| Broadcast area | United Kingdom. |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Various. |
| First air date | 1987 - 1992 |
| Owner | Richard Branson 1987 - 1989, then Owen Oyston from 1989 onwards. |
The Superstation (or Radio Radio as it was known in the industry) was set up as an over-night sustaining service for Independent Local Radio. The station broadcast from 10.00pm until 6.00am on many of the UK's commercial radio stations.
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The concept of The Superstation came from David Campbell and Rob Jones who worked for Virgin's radio arm and was backed financially by Richard Branson [1].
After the stations in London (specifically Capital Radio) decided not to take the service, The Superstation found it hard to encourage companies to advertise with them [2]. This led to many of the original high profile presenters/celebrities leaving.
The Superstation would leave a gap for local stations who had sold their own advertising air-time to "opt-out" of the national programme. A name check ident and a gap of around 1 second would be the signal for a tech-op to fire the carts containing the local adverts.
The typical duration for one of these ad breaks was either 2.10 or 2.40. So, in order to fill the gap, either four or five 30 second adverts and one 10 second jingle into the end sweeper would be used.
Each station had a log with the exact duration of each break.
Not all stations had their own ad breaks, so music montages would be played down the line so there was continuous output. A 3-5 second sweeper sound followed the montage and signalled the next part of the programme was about to start [3].
The station had a sung jingle package produced by Midlands based music producer Muff Murfin, these jingles were originally created for W.T.R.K-"Electric 106" in the U.S. All of the original presenter line-up had their own name "shouts", the newer presenters generally used their own name idents. The station also had American voice-over style "sweepers" voiced by J.R Nelson who was part of the Z100 morning crew. Some of the more famous ones went:-
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