Select bid for community licence

Discuss all things relating to the busy London Pirate Radio scene.
zoostorm
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by zoostorm » Sun May 12, 2019 12:55 am

Albert H wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 10:53 pm The material that Upfront played appealed to a very narrow audience. Other stations were more diverse so had worthwhile listenerships.
In legal radio, a narrow playlist equals more listeners. Upfront obviously went for the audience that liked the 'poppier' sounds of UKG and it worked for them at that period.

Delight seemed to be a promotional vehicle for So Solid.

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by pure94 » Sun May 12, 2019 7:18 am

Albert u slate every station blah blah get a life fella

Albert H
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by Albert H » Sun May 12, 2019 11:14 am

Pure 94 - I don't. Some stations are / were very good at what they did. Some of them were actually better than their legal rivals. "Choice" was a good example - an abysmally bad attempt at replacing the pirates. The Radio Authority - at the time - announced that "now Choice is on the air, the pirates have no reason to exist"!

This has been true throughout the history of pirate radio in one way or another: -

The Marine Offences Act 1967 made it pretty much impossible to operate a pirate station at sea (though Caroline and a couple of others gave it a good try). The BBC added Radio 1 as a "replacement for the pop pirates". Radio 1 - with its limited hours and MW-only output (at first) was just as dreadful as everyone expected. They'd hired the "socially acceptable" DJs from (pirate) Radio London and a couple of other stations, and bowdlerised their output. Radio listening was severely damaged, and sales of recorded music rocketed!

The "black music" pirates of the 80s lead directly to 1Xtra (which is a sad joke), Choice, Capital Xtra and several other attempts at stations that tried to sound like "replacements". None of them worked - as anyone who'd ever had anything to do with real radio could have predicted!

There have been some superbly presented pirate stations - operated by people who really knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, the current crop of pirates are much poorer than the earlier ones.....
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by famefm » Sun May 12, 2019 12:55 pm

I thought the very early choice fm circur 90 to 92 was very popular and it's main problem was the low power it was only later it started to become a bit rubbish?

zoostorm
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by zoostorm » Tue May 14, 2019 12:43 pm

famefm wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 12:55 pm I thought the very early choice fm circur 90 to 92 was very popular and it's main problem was the low power it was only later it started to become a bit rubbish?
Capital were a minority shareholder in Choice and bought the station outright in 2004. Various company takeovers led it to become part of Global who relaunched the station as Capital Xtra.

While Albert has his own personal thoughts on why he thinks it's rubbish, the station has 1.8m listeners since going national.

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by famefm » Tue May 14, 2019 8:26 pm

I knew capital had a share but I don't think it was from the beginning? I knew they were never a pirate but I sure they were a lone independent company for the first few years I thought it was about 2001 capital bought a share and 2004 outright when the better djs started getting sacked

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by Albert H » Wed May 15, 2019 1:35 am

FameFM - you're exactly right. When Crapital (then Global) took it over, it lost any credibility it ever had. It has only got an audience today (which is unlikely to be anywhere near 1.8m) because it's the only national station that tries to play the material it does. Radio 1Xtra is a bit of a joke (I'm told by my friends who listen to that kind of thing).

All I'll say on the whole topic of current UK radio - it's rubbish (mostly). I've largely given up listening to it when I'm there.
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zoostorm
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by zoostorm » Wed May 15, 2019 4:22 pm

Albert H wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 1:35 am FameFM - you're exactly right. When Crapital (then Global) took it over, it lost any credibility it ever had. It has only got an audience today (which is unlikely to be anywhere near 1.8m) because it's the only national station that tries to play the material it does. Radio 1Xtra is a bit of a joke (I'm told by my friends who listen to that kind of thing).
Capital Xtra in London has 816,000 listeners, more than anything Choice achieved. For accuracy, nationally they have 1,792,000 listeners.

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by famefm » Wed May 15, 2019 4:48 pm

Don't forget for the first 11 years choice had the abysmally weak 96.9 fm only

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by Albert H » Thu May 16, 2019 2:00 am

Fame - you're right. The 96.9MHz from the Palace was a dreadful signal, but the authorities didn't care. As they saw it, Choice was the replacement for the pirates. I remember a senior idiot at the Radio Authority saying that "the Choice audience shouldn't complain since the 96.9 signal is more powerful than any of the pirates"!!!
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by famefm » Thu May 16, 2019 3:15 am

That's amazing the idiot you were talking about Albert must never have heard 102.5 being used by horizon and solar that was the best frequency of all the stations at the time and covered the whole of the south east of England

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by Effemm » Thu May 16, 2019 1:20 pm

famefm wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 3:15 am That's amazing the idiot you were talking about Albert must never have heard 102.5 being used by horizon and solar that was the best frequency of all the stations at the time and covered the whole of the south east of England
Yep. I remember it reached overseas on many occasions n that’s not a tropo thing

We were well n truly funked back then :clap

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by Albert H » Mon May 20, 2019 2:00 pm

I remember hearing Starpoint on 88.6 in Hamburg, in noise-free stereo!

However, the really big pirate signals were from County Monaghan in the 80s and 90s. A couple of the bigger ones achieved 1MW erp (that's 1 million Watts!!!) and aside from reaching their target areas in Northern Ireland, could also be received - consistently - in solid stereo up much of the west coast of Scotland!
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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by famefm » Mon May 20, 2019 6:47 pm

That's a supprise I only remember starpoint being a poor signal on 886 and 94.3 it only seemed to go far when they were on 93.2 when they finally finished in 1990

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by drumandbasshead010 » Mon May 20, 2019 10:48 pm

Albert H wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 2:00 pm I remember hearing Starpoint on 88.6 in Hamburg, in noise-free stereo!

However, the really big pirate signals were from County Monaghan in the 80s and 90s. A couple of the bigger ones achieved 1MW erp (that's 1 million Watts!!!) and aside from reaching their target areas in Northern Ireland, could also be received - consistently - in solid stereo up much of the west coast of Scotland!
Speaking of Ireland and based on your above messages (as well as in previous topics), I think you'd probably prefer the selection of pirates in Dublin than London. Among the Dublin pirates are 2 or 3 oldies music operators who would've worked on the bigger stations of the 70s and 80s and often collaborate and do a joint broadcast. They play bottom of the barrel stuff as well as the general stuff. Energy 1395 - the only one of them on mediumwave - has been received in Blackpool lately. There's also, as you've mentioned before, Radio North and Radio Star Country up north.

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Re: Select bid for community licence

Post by Albert H » Sat May 25, 2019 2:48 am

I'm pretty certain that "Megawatt Miles'" stations were the most powerful pirate stations ever - with the exception of the 5 MW from Luxembourg on 1440kHz - and they still couldn't get a groundwave signal into the UK!
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