 It was one of the most well-regarded gold-formatted stations to come to the British airwaves in the late 1980s and was launched as a response to government disapproval of the simulcasting of radio companies' FM programming on their mediumwave frequencies.GEM was the offshoot of Radio Trent, which began to cater for a younger audience and became known as "Trent FM" upon the frequency split, and the new AM service was launched to much fanfare with a team of Olympic style runners completing a marathon from Leicester to Derby and finally to Nottingham (the three main areas to which GEM was to broadcast).GEM's medium wave broadcasts to Nottinghamshire on 999 kHz and Derbyshire on 945 kHz were initially supplemented by transmissions on 1260 kHz to Leicestershire, but this last frequency was later given over to programming for Leicester's large Asian population (Sunrise Radio later Sabras Radio).