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Free Radio Birmingham
Free Radio Birmingham is an Independent Local Radio station based in Birmingham, England, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Birmingham and the West Midlands. As of September 2022, the station has a weekly audience of 165,000 listeners according to RAJAR. History Launched on 19 February 1974, on 261 metres medium wave, (1152kHz) and 94.8 MHz FM, BRMB was the fourth independent local commercial radio station to begin broadcasting in Britain after LBC, Capital London and Radio Clyde. Broadcasting a mix of popular music with local news, live football coverage, information and specialist output, the station became popular amongst residents in Birmingham and later changed its main FM frequency from 94.8 to 96.4 in 1986. The original station name, BRMB, was not an initialism (contrary to popular belief – some believed it stood for Birmingham Radio, Midlands Broadcasting). Instead, the original company, Birmingham Broadcasting Ltd. ...
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Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a statutory duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive material. Some of the main areas Ofcom presides over are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting the radio spectrum from abuse (e.g., pirate radio stations). The regulator was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002 and received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003. History On , the Queen's Speech to the UK Parliament announced the creation of Ofcom. The new body, which was to replace several existing authorities, was conceived as a "super-regulator" to ov ...
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Hertz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one hertz is the reciprocal of one second. It is named after Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857–1894), the first person to provide conclusive proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves. Hertz are commonly expressed in multiples: kilohertz (kHz), megahertz (MHz), gigahertz (GHz), terahertz (THz). Some of the unit's most common uses are in the description of periodic waveforms and musical tones, particularly those used in radio- and audio-related applications. It is also used to describe the clock speeds at which computers and other electronics are driven. The units are sometimes also used as a representation of the energy of a photon, via the Planck relation ''E'' = ''hν'', where ''E'' is the photon's energy, ''ν'' is its freq ...
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Leicester Sound
Leicester Sound was an Independent Local Radio station which broadcast to Leicestershire. The station merged with two other East Midlands stations, Trent FM and Ram FM to form Capital FM East Midlands (part of Global's Capital FM Network) on Monday, 3 January 2011.Capital FM to replace Galaxy
, RadioToday, 13 September 2010


Background

Leicester Sound was launched by the owners of Radio Trent on 7 September 1984, eleven months after Leicestershire's first ILR station, , went into receivership and ceased broadcasting. The new station broadcast from Centre's Granville House studios and on Centre's frequencies of 1260 MW and 97.1 FM. The FM frequency was moved to 103.2MHz in 1986 with me ...
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Radio Trent
Trent FM was an Independent Local Radio station which broadcast to Nottinghamshire. The station merged with two other East Midlands stations, Leicester Sound and Ram FM to form Capital FM East Midlands (part of Global's Capital FM Network) on Monday 3 January 2011. History Launched on 3 July 1975 as Radio Trent and based in the converted Nottingham Women's Hospital at 29-31 Castle Gate, Nottingham, the station broadcast on FM and medium wave and was managed initially by Dennis Maitland, a commercial director at the highly acclaimed offshore pirate station, Radio London. The original line-up of presenters featured John Peters (the first presenter on air), former Radio Luxembourg presenter Kid Jensen, Jeff Cooper, Peter Quinn, Graham Knight, Chris Baird and Guy Morris. The station's news and sports team was led by Dave Newman and Martin Johnson – with Trent making heavy use of outside broadcasts to cover major events and incidents both within and beyond its broadcast area ...
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Midlands Radio Plc
Midlands Radio plc was an independent radio operator, which operated seven radio licences in Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham and surrounding areas in the United Kingdom. Stations owned FM *BRMB *Leicester Sound *Radio Trent *Mercia Sound AM * GEM AM - operated on the medium wave frequencies of Radio Trent. *Xtra AM - operated on the medium wave frequencies of BRMB and Mercia. History Under the control of Ron Coles, Midlands Radio plc was floated on the full stock market in 1990. Following the introduction of the Broadcasting Act of 1990, a number of major groups began to lead a consolidation of the market. This led to Midlands Radio plc being purchased by for 18 million by Capital Radio plc, who then sold Trent, Leicester Sound, and Mercia Sound to GWR in 1993, but kept hold of BRMB. As Mercia and its medium wave frequency were sold in the bundle, GWR announced that 1359 kHz would be rebranded as Classic Gold. This meant Xtra AM would only continue in ...
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Xtra AM
Xtra AM was a United Kingdom radio station which was on the air between 1989 and 1998. It was broadcast to much of Birmingham, Coventry and Warwickshire and was the 'oldies' station which took over the mediumwave frequencies of both BRMB (serving Birmingham) and Mercia FM (Coventry and Warwickshire). The programming came from the BRMB studios in Aston, Birmingham, and the signal was relayed from the Langley Mill transmitter (Birmingham) and Shilton (Coventry). The Coventry station was acquired in 1993 by GWR Group and replaced by Classic Gold, while the Birmingham station continued until 1998 when it was replaced by Capital Gold. History The station was launched on the morning of 4 April 1989, as a response to government disapproval of the simulcasting of programming on FM and medium wave. Xtra AM became a 'gold' station and targeted listeners in the 35 to 50 age range, while BRMB and Mercia both began to cater for a younger audience. The new AM service was launched to much fanf ...
