BBC Southern Counties Radio

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BBC Southern Counties Radio (BBC SCR) was the

History

The station was formed by the merger of BBC Radio Sussex and BBC Radio Surrey. It began on 1 August 1994.

BBC Radio Sussex had originally been founded on 14 February 1968 as

BBC Radio Surrey had a chequered history. Once planned as a stand-alone radio station, it eventually launched on 14 November 1991 as a limited opt-out service of BBC Radio Sussex, broadcasting from newly built studios on the campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford. However it was never able to build a substantial audience over its two years on air.

The two stations were merged in January 1994 and moved into the Guildford studios; a bone of contention for many Brighton residents who felt they were being deprived of the local station they had enjoyed since 1968. Their campaign to bring the station back to Brighton was to succeed twelve years later.^{[citation needed]}

Initially called BBC Radio Sussex and Surrey, the station relaunched with the name BBC Southern Counties Radio on 1 August 1994. It became the first BBC local radio station to adopt an all-speech format, with the broadcast slogan "all talk all the time". Presenters included Gordon Astley, Tommy Boyd, Peter Heaton-Jones, Al Clarke, Alison Taylor and Eric Dixon; however there were to be numerous presenter and schedule changes over the following three years.

The next revamp occurred on 1 September 1997, when the station reverted to a more traditional mix of talk and music, and introduced new presenters such as Chris Ashley, John Radford, Giles Dilnot, Bill Buckley and Simon Bates, who presented the Sunday morning show.

Further changes followed, including the departure in 2005 of Brighton Breakfast Show presenter

From September 1997, there were separate news services for Sussex and Surrey, and separate breakfast shows for both counties, using a split frequency system. Until the April 2006 changes, a separate service for Brighton, Hove and Worthing was also provided. A one-hour drivetime programme and Saturday breakfast show for Surrey were introduced at this point - however the Surrey output was now only available to listeners in the west of the county, on 104.6 FM. The 104.0 FM frequency, which covers parts of both East Surrey and the north of West Sussex and previously carried the Surrey programming, was switched to carry the Sussex output. The reasoning behind this was to give listeners in Crawley and East Grinstead a more relevant service, at the expense of those in East Surrey where audience figures have been in decline, but from 16 October 2006, 104.0 FM reverted to the Surrey output. In addition, to reaffirm its commitment to Surrey listeners, the Surrey drivetime programme was increased from one to three hours.

There were also separate sports shows on Saturday afternoon, allowing listeners in north-east

Notable on-air staff

• Gordon Astley
• Simon Bates
• Tommy Boyd
• Bill Buckley
• Giles Dilnot
• JoAnne Good
• Stephen Grant
• Peter Heaton-Jones
• Adrian Love
• John Radford
• Paul Ross

Top Gear

On Wednesday 26 April 2006,

Networked and simulcast programming

Evening programming throughout the week was networked with counterpart