Down Your Local - Beacon Radio

This is the final post in a series looking at the original nineteen ILR stations. This week Beacon Radio.

Airdate: 12 April 1976

Still on air?: Yes, after changes of ownership and branding

Beacon was based at studios in a converted Victorian house in Wolverhampton and was the last of the original nineteen to go live. Essentially covering the Black Country the transmission area did in fact overlap with BRMB’s. Initially its music policy had a heavy slant towards country rock (the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt being favourites on the playlist) and soul music and sounded very slick in comparison to some of the other earlier ILR stations, complete with its EMISON Sunshine Sound jingle package and the use of sound compression. This may have been because the first Station Manager was American Jay Oliver working alongside Scots/Canadian Allan MacKenzie and Canadian consultant Gerry Laing.

Beacon Test Transmission

Despite initially returning a reasonable profit – it was also hot on merchandising to boost income - the station came in for criticism from the IBA for lacking a community identity and was in danger of losing its licence. By 1979 Beacon was given a shake-up by incoming MD Peter Tomlinson (ex. ATV) and Programme Controller Bob Pierson (ex. BFBS). Tomlinson stated that “we have radically changed the style of music to middle-of-the-road music with a heavy emphasis on golden oldies ranging back to 1955. Before we took over no pre-1966 music was played on the station. We didn’t even have the discs in the library.”

Here’s the Radio Guide programme listings published in December 1977:

One of the first DJ recruits was Mike Baker, who launched the station. Mike was yet another United Biscuits Network (UBN) bod and was a sound engineer at Capital. He’d also been a pirate at Radio’s Kaleidoscope, Veronica and Caroline – being one of the few to be prosecuted under the Marine Offences Act – and subsequently worked at Chiltern Radio, Lantern FM, Supergold, Heart, Saga, Smooth and Radio Maldwyn. Nowadays you can catch Mike on the morethan40 internet radio service, alongside other ex-ILR stalwarts Mike Hollis and Dave Jamieson.

Another experienced voice at Beacon was George Ferguson who’d started broadcasting on Manx Radio in the 60s. After a spell in the States he came back to the UK and joined BRMB, taking over from Kevin Morrison to present the Breakfast Show. He moved across from BRMB to Beacon, was on Radio 2’s Weekend Early Show in the mid-80s before returning to the Isle of Man to become a manager and presenter at Manx Radio. George left Manx in 2003 to set up 3FM where you can still hear him every weekday morning.

The other Beacon ex-pirate was late-night host Dave Owen who for many years was associated with London station Radio Jackie. Read more about Dave here.

Beacon’s genuine American DJ was Tony Silva (pictured above) with a CV that covered stations WPRO-FM, WSAR and WPJB in New England and a number of other US TV and radio outlets, including CNN. Already an MA when at Beacon he’s now Professor of Communications at the University of Rhode Island.

It’s not uncommon for the on-air talent to also be part of the management team and Phil Brice, presenter of Kid’s Stuff, was the Commercial Production Manager. The “Poison Dwarf” in the billing is copywriter Paul McMahon. Phil went into radio and TV advertising full-time setting up Soundhouse in 1979 and Koala Limited in 1997.

Mick Wright was yet another ex-UBN DJ. He became Head of Music at Beacon and continued to broadcast in the Midlands for the rest of his career at Xtra AM, WABC, Telford FM and Saga. 

Working at the weekends was KKJ. Later he would broadcast on BRMB as Kris Kennedy Junior but apparently “KKJ” was also derived from his club DJ days when wearing a King Kong mask he acquired the pseudonym “King Kong Junior”.

The media group behind the Beacon licence was the Midland News Association. Journalist on the MNA-owned paper The Wolverhampton Express and Star, and later deputy chairman of the group, was Mark Kersen, host of the Press Ear current affairs programme. Mark also founded the other Wolverhampton based radio station 107.7 The Wolf.

This is the station information published in January 1978:

Do you have any audio clips of Beacon Radio from the early days? If so please contact me.

Web Links

Beacon Radio Tribute Site

35th Anniversary celebrations - Soundcloud provided by Andy Walters

University of Worcester PhD Thesis on ILR in the Midlands

Thanks to Andrew Hewkin

Those Radio Times! (BBC TV and Radio Selections for 22 November 1961)

Ever wondered what was on the telly and the wireless the day you were born? Well, OK some of us are sad enough to want to know and back copies of the Radio Times from eBay or Kelly Books come in useful.

It was my 50^th birthday yesterday and over at Online Scribblings my fellow blogger Andy Howells has very kindly added 22 November 1961 to his Those Radio Times! series of posts. Pop on over and have a look.