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Ian Crocker (commentator)
Ian Crocker (born 1965) is a football commentator who works for Sky Sports. Crocker grew up in the small village of Sutton Poyntz near Weymouth in Dorset and attended Broadway Secondary School. Prior to his television career, Crocker commentated for Capital Gold in London, alongside Jonathan Pearce and Steve Wilson (who are both now BBC commentators). He then spent several years with BRMB Radio in Birmingham commentating on Aston Villa and Birmingham City. During this period, Crocker began providing occasional commentaries for BSkyB. He covered some live Premier League matches during Sky's first season of coverage 1992/93, before joining permanently in 1997.Archived aGhostarchiveand thWayback Machine After joining Sky, Crocker commentated regularly on Premier League matches, but was best known for his four years (1998–2002) as the voice of Scottish football, covering live matches from the Scottish Premier League, Scottish Cup and Scottish internationals. After Sky lost ...
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Tom Ross (broadcaster)
Thomas, Tom or Tommy Ross may refer to: Politicians * Thomas Edwin Ross (1873–1951), member of the Canadian House of Commons *Thomas Hambly Ross (1886–1956), Canadian politician * Thomas R. Ross (1788–1869), U.S. Representative from Ohio * Thomas Ross (minister) (1614–1679), Scottish minister *Thomas Ross (Pennsylvania politician) (1806–1865), U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania * Tom Ross (politician) (born 1981), British Labour politician Sports * Thomas Ross (speed skater) (born 1927), British Olympic speed skater * Tom Ross (cricketer) (1872–1947), Irish cricketer * Tom Ross (ice hockey defenseman), ice hockey defenseman * Tom Ross (ice hockey, born 1954) (born 1954), former professional ice hockey player * Tom Ross (rugby union) (born 1998), Australian rugby union player * Tommy Ross (footballer) (1946–2017), Scottish professional footballer Others * Thomas E. Ross (born 1942), professor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke *Thomas W. Ross (b ...
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Tony Butler (broadcaster)
Tony Butler (born 15 May 1935) is a retired Birmingham based UK sports broadcaster and was one of the first stars of local radio in Britain, known for a distinctive local accent and sometimes controversial style. In 2007, he was honoured by the Sony Radio Academy with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Early career Tony Butler was born in Wolverhampton on 15 May 1935. He began his journalistic career in local papers in Birmingham before beginning to contribute to BBC national and regional radio in the 1960s. His strong regional accent caused problems at the staid BBC and he later recalled how he was encouraged to soften his natural accent. At one point the BBC even provided elocution lessons. BRMB In 1974, he was hired to be the first sports editor at Birmingham's new independent (i.e. non-BBC) radio station BRMB, one of a handful of commercial stations to launch at that time. With BRMB striving to offer something different from the established BBC radio stations, Butler was enco ...
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Les Ross
Les Ross MBE is a British disc jockey in the West Midlands. He was born as Leslie Meakin; 7 February 1949, in Birmingham. Early life and career Ross always wanted to become a DJ and, at the age of 11, wrote to the general manager of Radio Luxembourg. He attended King Edward VI Aston School in Aston, Birmingham and left with 10 O Levels. His first job after school was at IBM, but he left after one year. His next job was as a clerk at Witton Cemetery. At the age of 17, Ross won a DJ competition run by the Birmingham Evening Mail, beating Johnnie Walker, who came in second. Part of his prize was to appear at Radio Luxembourg for an audition, but this never happened. He was offered his first gig at the Mecca Ballroom in Birmingham before moving on to the Birmingham Rollerskating Rink. BBC Radio WM The break he was waiting for came in 1970 when he joined BBC Radio Birmingham (which became BBC Radio WM in 1980), presenting a 90 minute Saturday morning show with John Henry called ...
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Ed Doolan
Edwin Myer Doolan MBE (20 July 1941 – 16 January 2018) was an Australian born naturalised British radio presenter who was a veteran of Birmingham's first commercial radio station BRMB, and subsequently the BBC. At the BBC he presented a weekly show trawling through his broadcast archives from noon until 1 pm on BBC WM on Sunday lunchtime. He was honoured by the British Radio Academy, earning a place in the Radio Hall of Fame. He was presented with Honorary Doctorates from Birmingham's three universities and was the first person to have ever achieved that honour. On Doolan's lunchtime show of 22 February 2011 he announced he was cutting down on the number of shows he would be presenting, stating he could no longer "continue the current work schedule". His lunchtime show was on a Friday only from 9 September 2011, and he began presenting a new 9 am – 12 noon Sunday show from 11 September 2011, before reducing his workload even further and switching to a Sunday lunchtime ...
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Call Sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigned by a government agency, informally adopted by individuals or organizations, or even cryptographically encoded to disguise a station's identity. The use of call signs as unique identifiers dates to the landline railroad telegraph system. Because there was only one telegraph line linking all railroad stations, there needed to be a way to address each one when sending a telegram. In order to save time, two-letter identifiers were adopted for this purpose. This pattern continued in radiotelegraph operation; radio companies initially assigned two-letter identifiers to coastal stations and stations onboard ships at sea. These were not globally unique, so a one-letter company identifier (for instance, 'M' and two letters as a Marconi station ...
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