Andrew’s Amateur Analysis: Why it didn’t work

1980

February: The IBA invite applications for the ILR contract for the Bristol area. Radio Avonside’s chairman, Professor Glynne Wickham (1922-2004), announced that they were “all set to go” in an Evening Post interview.

March: Radio Avonside merge with rival consortium Bristol Channel Radio.

April: Seven consortiums in all apply for the Bristol franchise, a record number outside London.

June: The IBA announce that Radio Avonside have won the Bristol franchise. The Evening Post describe them as a “largely arts-based consortium” and as “an alternative to BBC Radio Bristol, rather than a direct rival”.

November: Radio Avonside issues 600,000 non-voting £1 shares and £400,000 unsecured loan stock. Chris Yates, managing director of Radio 210 in Reading, is appointed Managing Director. He tells the Evening Post, “We will be more of a local station than Radio Bristol.”
 

1981

Spring: Radio Avonside announces that it plans to be on air by Autumn, using the name Radio West, a title popularised by the BBC thanks to the “Shoestring” series. Capital Radio presenter Dave Cash is appointed Programme Controller.

The station acquires premises in the Watershed in St. Augustine’s Reach. [Watershed and Half-built studio]

June: Dave Cash and Chris Yates give interviews to the Western Daily Press and Evening Post. In the Western Daily Press [Dave Cash talks to the Western Daily Press, 23 June 1981] Dave Cash says, “I can tell you one thing. We aren’t going to be a talking jukebox...I’ve learnt already that if you stick to your beliefs and go to the “street”, you can’t fail...recently I’ve been looking in at community centres and pubs and putting my ear to the ground.” In the Evening Post, Chris Yates says, “We’re motivators and are expert in getting the right people into the club...I believe honestly that Radio West is going to be the best station in the country. This is the Big Time.”

October: Dave and Chris talk to Out West, the predecessor to Venue magazine [Out West cover, October 1981]. In the interview [Out West, October 1981]  Chris Yates says, “We are a fresh, new dynamic in the market with plans to completely alter people’s listening habits. Obviously, being new and keen, we have taken the initiative and will continue to do so and no doubt our rivals will come up with some answers. It can only be for the good of everyone in the area.” Dave Cash says, “Less than half the output will be music...sure, we might lose a few listeners to someone like Peel, although we have someone up against him who I think will one day be as big as Peel. But hopefully people will stay with the station because they pick up the overall vibe. Our schedules are based on what people want, not what we think they should have. Extensive market research has been carried out and we have acted upon it.” The station hopes for 400,000 listeners initially, and half a million later. Out West says, “...there ain’t no way, no how that they aren’t about to lay a golden egg.”

Andrew says: It is clear from the article that the station’s programme plans had not, at that stage, been approved by the IBA. In those days the IBA had to be consulted, even over fairly trivial details. The station was obviously expecting to broadcast until 1 a.m. I was told later that the IBA had insisted on a 9 p.m. closedown, common in new ILR stations at that time. Only Chris Yates’ experience persuaded the IBA to relent, and allow the new station to broadcast until midnight.

Test transmissions start from the IBA transmitters at Mangotsfield (238 metres) and Dundry (96.3 VHF stereo). The main voice on the tests is that of Dave Glass.

Radio One organise a “coincidental” week of programmes from Bristol. From Sunday 18 October, all Radio One’s daytime programmes are broadcast from Bristol for a week.

A few adverts appear in the local press [Advert in Evening Post, Monday 26 October 1981]

1982  

Spring: The station extends daily transmissions until 1 a.m. to cover the Falklands War.

The first set of JICRAR audience figures give the station a reach of 30%, which equated to about 300,000 listeners, and a share of listening of 13.2%. Radio Bristol has 16.9%, and Radio One 26.1% in the Radio West area. Nationally, independent radio had a 33% share, and BBC local radio 6.2%.

Andrew says: The station put some good spin on these figures, but they were clearly disappointing. No obvious changes were made as a result, although the station issued a four-page supplement to the Evening Post which began with “Eat your heart out, Eddie Shoestring. Tune into the real thing.” Were they regretting the choice of on-air name?

