On 1 October 1979 2SER was opened by the Federal Minister for Education, Senator
John Carrick. In the mid-1990s the station expanded its programming to emphasise
underground dance music. This caused friction within the station but 2SER organised a series of highly lucrative fund raising events called Freaky Loops in association with Sydney promoters such as Cryogenesis,
Clan Analogue, Club Kooky and
Elefant Traks which sustained the move to a new musical format for several years until 2001. The station worked on improving its brand across the 2003-2005 period, incorporating a new logo, while the station's online presence and content experience was also redesigned. In late 2004, the station was faced with a projected budget shortfall of up to $100,000 that financial year. Management addressed the situation by reducing the number of paid staff, putting forward proposals to scale down the use of its studio at Macquarie University and attempting to cater for a slightly older audience. These ideas were met with frustration from some volunteers. Internal activism resulted in a softening of policy and in early 2005, the new program grid was launched. Despite the controversy in its lead-up, it proved to be a simple reshuffle of the existing grid rather than a dramatic overhaul. From the late 2000s and into the 2010s, 2SER has continued to expand its offerings across broadcast and digital, as well as with podcasting. It has won international awards for its collaborations, including a Silver Radio Prize at the
New York Festivals Radio Awards for History Lab (with Impact Studios). The station celebrated its 40th anniversary in October 2019 with a podcast series, exhibition and book, ''An Incomplete History of Community Radio: 2SER's 46 Boxes of Stuff.'' The station's long-term publication, Listening Post, was also digitised in full and placed in the Australian open access archive
Trove. The station also regularly runs live events like the acclaimed. In Your Hood series supported by the
Inner West Council and Live@2SER performance series based on
NPR's Tiny Desk.
Kobi Shetty mentioned the February 2025 event in her address to
NSW Parliament as an example of "vital community work" performed by the station. In April 2026, the station emailed volunteers that it could close by July of that year, due to financial difficulties after Macquarie University withdrew funding. == People ==