran a few different shows from in here where they put things

like spiders on the presenters or they did pranks on some of the staff. >> And then you've got the hallway area on

the left which was actually used for storing CDs at one point in time. And then right next to that is one of the

recording studios that they use for all sorts of things from what I can see. If you listen to B105 in some of the

earlier days, you might have heard a show called The Morning Crew. And this was actually recorded in this very

studio by Jamie Dunn and Ian Cder. Tragically though, Jamie has since passed away, which is really sad to

hear. Directly next to this room with a big window in between is the control room for that studio. And they had a

bunch of mixing desks and all these different computers running different software to allow them record different

audio files and get them edited to go to air. As we make our way out of this room though, we get back into this hallway

that held all the CDs. And we're coming up on the area that was used by the programming staff. So, they had about

four or five different people working in this area just to do a bit more of the admin type stuff. It's really hard to

see because the lights aren't that great. And I'm here at nighttime because that's the only time I could really

record this, but you get an idea of what's going on, I guess. Coming up here, we've got what I think is a store

room for cleaning supplies and that sort of thing. It's kind of weird that it has hot plates and like kitchen stuff

because the kitchen is in the room to the left of this room. And this is kind of a bit small to be a kitchen. So, I

don't know why this is here. It's just maybe for extra cooking. And let's look at the actual kitchen now so you get an

idea of what I mean. This was the kitchen. This is where everyone came in in the morning and they cooked eggs on

the sandwich press that is not for cooking eggs. And they put milk in cereal packets instead of putting in

bowls cuz they didn't want to clean the bowls. And they also jump scared some people in here as well. But that's all

pretty normal. Going back to the main hallway, which they actually use for quite a lot of different things. We've

got the bathrooms on the right as well, which is where people used to do their makeup in and get ready for the show.

And then we've got another two studios and four control rooms. These studios were more for recording commercial audio

things like advertisements, station imaging. Basically, everything you'd hear on the station that isn't music and

isn't a show would be recorded from these rooms. Of course, they were used for pranks as well.

>> No, no, NO. >> SO, we've taken the handle off the door to the sound booth and we've got your

phone in here. So, you have no access to any technology as adults get so >> Oh, I know. I've just been to work an

angry demon, my friend. >> And the room that I'm in right now is probably one of the weirdest ones

because it's the only studio with a big wooden beam in the top. It's weird. It's weird that it's there and just coming

out of the wall. Right next to this room, though, is what I believe to be the carding department. And this is

where they basically took all the audio, the effects, the advertisements, and they got them ready to be played on air.

And here's some footage of that. >> This is Jamie. Hi Jamie.

>> Hello. >> Jamie is filling in for me when I'm on holidays.

>> And Jamie, what do you do for this station? >> Uh, I'm a panel

>> on B 105. >> Okay. Now, when we chop those up, they will be loaded into here into Maestro.

>> So, that's basically what that room was for. And now we're in the middle of the entire building pretty much. And on the

left is two more studios. Down the middle is the control room and the engineering areas. And on the right,

which is where we're going to go now, is the reception and also the way to get to TripleM. TripleM is a whole another

section of the building. So, going down here, we'll see the reception desk. And one of the cool things about this area

is all the staff actually signed their names on the wall and left really cool notes before they left. Obviously, this

was removed when they demolished the building, but it's cool to see that they left something behind here before it

was. I'm really glad to at least be preserving these in video form because all of this would have been lost to

history. All right. All right, next we're going to be leaving the reception area. And here's a bit of a sneak

preview of what's coming up. But there's two more studios here I'll quickly show. Pretty similar to the other ones. These

were mainly for TripleM, obviously. The only thing unique about these two is that this is the only control room

without any working lights. So, we'll move on to the next section of the office. Now, this is where we start to

get into more of the technical stuff that ran the station. We've got two news booths on the right, as well as another

studio on the left. So, this is where the news readers would probably be working, reading out the daily news. And

all these desks are part of the finance and news area as well. This is one of the better condition studios in the

whole building from what I've seen. I know a fair few of them are missing the uh wall panels though, which is kind of

annoying. And we've got one of the first pieces of left behind documentation right here. This window gives you a

pretty good view of this whole side of the office, which is really cool. Now, let's make our way around all these

desks. We've got a bit of a fiber box here. here I had a quick look at. So they've got fiber optic around the whole

office pretty much for all sorts of things. Windows that have a great view of Roma Street and some desks over here

which look like they're for the sales department. There's also a meeting room here as well. But I know this isn't what

you actually want to see cuz what you want to see is the master control room. Now this is basically a mini data

center. It's really really cool. I spent ages in here. This place has some of the cleanest cable runs I've ever seen

anywhere in it. And when I was doing this tour, I didn't actually work in it. I was still studying it. So seeing all

this stuff in real life was really, really cool. We got the building's access control here and a NVR as well.

