Why does Midlands 103 not cover Longford?

You could also ask why Highland Radio doesn't cover the whole of Co Donegal. Basically some of the franchise areas in the 1989 plan never made a lot of sense but very unlikely anything will ever change now

Some of the regional franchises loosely followed the broadcasting areas of the pirates of the 80's that preceded them; they in turn stuck to what the mountains and hills allowed them to. More of the stations in Donegal covered the northern areas of the county, with some capitalising on the Tyrone and Derry listeners and businesses for ad revenue.

In the lower part of the county, broadcast coverage was always easier from the Mayo/Sligo side. MWR has a very strong and loyal listener base in the area, a throwback to the NWR days.

Yeah, there is a bit of cross border sales on the stations in that region.

But if I may make an anoraky point here: Mullingar Hospital serves Longford and Wesmeath. And they used to have a joint library service.And the same Dail constituency.

Sorry, 😊quiet Sunday

The traditional midlands grouping are Laois/Offaly and Longford/Westmeath. A lot of services are set up along those lines. Getting back to the Radio question. Laois and Offaly were probably too small for a station for them together. As were Westmeath and Longford. A four county service would be rather large and would be hard to cover from a local perspective. The original name for Midlands 103 was Radio 3 (still called that by lots of people)to refer the 3 counties. Maybe also as a nod to Radio West in a way aswell. In fact a lot of the early presenter and programming was a bit of a continuation of West.