Aircheck UK - Down
UPDATED: 01/05/2003
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NORTHERN IRELAND
AIRCHECK County Down
BBC LOCAL RADIO:
BBC RADIO ULSTER broadcasts nationally on the following frequencies: 92.7 (Rostrevor Forest) 93.1 (Londonderry), 93.5 (Larne), 93.8 (Brougher Mountain & Kilkeel), 94.5 (Divis), 95.1 (Ballycastle) & 95.4 (Limavady). The AM transmitters are: 873 (Enniskillen), 1341 (Lisnagarvey) & 792 (Londonderry) - Lisnagarvey's transmitter offers the main AM service at 100kW as opposed to 1kw for the others. No other information on the station's history is known currently.
BBC RADIO FOYLE. This BBC service went on air, initially on VHF only, on 11th September 1979 to serve the North West of Northern Ireland, from Strabane to Derry and Limavady - supplying 20 hours of programming per week from the Northern Counties building in the City Centre of Derry. Amongst noteable moment for the station there were two bomb explosions directly outside the studios, on December 19th 1979 and again on June 8th the following year - without disrupting output. The station moved to new premises on Rock Road in Derry on July 28th 1980. More recently on November 18th 1983, work started on new studios on Northland Road which forms part of a central BBC broadcasting centre. It cost £1million to build and equip. It provides an opt out service from BBC Radio Ulster for Londonderry on 93.1FM and 792 AM.
The Radio Ulster service can also be heard by Northern Ireland listeners via DSat - at EPG number 868, via the Score Digital Northern Ireland multiplex and via DCable. NTL distributes the service across it's digital network in the UK and Northern Ireland on channel 871, and it can also be heard via SKY Digital Audio channel 868.
COMMERCIAL: LOCAL (ILR)
COOL FM operates on just one frequency across Northern Ireland on the Belfast based transmitter of 97.4 It started broadcasting adult contemporary music and news from Belfast on 7th February 1990. It is owned and operated by Scottish Radio Holdings plc. It is a sister station to Downtown Radio and targets over 900,000 people aged 15-34 with a rock and pop service, lifestyle information and competitions.
Addendum by Stuart Robinson ' ...it may be of interest for you to know that Cool FM only uses 97.4FM and broadcasts to roughly the same area as ourselves at Citybeat. In short, Downtown has 8 frequencies and Cool has one! Bsically Cool FM was born after the 1989 legislation that all stations which operated on AM and FM must provide a separate service. (the old use it or loose it that effected a lot of stations at the time). So in 1990 Cool took over from Downtown using 97.4FM in the greater Belfast area while Downtown continued using 1026AM in the same area. Outside of Greater Belfast, Downtown continued to operate on a couple of FMs in the like of Derry and Fermanagh they had acquired since 1976 however since 1990 they have obtained several more low powered FMs in other areas outside Belfast too!'
Thanks go to Stuart for the additional information.
HOSPITAL RADIO:
RSL:
DIGITAL:
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