On-Air
102.2 Smooth FM played middle of the road music, soul and R&B during the day and, as part of its licence requirements, focused on jazz music at night. Smooth FM also played specialist jazz and soul shows at weekends, details of which are listed below.
The station was launched on the premise of a 'clutter-free' listen, offering 40 minutes of non-stop music every hour without commercial interruptions, deliberately posed as a direct challenge to the 'might' of the BBC and a tactic aimed at increasing the total number of hours listeners stayed with the station. The 'Smooth 40' later became the '9-5 Smooth 40', with off-peak shows introducing more commercial breaks into their output, before the concept was dropped altogether in mid-2006.
Weekday programming featured an 'all-request' feature entitled 'Smooth On Demand' at 2 pm and 7 pm, Monday to Friday, where listeners were invited to 'demand' their favourite song by calling a local-rate phone number.
Smooth FM also ran a number of 'big money' promotions to entice listeners to trial the station - the 'Smooth £10K Tripleplay' ran for several weeks in late 2005, giving £10,000 to a listener for correctly identifying three consecutive songs in a particular order. Another large prize was awarded to Dawn Muggleton on 19 April 2006, however - who correctly identified the 'Smooth Secret Song' (Diana Ross' My Old Piano), winning £118,454 at the end of a contest that had run for several months, which was, at that time, the biggest cash prize awarded on UK radio since 1999.
The station also held exclusive live commentary rights for Chelsea FC soccer matches in London for the 2005/06 and 2006/07 seasons. Commentary was provided by Gary Taphouse and Kerry Dixon.
The station's jingle package was produced by Bespoke, and voiced by Mitch Johnson.
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