East Anglia's Heart Attack - Part 4: The Chiltern Radio Network

The final part of my jingle history of radio in East Anglia concludes with Chiltern Radio broadcasting to Herts, Beds and Bucks, and their sister stations in Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes, and beyond.

The station launched in the Luton area in September 1981 and a year later they started broadcasting in Bedfordshire. The jingle packages around the time were made by Alfasound, the third of which can be heard below.

1983 Jingles - Alfasound

Like most of Alfasound's packages, they were rather sickly to an extent with corny lyrics and badly sung vocals compared to those in Dallas Texas, which inspired two of their presenters Paul McKenna and Anthony James AKA The Bastard Brothers to produce
a very amusing pisstake of the Manchester company with very well observed send-ups and "arkapellas" for presenters including their own Phil Fothergill.

For the 1984 jingle package the station was I believe the first in the UK to have an Alfasound custom set of jingles with Dallas vocals including some superb solos from veterans including Trella Hart.
A very tight and rapid package with some superb shotgun cuts including one sounding very similar to the clock off of Countdown.

1984 Jingles - Alfasound

By 1987 the station had switched to TM for a fully fledged US package with Dallas vocals and one of the best I have ever heard for a UK commercial radio station.
Containing cuts from "Full Force", "Synchronism" and "Knockout" amongst others,
you really can't fault the full orchestration and rich vocals.

1987 Jingles - TM Productions

Also Northants 96 started broadcasting to Northamptonshire on the frequencies previously owned by Hereward Radio and had a similar set of jingles as part of what became The Chiltern Network.

By this time, the presenters included Martin Collins, Neil Francis, and the late Keith Butler who happened to live opposite the Dunstable studios.

One of his friends posted an amusing story on Digital Spy a few days ago about how Keith was woken up at 4am each morning by the security alarm at the building, where around this time, GCap introduced the slogan "Haven't You Heard" to which Keith responded "Yeah, that f**king alarm that goes off every night!".

The stations also had a few additional cuts not long after the last package, including the brilliant top of hour jingle from "Synchronism" and that groovy traffic bed from
the WBZ package.
Also 1989 saw the launch of Horizon Radio for Milton Keynes and whilst I don't have the actual package itself which was a re-sing of TM's "Dallas Power" I have an off-air extract of one of the female presenters cracking up while trying to read the weather over that superb bed that is difficult not to headbang to.

I guess that's just me then.

In the early 90s the stations were now run by Paul Chantler and by now had aqquired Severn Sound in Gloucester and Galaxy Radio in Bristol and this saw a new custom jingle pacakage by JAM for the stations under the banner of "The Hot FM".

1991 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions

In 1994 the network began using some additional cuts resung from "The Beat '92" which sounded pretty good with Dallas vocals with the addition of top UK vocalist Steve Butler making it sound that extra bit stronger.
By this time Chris Moyles was part of the team on the station presenting the evening show across the network, alongside other presenters such as Nigel Williams and "Red Hot" Emma Scott.

Also on AM, a custom package for Supergold was made by Alfasound with some superb cuts which proved that once upon a time, the UK were capable of producing quality sounding jingles although these had Dallas vocals.

Supergold 1994 Jingles - Alfasound

Things were changing, as Galaxy Radio relaunched as Galaxy 101 with a new frequency in addition to their exisiting one and a superb custom package from Alfasound with
the strapline "The Hotter Mix" which was also taken by Horizon Radio.

Galaxy 101 1994 Jingles - Alfasound

It's also worth mentioning that they made a slight modification to the news intro which can be heard in this brilliant top of hour sequence.

However in 1995 the network got brought by GWR resulting in the stations relaunching by switching off over a weekend in September broadcasting non stop music and relaunching on the Monday as "The New 97.6 Chiltern FM" in Dunstable and Luton and B97 in Beds (although they were on 96.9) which soon got the Chiltern name back after a few years. Most of the other stations added "FM" to their station name.

Galaxy 101 was sold to Chrysalis and Oasis Radio in Watford was sold to the Essex Radio group where Paul Chantler left to join and did a bloody good job as group programme director for four years.

So that more or less concludes my look back at the better days of radio in
the Eastern Counties and it's likely I'll be up at 6am tomorrow to hear
the first stations in the UK to be rebranded as "Heart" as part of the Global takeover.

I doubt it will be anything too inspiring.

Thanks to David Hemsley, Christian Spooner, and Rob McCaffery for some of the above audio.