The station links up with WRKO in Boston, as part of an ambitious America Week. [lTrevor Fry Mike Stewart America Week and IBA factsheet]

September: Johnnie Walker joins Radio West. He describes the manner of his recruitment very clearly in his autobiography! [Johnnie Walker talks to Venue, September 1982, Part 1 and Johnnie Walker talks to Venue, September 1982, Part 2]

October: The station announces a pre-tax profit of £11,272 in its first year, from a turnover of just under £1 million. [Accounts, 30 September 1983]

November: After persistent rumours of personality clashes, Dave Cash resigns as Programme Controller. Dave Glass’s Loveline slot (3-4 p.m.) is removed by order of the IBA.

1983

January: Dave Cash does his last Sunday show on 30 January. [Dave Cash signs off 300183]

February: Roger Day joins the station, as Head of Music and Presentation, from BRMB in Birmingham.

A new JICRAR survey gives the station a reach of just 26%. [Poor audience figures, Venue, February 1983] In an article, Venue says that “revenues are ahead of target, the fewer listeners actually spend more time tuned in and they’ve picked up listeners in areas outside Bristol.”

A new programme schedule is introduced [Sounds Safe, Venue, February 1983]. The main changes are: John Hayes moves to breakfast; Roger Day takes John’s mid-morning show; Johnnie Walker takes afternoons from Bryan Chalker, who moves to late nights; a speech block is introduced between 6 and 8 p.m. Ray Edwards leaves the station (but reappears later in the year as presenter of specialist soul shows).

A new music policy is introduced as well. Mike Stewart, by now Programme Controller, says, “There was no real policy before which resulted in absurd situations like coming out of The Jam’s single and going straight into a sea shanty. The new format is essentially the policy of all successful stations. The DJs understand what we are trying to do.”

Andrew says: The new weekday programme schedule looked very similar to BRMB’s, which also had an early evening speech block at that time. One of the Venue articles mentions that the station isn’t increasing its speech output, and indeed, it probably wouldn’t have: in those days, the IBA limited music to 50% of the total airtime, and the Musicians’ Union limited needletime to nine hours a day, so the amount of speech was pretty fixed. It was simply concentrated in the 6-8 p.m. slot. I remember Roger Day’s mid-morning show as being mostly music, while when John Hayes was presenter, there were large blocks of speech. In the other Venue article, Mike Stewart savages the previous music policy and describes some of the previous speech content as “self-indulgent drivel”!! The new programming policy can only have contributed to the increase in “broadcasting costs” described in the 1983 report (see October).

Spring: The station introduced some new jingles. They were resung cuts from a TM Century package called Airworks. The original jingles, made in-house, continued to be used alongside.

Andrew says: They were awful! I know some ex-West presenters liked them, and didn’t like the David Arnold package introduced in 1984. But they were really badly sung, with the station name coming out as Radio Weh. There were a few good cuts, such as the 30-second theme, which was nice to hear just before 6 a.m. as the station opened. I was already up, to make sure I got my parking space at the tax office near the Fleece and Firkin.

May: Managing Director Chris Yates resigns his £30,000 a year post “amicably”.

The Evening Post reports (on Tuesday 25 October) that a JICRAR survey in May put reach at 22%.

Andrew says: I cannot find any other records of this survey.

June: John Bradford, from Mercia Sound in Coventry, is appointed new Managing Director. He tells the press that he plans no changes. Venue quotes him as saying, “From what I have heard, everything has been running smoothly. My most important job is to get to know the staff.” and interviewed him at length in the summer.

[ John Bradford in Venue, Summer 1983]

Andrew says: The Venue interview tells a slightly different story to the Evening Post quote. In it, there’s the first appearance I can find of a view that the station, in its early days, employed presenters who said on-air, “Whacko, only a quarter of an hour left before the programme is over and then I can get back to London.” This accusation will reappear, but it’s not one I could point at the station. I never heard this attitude on the air. And I listened a lot!

September: Johnnie Walker leaves the station after accepting an offer from Ralph Bernard to join Wiltshire Radio in Wootton Bassett. The offer came with an enormous salary! At around the same time, drive time presenter Dave Glass is “suspended for three weeks” and subsequently leaves the station. A demonstration and petition are organised on his behalf by listeners, but to no avail. [Walker leaves West, and Dave Glass. Venue, September 1983]

October: An eventful month!