Down Your Local - Downtown Radio

This is the eighteenth post in a series looking at the original nineteen ILR stations. This week the Northern Ireland station Downtown Radio.

Airdate: 16 March 1976

Still on air?: Yes

Based in Newtownards in County Down the station was unique in that its broadcast area matched that of an ITV company and a BBC region as it covered the whole of Northern Ireland.

Here’s the Radio Guide programme listings published in December 1977:

Downtown Daybreak was presented by Michael Henderson (aka Hendi). Like a certain Mr Wogan Hendi had worked in a bank before a career in broadcasting beckoned. After running a mobile disco he presented on the BBC Home Service and Ulster TV before joining Downtown. After nearly a decade at the station it was back to TV at both Ulster and the BBC. His most recent radio gig was at U105 in Belfast.

In all these ILR profiles that I’ve written there are just two DJs that were on air in 1977 and are still broadcasting at the same station-both are at Downtown. First is Trevor Campbell, Big T to his listeners. Giving up a career in the civil service he worked as a club and disco DJ as well as short stints on Manx Radio and Radio Nordsee International. Joining Downtown in 1976 Big T eventually became their “king of country” and had hundreds of registered County Cousins.  Prior to launch country and western music had been identified as a particular favourite of the Northern Irish audience.

The Dinner Spinner was John Paul, full name John Paul Ballantine. He also gave up a steady job as a naval radio operator to become a club DJ in London and the South East before returning to Ulster and joining Downtown. John was later at Cool FM and is now Programme Controller at Citybeat in Belfast.

The other long-standing name at Downtown is Candy Devine. An Australian by birth she started off as an actor and cabaret singer touring the world before settling in Northern Ireland. Candy can still be heard on the station every weekend.

With Sounds Easy was Eddie West. Later at Radio Nova, Eddie is now Programme Director at Downtown & Cool FM.  

A regular broadcaster is those early days was Jackie Flavelle, presenter of the Saturday night jazz show. Well qualified to host the programme Jackie was with the Chris Barber Jazz Band for many years and also performed at London’s Marquee Club and at the Reading Festival alongside Hendrix, Free and the Stones. Later he would become the station’s Programme Coordinator and then Press Officer. His daughter Lisa also followed him into the business working at Cool FM, Citybeat, Downtown and U105.

Another father/daughter connection at the station was Derek and Karen Marsden. Derek presented a couple of shows on Sunday. Following his death in 1998 Lisa worked at Downtown, with a Sunday morning religious programme Reflections, until 2003.

One of the hosts of Downbeat and the Top 40 Countdown was Lawrence John. Many DJs have worked on pirate stations and then gone legit but Lawrence did the reverse. He was at a number of stations both in the province and over the border in the republic  – Downtown, Nova, BCR Belfast, Kiss 106.6, Kiss 103.7 (as John Friday), Riviera 104 Monte Carlo, Radio Nova Dublin and Q102 Dublin (where he was station manager) and at pirate station Energy 106 which he ran between 1997 and 2004 and during which time he infamously claimed to have been abducted by aliens. 

Its a little unusual perhaps for the station's Record Library Manager to be on-air but that's precisely what Cherrie McIlwaine (pictured above) did on Friday's Night Moves. Cherrie has continued to broadcast and can be found each weekday evening on BBC Radio Ulster's The Late Show. She's also a keen gardener and presents Ulster's Gardeners' Corner and used to co-host Greenmount Garden on BBC1 Northern Ireland.

Two names worth mentioning that don’t appear in the 1977 schedule but worked here a couple of years later are Paul McKenna, later at Radio 1 and these days helping people to quit smoking etc. and Gary Bones, the producer of Ken Bruce’s Radio 2 show.

This is the station information published in January 1978:

Web Links

Downtown Radio

Transdiffusion article

Downtown jingles on Soundcloud

2024 update: Candy Devine moved back to Australia in 2013. She died in October 2024. Big T died in November 2024.

A Random Jotting

Random Radio Jottings is one year old today.

The blog has its genesis in the Digital Spy Radio Forum. A poster asked whether anyone recalled a Radio 2 weekday music show from the mid-80s called Music All the Way. I not only remembered the programme but had a copy of it too so I posted it online for people to listen to. This gave me the idea – why not post more old programmes that I’d recorded over the years and share my archive. But rather than just upload them I’d write about the programmes, providing context, history, production details and so on. So I started Random Radio Jottings.

Over the intervening year I’ve been encouraged by the positive comments, feedback and audio clips that I’ve received  from like-minded enthusiasts and bloggers as well as from those in the radio profession. A big thank you to everyone.  

So here is that recording of Music All Way as broadcast on 11 February 1986. The announcer is Tim Gudgin.
 

