It's surprising how long it took for the "birthplace of broadcasting" to get it's own radio station for the area. Essex Radio was the first of it's kind to launch in the county, five years before the BBC, where the launch took place on Saturday the 12th of September 1981.
Jon Scragg was the first voice on air and after playing the station theme, the first record played was "Wired For Sound" by Cliff Richard.
The theme and jingles were produced by David Arnold and the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra and recorded in a variety of styles as heard below.
1981 Jingles - David Arnold Music
Having launched in Southend, the station shortly began broadcasting in Chelmsford in December 81 on 1359 AM and 96.4 FM, and became very popular with presenters such as Dave Gregory, Terry Davis, and the most popular of them all Tim Lloyd AKA "Timbo" who's late night show proved popular with the teens.
A selection of audio from the first two years can be heard here including the "1431" closedown song written and sung by Terry Davis.
Two years later the station returned for a second package by David Arnold continuing along the theme of the original, but with sharper and more pacier cuts and sounding more like a genuine radio ID jingle package.
There was also a new intro jingle for the news that can be heard towards the end. It's a shame the quality's not so good as the jingles themselves are top notch.
1983 Jingles - David Arnold Music
By 1985 managing director John Wellington had left the station to set up Radio Mercury in Surrey along with Timbo who took his show with him.
Changes were afoot with a new jingle package introduced to the station produced by Airforce with the tagline "Together, We'll Make It A Great Today" which doesn't really make sense gramatically but for me was one of Essex Radio's strongest sounding packages.
1985 Demo - Airforce
My favourites have to include the cut done for long serving sports reporter Roger Buxton, and the lead into the news used to read the weather before the main bulletin which remained the standard method of introducing the news at the station for at least the first 20 or so years.
That particular jingle can be heard quite a few times in this selection of audio.
Around this time presenters such as Gavin McCoy, Peter Holmes, Graham Bannerman, Tony Monson, and soul boy John Leech had joined the station.
On the 1st of April 1987 a walkout was staged in protest of a new format introduced to the station but it turned out to be an April Fools publicity stunt for the introduction of the new format "Greatest Memories Latest Hits".
New jingles were introduced, again by Airforce retaining the melody logo of the previous package but with a brighter more contemporary music style. The main theme can be heard here, whilst the demo can be heard below.
1987 Demo - Airforce
A couple of airchecks with the news intro from the package can be heard here.
In 1989 with the IBA's "Use It Or Lose It" policy in full flow, Essex Radio split it's frequencies to launch a new easy listening station on AM called "Breeze AM".
The jingles were produced by Century 21 in Dallas and mainly came from the superb K-Lite package with some really nice solos.
Breeze AM 1989 Jingles - Century 21 Programming
Essex Radio continued to use the Airforce jingles and it's worth posting another demo from around the time, "Gold For The 90s".
1990 Demo - Airforce
Also around this time, Terry Davis commisioned a JAM package for the station consisting of a wide selection of cuts from packages such as "Country Class", "All Oldies", "On The Coast", and "Q Cuts".
Whilst it was a nice package it was never used on air and from what I understand, Terry had brought it without the management's permission and ended up getting sacked from the station.
Anyway here they are.
1990 Unused Jingles - JAM Creative Productions
At least Terry had the sense to use "On The Coast" cut 11 as a Christmas jingle as the synth bells don't really fit in with the idea of it being a Summer jingle.
Airforce continued to be used on the station throughout the early part of the decade with this example below making things even more contemporary with the strapline "The Music Station".
1992 Jingles - Airforce
The station was actually the first to pioneer the blink and you'll miss it RDS travel in and out tones with a very early example, (slightly rushed as well) as heard here.
The station appeared to be that proud of them, they even used them on Breeze despite being on AM.
Breeze meanwhile brought another package from Dallas resung from TM Century's "Classic Oldies" package as orginally done for WMXJ in Miami.
Breeze 1992 Jingles - TM Century
Further changes arrived in 1994 when in attempt to gain more listeners, Essex Radio changed it's on air name to Essex FM and brought a full resing of JAM's "Breakthrough" package. The new strapline was "The Big SX".
Essex FM 1994 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions
A selection of audio from the era can be heard here courtesy of Michael Bolton (jingle collector).
The Essex Radio Group had also launched a new station broadcasting to the Harlow area on 101.7 with the name "Ten 17" and shared some of the output with Essex FM at certain times of the day.
Audio of Chris Best's mid morning show broadcast on both stations can be heard here with the traffic jingle and RDS ins and outs in a less rushed form.
In 1996 Programme Director Peter Holmes fell ill and took time off from presenting the breakfast show allowing Martin Day to take over the task of waking up Essex which remains in place today as part of the Heart rebrand.
Taking over programming duties for the station and the rest of the group was Paul Chantler who introduced a brand new jingle package for the station and what has to be my overall favourite, produced by ALFA and demoed as "Power Positive".
A very distinctive jingle package managing to sound fresh alongside the records whilst accessible at the same time with great vocals with my favourite cuts including the transitions, and the superb weather bed/news intro.
Essex FM 1996 Jingles -ALFA
An off-air example of the said weather jingle can be heard here with a longer bit towards the sung ID which wasn't included on the demo for some reason or other.
Over on AM Breeze also relaunched as "The Breeze", possibly to fit in with this impressive resing of "The Beat '92" by JAM which Chantler had also commisioned for the Chiltern Network a couple of years earlier.
The Breeze 1996 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions
I'm just rather peeved that on the second cut the "#and love songs" part couldn't have been sung earlier as it would have been easy for me to doctor into my own version of that cut.
Peter Holmes soon returned and joined The Breeze as their breakfast presenter.
