Laser 558

Within months the station had a large audience, due to its strong signal and continuous music, mixing current records with oldies.

LASER558 Ltd was incorporated at Companies House on July 4, 2023[1] and became the owner of related intellectual property trademarks the same year covering name, taglines, and logo.

From 2024, original LASER558 disc jockeys Craig Novak, Ric Harris, Jay Mack, Erin Kelly, Jeff Davis, and Chris Carter returned to the station providing a full schedule of programming from 5 am until midnight.

[7] A London car salesman and DJ named John Kenning convinced Philip Smyth, a wealthy Irish businessman, to fund an offshore radio station.

There were reports that the tobacco giant, Philip Morris, pulled out following pressure from European authorities, although their sponsorship of programmes continued to be announced.

The ship was registered via a Panama-based company, Deka Overseas Inc.[8] The plan was to use an antenna held aloft by a helium balloon - an inflatable dirigible tethered to the deck.

The conversion work to install studios and transmitters was carried out in autumn 1983 by Paul Rusling at Tracor Marine in Port Everglades, Florida, and the ship sailed via the Azores and Ireland to an anchorage off the Thames Estuary.

The lack of advertising on Laser, plus the American DJs, resulted in a huge audience - BBC research indicated four million in the UK and a similar number on the continent.

On 9 August 1985, the British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) chartered the Dioptric Surveyor to anchor nearby to monitor Laser and Caroline, at a reported cost of £50,000 a month.

The New York agency MMI failed to secure advertising although London based agents took large payments for airtime on the station.

The former research lab at the stern of the ship was converted into two studios plus a newsroom, which contained a Kaypro 4 computer and telex link with the station's office in New York.

Coverage was good with the "commercially marketable" core area of the signal travelling 140 miles over land, which included most of England, all of the Netherlands and Belgium and much of northern France as far as Paris.

Other media in the UK ran stories about who the owners might be, and in August 1984 the Evening Standard named a BBC TV journalist, Roger Parry and an Irish businessman, Philip Smyth.

Plans to relaunch the service were plagued by financial irregularities, the ship being taken over and finally a partial sale to an American entrepreneur, James Ryan.