 

Random Radio Jottings in numbers:

Blog Posts 113

Blog Page Views 20,000

Audio Downloads or Plays 11,000

YouTube Views 8,000

Audioboo Plays 600

All In the Name of Research

How much easier is it to research a radio blog such as this with the internet? For starters you realise how many other like-minded people recorded and saved radio output, kept magazines, cuttings, leaflets, car stickers etc etc.

Although I either sold or threw away a lot of “stuff” (not nearly enough according to my long-suffering wife) before leaving the UK and moving to France I still have recourse to 30+ years of tapes, books, Radio Times, notebooks, publicity and magazines.

Just to show you that I was undertaking radio research as far back as 1982 here’s a copy of the Information Please section of the Radio Times from 20 November of that year with my letter asking for more gen on Radio 4’s Just a Minute.

No letter to the Radio Times required today. In a few clicks here’s all the information I need about that first series and without too much difficulty you can track down a recording (albeit a home recording) of that first programme from 1967. Too easy!

Just a Minute_First edition_extract

Down Your Local - Radio 210

This is the seventeenth post in a series looking at the original nineteen ILR stations. This week Radio 210 from Thames Valley Broadcasting.

Airdate: 8 March 1976

Still on air?: No, now part of the Heart network

The contract for the radio licence for the area was awarded by the IBA to Radio Kennett with the recommendation that the two other bidding groups, Radio Thameside and Radio Thames Valley, be allowed to participate. By launch date the company traded as Thames Valley Broadcasting Ltd with the station known as Radio 210, making it the only one of the first ILR stations to be solely known by their medium wavelength. However, broadcasting on 210 metres meant the station battled each evening with Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres. The studios were set in tree-lined gardens in Tilehurst just outside Reading, Berkshire. 

Managing Director Neil ffrench Blake promised that they would be an easy listening station, the first since the old pirate Radio 390. Speaking in 1979 he also went on to say that “we don’t employ disc jockeys, we employ broadcasters. Disc jockeys are people who play records in discotheques – and if they’re good they say nothing. (Broadcasters are) people who have something to say between records. And that’s why we have a reputation for professionalism”.   

Here’s the Radio Guide programme listings published in December 1977:

The Breakfast Show was in the safe hands of Paul Hollingdale. Paul was certainly used to the early rise as he’d presented Breakfast Special on the Light Programme and Radio 2 from 1965 to 1970; his was the first voice on both Radio 1&2 when they started in 1967. His broadcasting career began with the British Forces Network in Germany. He then helped to set up CNBC (part of Radio Veronica) and next joined Radio Luxembourg. After leaving Radio 2 he moved into music management and also worked at BBC Radio Brighton before launching Radio 210. Paul’s interest in the movies is evident in the 1977 listings as, in addition to the breakfast slot he presented 210 Cinema. Note that on Thursday evenings he had a four hour phone-in until 1 a.m. and was then back on air at 6 a.m.

Radio 210 Launch

In 1979 Paul helped set up Blue Danube Radio in Vienna and he remains in Vienna to this day working for ORF and Inflight Productions. but in the interim had spells at LBC, Chiltern Radio, Country 1035 and on Sky TV. Hear an interview with Paul on his website.

Mike Matthews is pictured in the Radio Guide listing though they seem to have got confused between him and Brian Matthew. Mike gained his broadcasting experience in New Zealand, where he co-hosted Family Favourites, the United States, BBC Radio Brighton and on Radio 4 for whom he made some documentary programmes.

Of all the DJs listed in this ILR series the best known still to have a daily show is Steve Wright. Back in 1977 he was working on weekend breakfast, the chart show and a couple of mid-week evening shows. His celebrated shows on 210 with Mike Read had by now ceased as Mike had moved on to Radio Luxembourg.

Steve had been a local newspaper journalist before working for LBC. His first broadcast was in 1975 on Radio Atlantis in Belgium. After three years at 210 he also joined Luxy but there, he told the Radio Times in 1983, he felt “very uncomfortable, everything was so different, so cosmopolitan” and he hankered after Corrie and digestive biscuits. By 1980 Steve was back in the UK and on Radio 1, the rest, as they say, is history.

This is an oft-repeated clip of Steve on 210:

Steve Wright

At the weekend It’s Croze was Steve Crozier. He had worked on the sales team at 210 before getting in front of the microphone. Subsequently he broadcast on Capital Radio 604 – the one based in South Africa – LBC, Melody FM, KTN in Kenya and then moved to Santa Barbara. Steve is now a broker but still dabbles in radio in his home studio. Hear Steve Crozier on the opening day of Capital Radio on their website.

I am light on information about afternoon DJ Tony Fox, pictured above, other than he had worked at LBC and is now deceased, nor news editor, later Programme Controller, David Addis (ex. BBC Radio Oxford) or drivetime host Steve Williams. 

