EST – Station History

EST-FM “Your alternative friend in Sound” broadcast to Birmingham between 1981 and 1984, but the roots can be traced back to the short-wave station Empire Radio, which took to the air in 1978. “The Empire” developed a good reputation for innovative programming, mixing contemporary music with comedy, but the limitations of short-wave reception were not…

Magnum Radio – Bristol

Magnum 100 FM first broadcast as SLR, Sophisticated Local Radio, and was linked to the SLR Radio in London. They started in 1990 as SLR for maybe a few days but turned into ‘Magnum Force’ quite quickly. It was originally run by Wile-up and Iroy, but Wile-up seemed to continue alone after a short time.…

Interference FM – Bristol

Interference began as a radio project amongst some people in London and Bristol who were involved in direct action politics. Some of them also had a pirate radio pedigree. The idea was to splice together both these outlaw scenes and develop the overlap. The seeds were sown in summer 1997 following the Trafalgar Square ‘Never…

Inner City Radio – Bristol

On May 8th 1990, Inner City Radio opened after a few days of tests playing ‘Soul II Soul’ tapes on 102FM and announced it would broadcast Thursdays to Sundays from 10am to 10pm on 101.75FM. Like most other pirates in Bristol the schedule would be filled with Reggae, Soul, Hip Hop and black-influenced chart stars…

Flight FM – Bristol

The story of Flight FM starts in about 1990.  Two 15 year old lads, ‘Skinny D’ and ‘DJ Techno’, had been broadcasting using various station names (Spin FM, Bass FM, Hardcore FM…) using 50mW transmitters, drifting and humming up and down the dial for a couple of years.  This was in the days before the…