This is going to be a rather extensive post, so I'll get straight to it and take things back just under 35 years to October 1975 when the South of England's first independent radio station launched under the name of Radio Victory.
Broadcasting to mid Hampshire, Portsmouth and the Isle Of Wight the station had an impressive line up of presenters including Irish broadcaster Glen Richards, David Symonds formerly of Radio 1 and Capital, Sarah Ward, and Nicky Jackson who would later go on to be the Peter Dixon of his day voicing many gameshows throughout the 80s.
Here's the opening with Glen Richards along with the station theme from the first jingle package which can be heard here.
And here's the rest of the rather bizarre but lively jingle package with the questionable tagline "Everything That Touches You".
Radio Victory 1975 Jingles - EMIson
There's also a few promos and other stuff in this selection, a lot of it from the irrepressible Kenny Everett.
In 1981 the station decided to reposition itself into the decade by commissioning a new jingle package from Alfasound based around the Pompey Chimes which were a familiar sound in the Portsmouth area.
The Station Theme more or less sets it out.
Whilst it was a nice and coherent idea, I personally find that melody rather sinister when used in that context, especially in the news intro that can be heard at 2.10.
Radio Victory 1981 Jingles - Alfasound
The station returned a year later for some additional cuts of a more contemporary style including the one at the beginning styled around early Duran Duran.
Radio Victory 1982 Jingles - Alfasound
In 1985 the station celebrated it's 10th anniversary and marked the event on air as heard here.
It's also worth mentioning this selection of out-takes along the same sort of lines.
There were also new jingles introduced used alongside the existing Alfasound cuts although the producer remains unknown, unless anyone reading this knows otherwise.
The main theme can be heard here whilst the jingles can be heard below with the strapline "Come Alive On Stereo 95".
Radio Victory 1985 Jingles - Unknown Producer
However the celebrations weren't to last as later in the year the IBA did not renew Radio Victory's license and the station went off air on the 28th of June 1986.
Radio Victory - Station Closedown 28.06.1986
The station that was to take Radio Victory's license went by the name of Ocean Sound who in their licence application promised they would also broadcast to the Southampton area.
The station began broadcasting on the 12th of October 1986 and the first jingle package was produced by the Manchester based company LBS which included an uptempo main theme.
Ocean Sound 1986 Jingles - LBS
The selection above is well regarded by radio and jingle fans with the superb news and traffic jingles, and a rather odd rendition of the Sailor's Hornpipe at 2.50.
In 1988 another jingle package was introduced, also by LBS and continued along the same theme as the 1986 pacakge.
Ocean Sound 1988 Jingles - LBS
Once again they provided some more strong news and travel themes that can be heard here.
They can also be heard as used on air by Chris Carnegy in this selection.
Around this time however, changes were being made as the station was not just splitting it's frequencies on AM and FM, but also dividing them into different brands.
97.5 and 96.7 would broadcast as "The Light FM", 103.2 would be relaunched as "The Power FM" and 1170 and 1557 would change to "The Gold AM".
The AM station resulted in a court battle between County Sound in neighbouring Surrey over who had the right to use the "Gold AM" name on air with Ocean Sound winning the overall rights.
"The Power FM" however was introduced as a response to Radio 1's big launch on FM publicised around the time, but they would not be launching on the South Coast until 1990.
Therefore on the 4th of December 1988 Power FM took to the airwaves with a predominant mix of pop and dance music making it possibly the fastest paced commercial radio station in the UK at the time.
The station launch can be heard here, and the jingles as produced by Anthony James' AJ Productions can be heard below.
Power FM 1988 Jingles - AJ Productions
By the early 90s Ocean Sound was brought by Southern Sound Radio and Ocean began sharing evening programmes with Southern Sound FM in order to cut costs during the recession at the time. Such shows included Ambrose Harcourt's "Night Time Heart And Soul".
This resulted in a dual jingle package resung from the one used by Southern Sound by David Arnold, with US vocals.
Ocean Sound FM 1991 Demo "Ocean Classics" - David Arnold/TM Century
Shortly after both stations introduced a new jingle package by JAM resung from the KUSA country packages. I'll explain more about it in detail on the Southern Sound blog post but the Ocean FM version can be heard below.
Ocean FM 1992 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions
On AM Ocean had merged with Southern to form South Coast Radio which again, I'll refer to later on.
Power FM had been succesfull since the launch and in 1991 upped the ante with a jingle package by TM Century from the KIIS FM custom "LA's Number 1 Hit Music Station".
They followed this in 1992/93 with their own JAM package resung from KIIS 90 and what I'd say has to be my favourite resing of the much used package mainly because of the 7 voice group used instead of 5 voices.
Power FM 1993 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions
The standout however had to be what I'd say is the best ever top of our news intro and bed I have ever heard on any radio station.
Power FM 1993 Top Of Hour Sequence
This gem came from producer and composer Paul Witts who blended in the top of hour jingle from KIIS 90 with a stunning custom made bed for the newsreader to read the headlines over and and a climatic finish with the pips and Doc Morgan's voice introducing the 5 songs.
In the mid 90s, Southern Radio were brought by Capital and gradually new jingles from LA based company Groove Addicts were introduced over all stations.
Power FM commisioned a distinctive lively package based around many themes including some that were also used on sister station 95.8 Capital FM such as the Coolio one, and the Simply Red one.
Power FM 1996 Demo - Groove Addicts
Ocean FM also introduced their own custom package which was also of an uptempo nature but slightly less punchy than what was heard on 103.2.
Over on AM, South Coast Radio was rebranded as Capital Gold in the summer of 1998.
Ocean FM 1998 Jingles - Groove Addicts
Capital's umbrella branding started to reach the FM stations by the turn of the 90s with Power FM changing it's on air name to "Non Stop 103.2 Power FM". Some sweepers from this era can be heard here.
The station also began using the custom package for Capital by Vibe Music And Audio Imaging, and in 2002/2003 they used the subsequent Groove Addicts packages.
Over on Ocean in 2001 they started following a format similar to that of Century who's station's Capital had recently acquired and introduced their own custom package also by Vibe.
In 2003 they began using a resing of the IQ Beats custom package for Century with the melody logo altered to fit in with the station name.
Ocean FM 2003 Jingles - IQ Beats
For me it brings back some not so good memories of KMFM around 2005 who started using the package themselves although it did little to brighten up the average sounding station.
In 2005 Capital merged with GWR to form GCap and in line with many of the FM stations, Power FM started broadcasting under the "Mix" format and taking networked programming including Graham Torrington's Late Night Love.
Ocean FM around this time relaunched as just "Ocean" before adding the FM back to their name around 2007 but it wasn't over.
The inaugaration of Global Radio in 2008 saw even more long term changes when it was announced that Ocean would join several stations as part of the Heart rebranding.
Power FM would rebrand to Galaxy before the Heart Attacks even began and the final moments, from the 21st of November 2008 can be heard here and it was good to hear some of the older Power FM jingles being acknowledged.
Although in all cases it's typical of Global to undergo a rebrand just before the station could celebrate it's 20th anniversary.
Thanks to David Hemsley, David Harber, Sean Saunders, Ian Johnston for the Power FM 93 TOH, Aston McNeil, and Jonno and Inferno from Jinglemad.com.
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