Wyvern? Why Bother.

This morning's Sunday Soul show with Robbie Vincent was pretty much hit and miss, with the worst of today's tracks being Taja Sevelle's "Love Is Contagious" a dreadful late 80s smoocher which got played quite a lot on the old Jazz FM around the time that GMG took over the running of it in 2003.

However there were a few better choices such as Rufus and "Once You Get Started", "Best Of My Love" by the Emotions and best of all Vivienne McKone with "Sing" which was one of the tunes included in my Best of 08 podcast despite being released in 1992.

I very much doubt however that Robbie played it as a result of listening to the review itself.

There was also a jazzy Japanese tune from a compilation by Jeff Young who used to present a dance show on Radio 1 in the late 80s and according to Robbie is now running a care home for cats in Ramsgate.

Moving on a few years back, in fact over 25 years, a programme by Central Television looking at the launch of Radio Wyvern as it was known in Hereford And Worcestershire back in 1982.

Wyvern happens to be one of the stations owned by Global that won't be rebranded to Heart due to Heart 100.7 broadcasting to the West Midlands area which was actually the first of the stations to broadcast under that brand in 1994.

After watching the documentary I can honestly say that I wouldn't want to move to that area of the country due to it's utter dullness and from what it seems the general working class public as seen in the programme appear to have no interest in music whatsoever.

My favourite part is where presenter Mike George having to go through what appears to be a very confusing junction into the national news from IRN. It's worth pointing out that around the time a newsreader would finish the bulletin by saying "Indepedent Radio News, It's 3 minutes past 4" or whatever the time was, although by 1985 they had dropped the timecheck from that out-line although it would return on it's own in September 2002 with no mention at all of IRN during the bulletin ever since.

The reporters during the 80s always used to mention IRN at the end of their packages with that classic example of the Bastard Brothers pisstake involving Washington correspondent Andrew Manderstand "Andrew Manderstand, (to be shouted) IRN!, (return to normal voice) Washington".

Doesn't quite work in writing so here's the clip itself.

Early on in the documentary there's a look behind the scenes of the making of the jingle package featuring an appearnce from Muff Murfin himself at the board meeting, and the musicians and vocalists at his Worcester based company "Standard Sound" putting it all together.

The finished result can be heard here and it's very well orchestrated for a UK package and was used for 7 years.

In 1989 a new jingle package was introduced that was a resing of TM's "Knockout" package that was also used in parts on Northsound Radio in Aberdeen,
and on Chiltern Radio.
The package attempted to rebrand the station as "WVYN" possibly so it would fit in with the call letters of the American package it was done for originally.

The jingles themselves can be heard here with the legendary news intro at the end which was introduced a few years earlier and lasted all the way until the GWR takeover in 1997.
Once again, not the sort of thing I would want to be caught off guard by.

Well known presenters from the station included a certain Neil Fox who around the time looked like Leslie Crowther, and Russ Lowe who's now at Invicta FM.

In 1996 the station split frequencies, with two new packages once again from Muff Murfin's MMI for Wyvern FM and Wyvern AM. And many jingle fans will agree that the Wyvern FM jingles have to be the worst ever produced or resung, making any of JAM's packages with Alfasound vocals sound perfect.

I've put up a few examples here, with the original jingles for Cool FM in Belfast preceeding the beyond inferior ones for Wyvern which sound like they were done as a rush job.

Probably just as well that the station was sold off to GWR in the end.

Once again, Halesowen or Kidderminster certainly won't be on my destination list after finishing University.

Thanks to Neal Bowden for supplying me with some of the audio.