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With its close proximity to London, Radio 210 was able to draw some national names, they probably lived in the area anyway. In 1978 Bob Harris joined as did Pete Drummond who presented the Top 40 show. A year or so after that Radio 2 presenter and newsreader Jean Challis was on air for a spell. By 1979 the team changed considerably with the introduction of John Hayes (another UBN alumni), Gavin McCoy (who had been at Beacon and would later work with Wrighty on Radio 1), Howard Pearce and Keith Butler (see Radio Victory post).  

This is the station information published in January 1978:

Web Links

This is ILR
Radio 210 Club on Facebook (new group)

With thanks to Martin Peters
 

Do you have any audio from 210’s early days? If so please contact me.

David Symonds

A year ago a poster on the R2OK forum asked whether anyone had any recollections about David Symonds. The post below is based on my response to that query supplemented with additional research and audio.

David was born in Oxford in 1943. At university he read botany for a year but left and headed off for New Zealand where he got his first radio job working for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation.

He returned to the UK in 1965 and joined the BBC as a staff announcer working across all the networks. For the first 18 months he mainly read the news on the Home Service and presented classical programmes on the Third Programme. But he ‘swapped’ with David Dunhill and joined the Light Programme taking turns on Playtime, Newly Pressed and Breakfast Special. His break came when he took over from Keith Fordyce on the Sunday morning pop show Easy Beat.

David was part of Radio 1’s launch team in September 1967. Initially he presented a weekday afternoon show between 5.30 and 7.30 p.m. from October 1967 to February 1968. The time changed to 4.30 to 6.25 p.m. between February and July 1968. From July 1968 to January 1969 he was on air from 4.15 to 5.45 p.m.

In January 1969 he lost his daily show to Tony Brandon and moved to Sunday mornings, back in his old Easy Beat slot, where he was billed as ‘Uncle David Symonds’. Symonds on Sunday ran until September 1969 when DLT took over. During this period David was also one of the DJs on Radio One Club and during February he covered for Tony Blackburn on the Breakfast Show.

From April to October 1970 he presented the Monday editions of Sounds of the Seventies, before leaving the station. He spent time in recording studios learning about production and for a while managed the bands The Purple Gang and Fairfield Parlour. Back in radio by 1973 David was a production manager for Radio Luxembourg.

Writing in The Independent in 1992 he explained the possible reason his demotion from his Radio 1 weekday show: "In 1969 I was the first (and, as far as I know the only) Radio 1 DJ to be busted. I had left my overnight bag in a Doncaster hotel while on assignment for Radio 1 Club. An over-zealous manager called in the police when he found a small amount of grass in the bag. Douglas Muggeridge, who by then had replaced Robin Scott as controller, assured me that no stigma would attach to my BBC career. Perhaps it was coincidence, then, that the latter became downwardly mobile from that moment on, and I left Radio 1 altogether in 1971".

David’s voice was the first DJ on air when Capital Radio launched in October 1973. 



Here's David in action on the Capital Countdown on 15 February 1975.



A couple of years later he was chosen as the first Programme Controller for Radio Victory in Portsmouth. He was at Victory for a year or so. This aircheck dates from 22 June 1976.

By 1978 he was back at the Beeb as a Radio 4 announcer. He did many of the promotions for Radio 4 UK in advance of the move to 1500m in the November. His was the first voice to welcome listeners to Radio 4 on long wave. His stint here lasted from October 1978 to August 1979.

In July 1979 David was again had an afternoon music show this time on Radio 2 presenting  Much More Music, a programme of easy listening. This started on 9 July 1979 and ran through until 1981. These clips date from 1979 and 1980.

Then it was off to California to live out “the lost dream of sun, sea and rock 'n' roll” presenting the morning show on station KEZY in Los Angeles.

Back in the UK by 1985 David was again on Radio 4 as an announcer and newsreader. Here he is on 3 July 1986 with news of the Peacock Committee report on broadcasting.

By all accounts David “hated” his time on Radio 4 and so jumped at the chance to return to pop music presenting on Capital Gold from 1988 until about 1993.

Dreams of broadcasting from somewhat sunnier climes were realised when David moved to Cyprus in about 1995. There he set up radio station Coast FM in Limassol as well as running Rondor Creative Services Ltd. Saying that “it was everything I’ve lived for since I was a boy” the station ran for about 10 years. But the recession hit and earlier this year David sold the company to new Russian owners. Apparently his intention was to apply for a new radio licence for a station that is more “international” than “English”;

Do you have any recordings of David on either Radio 1 or Capital Gold? If so I'd love to hear from you.