Free Radio Coventry and Warwickshire

History

The station began broadcasting as Mercia Sound at 0700 BST on 23 May 1980, with an opening announcement by Programme Director Ian Rufus, followed by breakfast presenter Gordon Astley and a news bulletin read by Mike Henfield.

In 1987, the station moved FM frequencies, along with most ILR stations at the time to 97.0 FM. Shortly after this a new transmitter on 102.9 FM was created to serve South Warwickshire.

In 1989, along with BRMB in Birmingham, the AM frequency was split from the FM transmissions to create a new radio station called Xtra AM which played music from the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1993, the station's owners, Midlands Radio, sold the station to Capital Radio who, shortly afterwards sold it to GWR Group, who re-branded it in-line with their "Today's Best Mix" slogan from 1994 onwards. During this period numerous presenters from other GWR stations joined Mercia, including Craig Strong (Trent FM, Ram FM, Leicester Sound), Tim Gough (Trent FM), Rachael Hopper (Ram FM) and Sean Goldsmith (Trent FM). From 2002 onwards, the slogan was "Playing the best mix of the 80's, 90's and today". In 2007, it reverted to the old slogan of "Today's Best Mix".

On 8 August 2008, it was confirmed that due to competition 'conflict of interests' in the West Midlands (and in other areas), Mercia would be sold by Global Radio, along with other West Midlands owned GCap/Global stations BRMB, Wyvern FM, Heart 106 and Beacon Radio. In July 2009, the station was sold officially to a company, backed by Lloyds Development Capital and Phil Riley, called Orion Media.

Currently, eight hours of local programming are broadcast each weekday with four hours on weekend afternoons and a regional daytime programme on weekdays. Outside of these hours, programming is networked with the rest of the Bauer City 1 network.

On 8 July 2011, Orion Media announced plans to close Mercia's Coventry studios and co-locate the station to the company's headquarters in Birmingham - the move took place two months later, leaving Coventry with only one locally based station (BBC Coventry & Warwickshire) broadcasting from the city.

On 9 January 2012, Orion Media announced that Mercia would be rebranded as a Free Radio station from April 2012, along with its sister West Midlands stations Beacon, BRMB and Wyvern. The Mercia brand was phased out on Wednesday 21 March 2012 in preparation for the rebrand, which took place at 7pm on Monday 26 March 2012.

On 6 May 2016, the station's owners, Orion, announced they had been brought by Bauer for an undisclosed fee, reportedly between £40 and £50 million.

Programming

Local programming for Coventry and Warwickshire is produced and broadcast from Free Radio's Birmingham studios from 6-10am and 3-7pm on weekdays, 2-6pm on Saturdays and 12-4pm on Sundays. The four Free Radio stations also share a regional daytime programme from 10am-3pm on weekdays, presented from the Birmingham studios by Dan Morrissey.

Free Radio Coventry and Warwickshire also carries networked programming from sister station Key 103 in Manchester via the Bauer City 1 network. The Vodafone Big Top 40 is produced by Global Radio at its Capital studios in London for broadcast on 145 commercial radio stations in the UK.

The station's local presenters include John Dalziel, Roisin McCourt and Tom Newitt. The station's networked presenters include Paddy McGuinness, Darryl Morris, Marvin Humes and Wes Butters.

News

Free Radio Coventry and Warwickshire broadcasts local news bulletins hourly from 6am to 7pm on weekdays, from 7am to 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Headlines are broadcast on the half hour during weekday breakfast and drivetime shows, alongside sport and traffic bulletins.

National bulletins from Sky News Radio are carried overnight with bespoke networked bulletins on weekend afternoons.