There's also a Windows server left behind that was for managing access cards, but there were basically no

instructions along with it, so no one knew how to do it. But yeah, there were cables everywhere. And a lot of these

ones weren't actually cut like the rest of the building, cuz in the studios, they cut most of the cables. But in

here, you'll find that a lot of them actually were still intact. And you got so many patch panels. You got so many

connectors, lots of cool stuff. Some of the labels in here as well give you hints about what they were using. They

had a bit of a VM cluster in here. I know they had a big massive UPS in here as well. A bunch of different audio

equipment. There's cables running between racks. There is a ton of phone lines as well and a few bits and pieces

left behind like this random switch. We've got a ton of interesting labels here as well about how they routed their

audio, which is really cool to see. And also this amplifier that ran the PA speakers around the office. And they use

that to listen to the radio stations while they were working and also make announcements. It was really cool. I did

manage to find all sorts of documentation left behind like CDs, tapes, regimes, marketing materials.

Here's one for rack layouts. It's basically an as built for one of the racks in this room. I believe there were

24 racks in total. So, this gives you an idea of how they laid things out in the master control room. Something that I

found interesting as well is that all the incoming network connections and infrastructure for the building was not

in this room. There was a separate room purely for communications, which I imagine is the only place they ever let

vendors into like Telra to install fiber links. And to get to that room, you have to go through this engineering area,

which is where all the IT and audio engineers used to work. But because there's no one working here right now, I

can walk right in and I can look at the XLR cables they've got sitting here that that were probably running a broadcast

at some point. They've got four racks in this room as well in addition to 24 in the main control room. And one of the

most interesting ones is this big Telstster rack, which seems to be running a bunch of custom Simons gear.

And it has some batteries in here. There's a page here for an audio patch panel layout. But one of the most

interesting things is this big mystery blue box that just sits at the bottom of the rack and it's labeled 2 megabit

universal line transmission equipment. And there's no indication of what this really is, what's inside the box. My

best guess is that this is what actually linked this location to the transmitter tower over at Mount Cuther. But it's a

bit of a mystery, isn't it? This room is also, of course, where all the phone lines get punched down in a big punch

down block right here. There's so many wires going all over the place. It's crazy. I don't know how they managed all

this, but jeez, it's impressive. Over here is the marketing store room, and you can see a few different posters. And

there's also some documentation in here about radio antennas and all sorts of stuff. Seems like they had some problems

with the antenna that was originally shipped to them. But yeah, making our way out of there, we've got the keys,

which there is so many of that none of which really were needed for anything. Because all the entrances use access

cards, I doubt these keys were used for very much. Last but not least is the electrical room. And you can see

someone's left a note here saying the equipment is still on air as of June 2019.

They've got probably one of the more complicated electrical panels I've seen in a business before. This is only a

small section of it. This one here is just for lighting only. There's no actual outlets on this panel. Right next

to it though is the generator control. And the main generator was located outside of the office on the side of the

building. And obviously it's pretty important that a radio station has power, especially if there's like a

major disaster or something like a flood. The only way a lot of people actually get information is from the

radio. They also had some hookups here for the UPS alarms so that they could get alerted when something happened. You

know, batteries needed replacing, voltage changes, that sort of thing. And then you've got the main electrical

panel that ran all the actual circuits in the building that weren't lighting related. An interesting thing I found

here is that each individual rack in the control room had its own switch. So, you could switch between a UPS or the mains

power or a second UPS as well. And that's basically all there is to it in the engineering area. As for the rest

of the building, we haven't even looked at the main stage area, which is where they used to have people in doing

performances or run events as well. And on the other half of the building, we've got TripleM, and there's a bunch of

stuff in there as well. It's mostly office space with two studios, but sadly, I didn't get the opportunity to

film inside of TripleM. So, all I've got is these clips from when people used to work there. You get an idea of what it

was like. It's effectively the same thing. One of the weirder things I found in the station was all these batteries

just sitting on this wooden beam next to a motor and a picture of a wine bottle. Don't know why they're using batteries

here, but hopefully someone in the comments can help me out. Another interesting thing is this letter from

the Department of Transport and Main Roads in Brisbane authorizing a goon raft to be used in the Brisbane River.

And to be clear, goon in Australia basically means a type of alcohol. It's not what you think it means. But yeah,

it's been a really fun experience to work in this building and tour it and in a lot of ways preserve it because it's

gone now. It's completely knocked down. It's not coming back. And as I was doing research for this video, I kind of got

to know a lot of the people that worked in the station. And there were so many people that worked here, probably about

100, if not more. And even though I never actually met any of them, I kind of got a feeling of what it was like to

work here. And it looks like it was a lot of fun. So to finish this off, here's a bunch of photos taken inside

the building. Oh yeah. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. And that's the B105 and TripleM Studios

in North Key. Now, I've actually had this footage for about 4 years now since 2022 when I used to work there. And the

reason I held on to the footage for so long is I didn't want to release the video while there were still other

companies working in the building or while it was a demolition site. There's tons of more footage I've got, but I've

just tried to keep this short and show the interesting parts. My main goal was really just to preserve the inside of

the building and all the memories that it left behind. And this was really a video I made because I wanted to make

it, not because I expected to get many views or anything like that. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this tour of the

abandoned radio stations. If you really liked it, give it a like. If you want to see more videos from me, hit that

subscribe button. You can also chat about this in my Discord link down in the description. I really hope you

enjoyed and I hope to see you in the next video. Goodbye.