This coming Monday sees several long established stations in Bristol, Bath, Devon, Gloucestershire, Oxford, and Berkshire disapear as they're the latest to rebrand as Heart.
To be fair most of the heritage names have quietly vanished over the last week or so in place of "Heart Is Coming" promos played in between the records, in order to make the change not so sudden.
However just like the last set of stations back in early January, I thought it would be good to reminisce over the many jingle packages that have been used over the years, starting off in the West.
The first station to broadcast in that part of the country was Radio West launched in Bristol in 1981.
For a more detailed history of the station, I would heavily recommend
Andrew Rogers' tribute page as it comes from someone who lived in the area
and was one of their very loyal listeners.
The first jingles weren't great, done by an otherwise unknown company where the theme can be heard here, courtesy of Andrew.
Presenters around this time included future star Nino Firetto, former Radio 1 presenter Dave Cash, Jonathan Pearce who's now a commentator for 5 Live, and Johnnie Walker who had returned from a long spell in the US.
The music policy was pretty much all over the place as well as during the day it played general pop, but during Dave Cash's afternoon show he played a lot of country as he was a big fan of the genre, and Ray Edwards' late night show was rather heavy on soul.
By 1983 there were more changes as ex pirate Roger Day was brought into the station where he instigated a playlist and a new jingle package was introduced, that being a really bad re-sing of the TM "Airworks" package sung by UK singers.
The main theme can be heard here.
The jingles featured rather heavilly in an episode of "Conversation Pieces" produced by Aardman Animations for the then fledgling Channel 4, back in 1983.
This involved a claymation Roger Day running the breakfast show and the animators gave their own witty take on what could possibly be happening in the studio.
Around this time Wiltshire Radio had launched and had been more succesfull in it's approach to getting listeners than Radio West. Their success even tempted Johnnie Walker away from Radio West to join their station.
They launched in 1982 with a superb jingle package by David Arnold and the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra, of which the superb main theme can be heard here.
I love how it goes all relaxed in the middle and builds back into the main tune towards the end.
The rest of the jingles can be heard below, and yes the one at 4:25 does sound like the theme to "Dogtainian".
WR 1982 Jingles - David Arnold Music
A second more contemporary package followed in 1983 with updated versions of some of the cuts.
WR 1983 Jingles - David Arnold
Whilst WR were becoming established in the Wiltshire area, Radio West followed suit in 1984 by comissioning there own jingle package from the same provider and what I'd definitely consider to be their strongest.
Like all of David Arnold's packages this contained a strong main theme, really good vocals, and even a few novelty cuts done in different musical styles including one at 6:38 done in the style of the Wurzels appropriately enough.
The news intro and outro can be heard towards the end.
Radio West 1984 Jingles - David Arnold
It was difficult not to think of Potty, while putting this together as she's from that part of the country and even her hometown of Weston Super Mare gets a mention in one of the acapellas.
In 1985, with Radio West still failing despite many changes, the IBA had started to allow mergers in order to keep commercial radio in the UK on a more stable axis.
This resulted in Wiltshire Radio aqquiring the Bristol based station and it was more than evident that being the more succesfull station, they would have greater control over the output.
The proposed station name would be GWR, standing either for "Great Wiltshire Radio" or possibly "Great Western Radio", but I'm sure several people made up their own nicknames as the years progressed.
The announced changes saw the departures at several presenters at West including Breakfast presenter Tom Clapton, and Nino Firetto who moved to Thames Television to present the children's series "Splash!"
for the ITV network.
Due to the majority of broadcasting coming from WR's studios in Wooton Bassett this proved problems for some presenters in terms of transportation.
This meant that Radio West's successful classical music programme had to be dropped as the presenter didn't drive and was unable to commute to the studios.
Roger Day by this time had left to help set up the new Invicta Sound in Kent, and Mike Stewart had moved to Radio Broadland in Norwich which began at exactly the same time.
GWR launched in October 1985 with an umbrella package over all stations in Bristol, Bath and Wiltshire. Some of the cuts were updated versions of older WR jingles but overall it was a stunning package and well orchestrated.
The main theme can be heard here, while the rest of the jingles can be heard below.
GWR 1985 Jingles - David Arnold
Many thought the quality of the station in comparison to Radio West was a lot less welcoming and had a rather heavy speech format with future company owner Steve Orchard as the breakfast presenter. Fellow head Ralph Bernard was also a presenter around this time.
More jingle packages along the same theme followed over the next few years including one from 1987 with a more contemporary angle. Although to be honest a few of the cuts sound very similar to the theme to Blockbusters.
GWR 1987 Jingles - David Arnold
One of the jingles included is a presenter stab for David Hamilton who at the time had moved from Radio 2 to Radio 210 in Reading, but presented a syndicated music quiz over the ILR network.
1990 saw more changes as many commercial radio stations at the time adapted "hit music" formats due to the rules being relaxed by the IBA. By this time GWR's AM frequencies had changed to Brunel Radio whilst on FM a new custom jingle package was introduced, provided by Century 21 in Dallas with the strapline "Red Hot Radio".
The jingles carried over the musical logo used throughout the David Arnold packages and I'd say that this had to be the finest used by the station.
GWR-FM 1990 Jingles "Red Hot Radio" - Century 21 Programming
However by 1992 the bosses started to get ideas from Australia where they had very heavy music formats with less presenter chat on their stations and thought it would be a good idea to bring them over to UK shores.
This resulted in GWR relaunching as "The New GWR - No Rap, and Less Chat" which saw tighter playlists, reduced links from presenters, and no jingles.
Instead there were cheap sounding liners voiced by Greg Marsden and it more or less set the standard for the blandness that was to come throughout the decade.
On AM, Brunel had changed to "Brunel Classic Gold" which was to be the brand for all the AM stations that GWR had started aquirring, as well as several established stations on FM, including Devonair, 2CR in Bournemouth,
and 210 FM in Reading.
Sung jingles were more or less a thing of the past on GWR with a few short lived examples in the late 90s which were more or less power intro accapellas over records, and not to mention the rather weak Music 4 package used on the One Network a couple of years ago.
However I suppose the one good thing about the Heart re-branding is that there will be sung jingles used on a more long term basis with the IQ Beats package set to add a bit of light, in between the otherwise uninspring playlist.
Thanks of course to Andrew Rogers, and David Harber for some of the above audio.
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