The Mercia Mix and The Power Mix
Extended mixes of your favourite music

For more than 2½ years the radio programme The Mercia Mix was broadcast over the airways of Mercia FM covering Coventry, Warwickshire and South West Leicestershire and at a later date on Leicester Sound FM in Leicester where the programme was called The Power Mix.

The programme was a non-presenter, non-stop-music programme of extended mixes of both chart and dance music derived from alternate mixes / instrumental versions of tracks, these 'alternate' recordings were edited together with the original version to give an exclusive 'original extended' mix which could last as long as 30 minutes in some cases although The Radio Authority (the ruling body at the time) only allowed a maximum of 15 minutes airplay of a single track, most tracks came out around 10 - 12 minutes of duration.

The mixes were produced under the licence of PRS (Performing Rights Society) and MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society).

Originally the recordings were recorded and edited using ¼ inch Racal or Ampex 407 tape on a Tascam 34 4-track multitrack deck at home and on Studers B67 and A807 machines at Mercia's studios.

The edited tape was then re-mastered onto DAT (Digital Audio Tape), Ampex 467 cassettes cost around £10 per 2 hour cassette which made it an economical medium for archiving and storage, however, owing to the technical limitations of cueing DAT tapes the tracks for each programme were then re-recorded back onto ¼ inch tape for on air programming playback.

Recordable CD's were only just coming onto the market at the time with machines costing upwards of around £2,500 plus the cost of the 'special' CDR's which for 74 minutes cost around £25 - £30 each.

Now of course with computers and writable disc drives the costs have dropped dramatically hence the transfer from DAT to CD, this web page lists much of the material which was used on the programme which has now been transferred to CDR.

For a brief history of the Mercia / Power mix click here for:
The Mercia Mix