Radio Syd
Radio Syd was the first commercially operated radio broadcaster in Sweden , which later became the first commercially operated radio broadcaster in The Gambia .
Radio in Sweden
The station started in December 1958 as Skånes Radio Mercur , which acquired the airtime from the Danish pirate station Radio Mercur . The range of the FM transmitter covered the southwest of Sweden with Malmö , Landskrona and Helsingborg .
The founder of Radio Syd, Nils Eric Svensson, left the station in 1961 and the actress Britt Wadner , who was responsible for marketing, took over its management. In 1962, Skåne's Radio Mercur acquired the Cheeta transmitter from Danish Radio Mercur .
The transmitter now located on the ship was renamed Radio Syd , based on Radio Nord , a similar transmitter near Stockholm .
The operators of Radio Syd were not impressed by the adoption of the "Piratradiolagen" in June 1962, which prohibited the operation of such transmitters by law. In 1964, the Cheeta II, a larger ship, was bought by Radio Mercur, the Cheeta I sank in the port of Malmö. Radio Mercur had stopped broadcasting in the meantime, as a similar law against pirate stations existed in Denmark from 1962. In 1966 Radio Syd stopped broadcasting in Sweden.
Radio in the Gambia
Britt Wadner sailed south with the ship Cheeta II and after a stopover in the Canary Islands she was asked in 1967 by the then Gambian Prime Minister and later President Dawda Jawara to settle in Gambia. There Radio Syd was put back into operation.
Britt Wadner concentrated from 1970 on building a hotel and left the operation of the station to her daughter Connie. The ship, which also housed a boutique operated by Miss Sweden in 1968, was sold to a Senegalese - but sank shortly afterwards. The transmitter was initially housed in a neighboring cargo ship, later from 1977 in a building near the hotel, which was later run by the daughter.
Until 2001 the transmitter continued to operate with a daily 20-hour program on 329 m medium wave . The station mainly broadcast music programs, but also business and information programs in the various national languages as well as English and French. Tourist information was also sent in Swedish.
A storm destroyed the transmitting antenna, which was not rebuilt.