By the late 90s, the Essex Radio Group was expanding, having brought Oasis Radio in Watford from Chiltern after the GWR takeover.
The jingles commisioned were a resing of the "Wham" package by ALFA that were also used on Ten 17.
Ten 17 1996 Jingles - ALFA/Top Format
Oasis FM 1997 Jingles - ALFA/Top Format
The group also set out to bid for the East of England regional license and using the expertise of established dance jock John Leech and other presenters, they won the bid for the station Vibe FM who launched in November 1997 with an equally impressive custom package also produced by ALFA.
It was also one of the last to come from the Clocktower in Sale.
Vibe FM 1997 Jingles - ALFA
1998 saw the purchase of Mercury FM and it's sister AM station in Surrey which saw Mercury on FM adapt the superb "Hotter And Fresher" format also used by Essex FM.
Basically the format involved a really fresh set of new chart records rotated carefully alongside a wide selection of oldies mainly from the 80s and 90s, but occasionally from the 70s, and there were certainly no recurring tracks which made it a very enjoyable listen.
Over on AM, 1521 became Breeze sharing programming with the station from Essex and another jingle package was introduced from Vibe Music And Audio Imaging.
Towards the end of the decade Essex Radio were brought by Daily Mail and General Trust, but luckily they allowed programming to continue as usual through the watchful eye of Paul Chantler.
It was around mid 2000 when I pretty much started listening to Essex FM on a regular basis having being able to receive it through and aerial extention in my room and the "Hotter And Fresher" format and station overall was 100% more livelier and unpredicatable than what I was getting from Invicta FM at the time who seemed to think that everyone wanted to hear the same 30 songs in every show.
Sweepers were playing a more dominant role on the station by this time although Paul Lovett on Drive still used some of the sung stuff and as you'll hear in this selection, quite a few of the jingles were remixed including the traffic and weather/news intro.
Happy times I can tell you.
Sadly it wasn't to last as in July of 2000 the DMGT sold Essex FM and the rest of the stations to GWR and having only got into radio at the time it was only when I read the several negative comments about their reformatting regime that I realised that this wasn't good.
It turned out that they also owned SGR in East Anglia where most of my Mum's family lived and that more or less nailed the fact that things were not looking good.
After getting back from holiday in August I found out that long serving sports reporter "Rocket Rog" had been axed, and shortly after, John Leech and his "Experience" show was dropped in favour of "The Hot 30 Countdown" with Chris Brooks, which was a local variant of GWR's ever pointless and repetetive nightly chart show.
The August Bank Holiday saw the launch of the strapline "Today's Better Music Mix" with all oldies dropped from the playlist apart from Sunday's "Dancing Through The Decades" strand, the highlight of which being Peter Stewart's "Sunday Night Carwarsh".
Where else on the radio would you hear "Wap Bam Boogie" by Matt Bianco?
Major changes came in October when the Carwash made it's bow and Paul Lovett presenteed his final drivetime after being promoted to Mercury FM as the male half of their Morning Crew.
Essex got it's own Morning Crew by giving Martin a permanent co-presenter who was Su Harrison from Leicester and out went the Nut Hut in favour of the usual bog standard features such as the "Battle Of The Sexes" game.
Peter Stewart eventually left as the Head of News to rejoin Paul Chantler who had taken control programming TalkSport.
There were several protests in Essex in response to the takeover, moreso for Breeze but luckily GWR were asked to sell of their AM station to the Unique Broadcasting Company which meant the rebranding of Breeze to Classic Gold was delayed.
Weekend output on Essex FM had also been changed with the popular club shows replaced by networked output with Mel & Rob's Saturday Night Live and "The Party Mix" which didn't go down well with listeners.
The Carwash on Sunday's was replaced by "The Request Fest" with Robert Kenny.
Local programming remained on Sunday Morning where others took "The Retro Countdown" but the 80s and 90s shows were dropped.
Around December 2000/January 2001, GWR realised that the changes hadn't gone down well and gave Essex some of it's weekend timeslots back with the Club shows and mixes back on Fridays and Saturdays, as well the 80s show on Sunday mornings with Martin Day and Tracie Young.
For me however, the damage had already been done and it wasn't enough to tempt me back as a listener.
Vibe FM carried on as usual during the changes at Essex/Mercury/Ten 17 etc, but around March 2001 changes were made following the sudden departure of Baz Jones and the surprise return of Busta Brooker to the station.
Many were fearing that changes were about to happen with the possiblity of GWR selling the station to Galaxy but it turned out to be worse as in June 2001 the station was rebranded as "Non Stop Vibe" focusing solely on current dance and R&B, and removing the classic dance and disco tracks as well as the weekend oldies shows such as "Into The Groove" and "Lost In Music".
They ended up losing a listener as a result.
In spite of that, here's a selection of promos from their "Rhythm Driven" days.
I pretty much lost interest in radio in Essex and East Anglia from then onwards although it's worth touching on this audio from September 2002 when Essex FM celebrated 21 years on air with contributions from Jon Scragg, and Chairman Eddie Blackwell with his distinctive voice.
More audio can be heard here from around 2007 when the station brought a new jingle package by Reelworld resung from their Hallam FM 2005 custom.
Even when the Music 4 Mix package was introduced over the "One Network" they continued to use the Reelworld cuts, sometimes blending them in with the Music 4 ones.
Overall it's definitely a rather colourful history, a very small part of which became my way of life in terms of consistent listening, which in terms of excitement and fun, and liveliness has been matched by no other station since.
In the words of Stevie V "Money Talks" or so it seems...
Thanks to Sean Saunders, Pete Sipple, David Harber, Pete Wilson, Michael Bolton, Phil Edmonds, Ross Paltzelt, Aston McNeil, Martin Simm, and Ian Johnston for the usual extra stuff.
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