I've been having another trawl through my jingles and have managed to discover a demo from Alfasound demonstrating a package they produced for Radio 210 in Reading back in 1980.
This was around the time that Bob Harris was the head of presentation for the successful station and if you can remember the Bastard Brothers demo posted a few weeks ago then you can understand exactly what they were trying to send up!
I've also managed to find a selection of audio courtesy of the guys at This Is ILR giving a genuine perspective of how local radio sounded back then and this montage features a certain Simon Blaxland forgetting what the time is! I'm really gutted that when he came in to give the lecture on radio commercials I didn't think to play him that extract but I'm sure he would have seen the funny side!
Four years later the station introduced a more orchestral sounding package from David Arnold with the tagline "Sounds Of Your Life" and it was during this period that
David Hamilton joined from BBC Radio 2 as the breakfast presenter promising
"More Madonna and Less Mantovani".
By 1989 the IBA had enforced their "use it or lose it" policy which resulted in the station splitting it's AM frequencies becoming 210 FM on it's stereo frequencies and for me one of the finest jingle packages produced by Century 21 in Dallas with a mixture of many styles and sounding punchy but sweet at the same time.
This continued into 1992 with a resing of "New York's Best Mix" with the tagline
"More Hit Radio" and I won't lie when saying that the above packages have been a slight influence on my own jingles!
Unfortunately this wasn't to last as around this time new owners GWR let its men in suits with no regards for musical jingles, come in and rapidly reformat the station becoming 2-Ten FM which it's still known as today.
But despite helping Steve Wright and Mike Read in their careers, I'm certain that 210 will have a place in the hearts of many a radio fan.
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