Mercury FM - History

History

Radio Mercury began airing on 20 October 1984, on 103.6 FM and 1521 AM. A year later, the FM frequency changed to 102.7 and 97.5 in Horsham. In 1991 the station merged with County Sound Radio in Guildford to form the Allied Radio Group. Mercury then went from playing a broad mix of music to being mainly a Top 40 station, County Sound was later renamed "Extra AM" and then again was shortly renamed to "Mercury Extra AM" to make the connection between the two stations better known. It also became known as The Breeze, until the Classic Gold Network took over the AM licence of 1521 kHz. Mercury was renamed "Mercury FM" after the takeover of the group by GWR, later GCap Media. Before that Mercury lost the County Sound region again, and Eagle Radio took the Surrey 96.4fm transmitter, and County Sound returned to 1476am. The station was incorporated into GCap's "One Network" of stations, until the merger between GCap and Chrysalis Radio, forming Global Radio. As part of this merger, many of the former One Network stations were rebranded and reformatted under the "Heart" network. However it was decided that given the proximity of Mercury's coverage area to the existing Heart 106.2 station, it would retain its identity and be formatted as a "Hit Music" station.