Islands FM, previously known as Radio Scilly, is a non-profit

community radio Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial broadcasting, commercial and public broadcasting. Community broadcasting, Community stations serve geographic communities and communities o ...

station. Originally launched as Radio Scilly in September 2007, the station broadcasts to the residents of the

Isles of Scilly The Isles of Scilly ( ; ) are a small archipelago off the southwestern tip of Cornwall, England. One of the islands, St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, St Agnes, is over farther south than the most southerly point of the Great Britain, British mainla ...

. Radio Scilly rebranded as Islands FM on 31 January 2020.

History

Radio Scilly was launched in September 2007, and was founded by Keri Jones, who had previously launched Radio Pembrokeshire. In January 2016, Jones announced he would be leaving the station, and that his position would be taken up by his colleague Zoe Parry. In January 2019, three months after Parry passed on ownership of the station to Beth and Steve Sims in October 2018, it was announced that Radio Scilly would be closing in March unless someone else took on ownership of the station, due to the management team no longer being able to run it. On 31 January 2020, following a new set of directors taking ownership of the station, Radio Scilly rebranded as Islands FM, with the website, jingles, logo and music playlists also changing to reflect the rebrand and the audience demographics.

Technical

It broadcasts on FM on 107.9

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

from the existing radio mast by the Coastguard Tower at

Telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

on St. Mary's island. Most of the Isles of Scilly can be covered from this site. It is one of the world's smallest radio stations, due to the small number of residents on the islands. Its licensed service area population is slightly larger than that of the UK's smallest licensed station Two Lochs Radio which broadcasts to an official service area population of just 1,681.

Funding

The

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

is funded in part by a local weekly

lottery A lottery (or lotto) is a form of gambling that involves the drawing of numbers at random for a prize. Some governments outlaw lotteries, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find som ...

, licensed by the Council for the Isles of Scilly. It costs £1 a week to enter and there is a weekly prize of £1000. The number of players is limited to 2,000 each week. Any money remaining after the prize has been paid goes towards the cost of running the station or to local clubs or organisations that request a grant.

References

External links

* {{Isles of Scilly Radio stations in Cornwall Community radio stations in the United Kingdom Isles of Scilly Radio stations established in 2007