Swazi Music Radio

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Swazi Music Radio (SMR) was South African radio station established by the brothers Issie and Natie Kirsh as a competitor to LM Radio. The studios were based in central Johannesburg and the transmitters were in Sandlane in Swaziland, just across the eastern border of South Africa not far from the small town of Amsterdam. Programmes were recorded in the Johannesburg studios and the tapes taken to the transmitter station for broadcast the next day. It had been hoped that the medium wave transmission would reach the Johannesburg area during the day, however medium wave propagation in the former Transvaal province was not very good, so medium wave reception was only really effective at night. Daytime listening was on short wave. During the years it operated, SMR recruited many of the announcers who had been on LM Radio, among them Gary Edwards, Frank Sanders, John Berks, Darryl Jooste, Leon Fourie and Gordon Hoffman. SMR was not very successful and could not compete with Radio 5 (now 5FM) which took over from LM Radio when that station closed in October 1975. Radio 5 broadcast on medium wave in all the major cities in South Africa and also had good short wave coverage. When SMR closed, the studios and transmitters were used to broadcast three radio services. Radio SR, targeted to the sophisticated black African market, Radio Paralello 27 which broadcast in Portuguese and Radio Truro aimed at the Indian population of South Africa. These stations all closed down in the 1980s.

When commercial broadcasting licenses were issued in the South African homeland of Bophuthatswana, Issie Kirsh established Channel 702 which became Radio 702 and today TalkRadio 702. The first Channel 702 transmissions originated from the studios of the original Swazi Music Radio but the transmitter was based just north of Pretoria and provided excellent coverage in the Johannesburg area, 24 hours a day.