Whenever a Heart rebrand has taken place, I've always been in Canterbury when it has happened, with the third and final set being no exception.
So in the usual tradition I'll attempt to recount the disregarded heritages of the stations that are being relaunched this coming Monday through jingle packages past, starting off with Marcher Sound and it's sister stations in the North West of England.
As always what's written down may not always be accurate so anyone reading this is more than welcome to make corrections or contribute any extra audio.
Marcher Sound began broadcasting on the 5th of September 1983 to North Wales and parts of Cheshire where the first record was the ever inspired choice of Cliff Richard's "Wired For Sound" as also used for the same purpose on Essex Radio, and on the lesser successful Centre Radio in Leicester.
The launch can be heard here.
The station's tagline was "Your Station, Your Sound" (ring any bells?) and was emphasised within the jingles produced by David Arnold.
The main theme can be heard in the station opening whilst a few of the others can be heard below.
1983 Jingles - David Arnold Music
Many radio fans will probably know the jingles better as when they were adapted for Radio Mercury a year later and were used on the station for over a decade.
Marcher on the other hand decided to make changes early on, where after four years they decided to give things a freshen up with a more uptempo package courtesy of Alfasound.
1987 Jingles - Alfasound
It's definitely rather odd hearing Dr Guy Starkey's name as a sung jingle after being hassled to read his book many times as part of my radio course at University.
In 1989 following the IBA's instructions the station split frequencies with Marcher Sound continuing on AM, whilst on stereo launched the new MFM on 97.1 and 103.4 which for some bizarre reason they referred to as
"ten-thirty-four".
New jingles were introduced by Alfasound with US vocals retaining the melody logo used on Marcher Sound.
MFM 1989 Jingles - Alfasound (Apologies for the flaky quality)
In the following years MFM brought some additional cuts including resings from JAM's WBLI package including that rather impressive weather cut. I don't actually have it at hand but I'm sure it exists in aircheck form as it had one of the best vocals; "#MFM Weather, Brought to you with CIS Windows!".
They later brought a few cuts from the JAM Q-95 packages which fitted in well.
Over on AM Marcher Sound relaunched as Marcher Gold becoming a fully fledged classic hits stations and brought a selection of JAM jingles with UK vocals including a few rare ones from packages such as "All Oldies", "LX Gold" and the package made for Dick Bartley's syndicated oldies show such as the Four Tops one, and the one in the style of The Crystals.
Marcher Gold 1992 Jingles - Alfasound/JAM Creative Productions
The station was continuing to expand throghout the 90s with the launch of Marcher Coast FM in 1993 broadcasting over the North Wales coast.
The jingle package below contains UK resings of the KBIG packages also sung for Marcher Gold and occasionally on MFM.
Marcher Coast FM/Marcher Gold 1995 Jingles - Alfasound/
JAM Creative Productions
MFM meanwhile had brought a new part custom package by Top Format through Alfasound which was demoed as "Wham" and what I'd say has to be the most lively jingle package ever made for a UK radio station.
Possibly a bit too lively but very well made nonetheless.
MFM 1996 Jingles - ALFA/Top Format
By the late 90s, Marcher had stations broadcasting in the Wirral and Anglesey although they had dropped jingles in favour of sweepers with MFM broadcasting under the infamous tagline "Today's Better Music Mix".
Rather ironically in October 2000 all stations were brought by the GWR Group who had used the very same tagline on their own stations and gradually relaunched the stations around Summer 2001 with the fluroescent starfish branding.
A few weeks before the rebrand was announced, Marcher Sound managed to celebrate it's 25th birthday in September with by playing some of the old jingles and having special guest shows with the rather bizarre choices of Trevor and Simon from Going Live!, and Pat Sharp who had never actually broadcast on the station on it's own before.
Pat was live, but his show came from London as a fellow Uni student from my course was helping out and pushing buttons in relevant places, and it was quite an enjoyable show.
At least they got the chance to celebrate unlike a lot of the others who's anniversary's arrive just after they've been attacked.
Thanks to Chris Stevens, Paul Thompson, David Barras, Sean Saunders, Paul Griffiths, and Dave Nightingale for additional info.
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