102.7 Mercury FM (Surrey & Sussex)
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Mercury FM is a United Kingdom radio station which began broadcasting to Surrey and West Sussex in the UK on the 20th October 1984, at that time it was known as Radio Mercury. The station broadcast from studios at Broadfield House, Crawley on 1521 kHz (197 metres) MW and 103.6 FM (97.5 FM in Horsham). The first presenter on air was Ed Stewart. Other early presenters included Tony Myatt, Geoff Aspel (brother of Michael Aspel), Peter Young, Pat Sharp and Ian Davidson/Damon.
Radio Mercury and Southern Sound shared some of their programmes during the early days including The Timbo Show in the evenings. This was a madcap show aimed mainly at young teenagers, but was listened to by all ages. Timbo (Tim Lloyd) alternated presenting the show for about six months at a time swapping from Southern Sound to Mercury. He continued doing that for a few years before helping with the launch of BBC Essex.
The commercial breaks on each station never lasted the same amount of time so at the end of the breaks, three different pieces of fill-in music were used to prevent a deadly silence being heard. Timbo's own jingles were made by various people, including the Back Room Boys in Brighton.
The original Mercury logo includes a small man running along and whistling. He was known as the Mercury Man and featured as one of the early competitions where you could win a prize if you spotted him out and about town.
When the station first launched many of their jingles were performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and their slogan was "Radio Mercury - The Heart Of The South" (this slogan remained for well over a decade). They also advertised the station on TV very early on, but there have been no more TV commercials since, perhaps because even advertising on the regional part of the ITV Network in London covers a much greater area than the station reaches.
Towards the end of 1985 a plan to group ILR stations together and BBC local stations together meant a change in the FM frequency. Mercury moved from 103.6 to 102.7 FM.
In 1990, Radio Mercury invested heavily in A.I.R. (Airport Information Radio). This was an AM station providing Flight & Travel News for passengers arriving by car at London's Heathrow & Gatwick Airports. The station didn't last for very long as it suffered from a lack of advertising and audience figures gauged inaccurately.
On Radio Mercury, some of the original jingles were used alongside some new "Your Kind of Music" cuts during the early 1990's when they joined with County Sound (Guildford).
At this time Mercury's AM service became County Sound Radio with TM Century jingles.
In 1995 the County Sound name was dropped to form Mercury Extra. Radio Mercury on FM finally stopped using the David Arnold theme and both AM and FM services had Jam jingles with the Alfasound singers. Mercury on 102.7 became Mercury FM.
Mercury became part of the Essex Radio Group in the late 90's. Mercury Extra on AM became Breeze. The group also took ownership of KFM in Tonbridge and re-branded it as Mercury FM. The Essex Radio Group itself was then taken over by GWR now GCAP. Mercury FM became a "Today's Better Music Mix" station. On the 15th January 2001 Breeze became Classic Gold Digital Breeze 1521 and then simply "Classic Gold 1521" (see Classic Gold).
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