Andrew says: I had a little bit to do this month as well, as I started at university. So I didn’t follow all these events directly. In Oxford, I could just about get Radio West on 238m, during the daytime. The station started transmitting a message that essentially said it was going to be all right, and it had hundreds of thousands of listeners. It was obvious that something was up...

On Thursday 6 October, Centre Radio in Leicester ceased trading. Dave Bowen (who briefly presented on Radio West in the last few weeks) finished his morning show at 1 p.m. after which the station went into continuous music until 5:30 p.m. when Tony Cook gave an update on the station’s situation. The music stopped, and the station went off the air.

This was the first time an ILR station had gone bust. Even though its JICRAR figures at the time gave it a 31% reach, it had lost £500,000. This event cast shockwaves throughout the commercial radio industry, and were to have a direct effect on what subsequently happened at Radio West during the next few weeks.

In mid-October, the Evening Post published a report headed, “Losses mount for Radio West”. “Station managing director John Bradford said today he could not comment on the scale of the losses, since the full year’s account were still being prepared. But he said forecasts of further losses made in July at the half-year stage had been confirmed...It is understood that the full-year loss is blamed on advertising and executives are now considering ways of improving it.”

On Tuesday 25 October, the true extent of the station’s losses were made clear [Accounts, 30 September 1983]. It had lost £327,481 in the year to 30 September. Turnover was down by over 14% at £851,242, while broadcasting costs had risen by 16% to £650,259. Further, the auditors ordered the station to write off the balance of development costs, because the large operating losses brought its franchise into question. This took the declared loss for the financial year to an eye-watering £547,744.

The station took drastic action. The Evening Post [News of cuts, Evening Post, Tuesday 25 October 1983 ] reported that the station would undergo a vast shake-up. On the board, Professor Glynne Wickham retired, and was replaced by the flamboyant Marmaduke (Duke) Hussey, (1923-2006: obituary here).

Andrew says: I went back to school for Speech Day in 1984, to find the prizes being presented by Duke Hussey! He told the parents and pupils that he hoped they all read the Times at breakfast while listening to Radio West.

On the programming side, the most obvious change was a reduction in airtime. The station would close at 7:30 p.m. on weekdays, and at 9 p.m. at the weekend. This was implemented on Monday 31 October. Bryan Chalker, whose late night show disappeared, and Tony Kelly, who was commercial producer and presented weekend shows, left at once. The station claimed that audience and advertising revenue were increasing, and the board asked shareholders to approve a reorganisation of the company’s capital structure by the issue of £350,000 in new shares.

On Friday 28 October, the Evening Post ran an opinion piece [Advice to Radio West, Evening Post, Friday 28 October 1983] repeating the view that the presenters appeared to be itching to leave the city, and said so on air, in the early days. It also mentions the station surviving “beyond 1985” which proved to be prophetic...

November: Recriminations!

Venue magazine ran interviews with (among others) Dave Cash, Johnnie Walker (whose first name they spelt as “Johnny”) Dave Glass, and John Bradford, in a two-page spread. [When, who, why pt1 and When, who, why. pt2]. To paraphrase:

Dave Cash: “West was showing a £100,000 profit when I left...I put my proposals to the board of directors and I forecast a quarter of a million pound loss if the current policies were continued. I seem to have underestimated the loss!...I never completely left Capital Radio. It’s the difference between the First and Third Divisions. The Board were simply not interested in adventurous programming. In fact they weren’t interested in anything at all except Lotus cars and cocktail parties...The faults go back a long way. the die was cast in the first year...All the best DJs have been sacked or left. Is it going to be the Trevor Fry station? There’s nobody there to hold up the front end...Radio Bristol was not underestimated, it was underdealt with.”

Johnnie Walker: “I left Radio West because I saw its future as being troubled. Wiltshire Radio’s offer appealed to the sort of style of radio I was looking for. Yes, I am glad I left but I’m very sad about what’s happened there...I imagine they didn’t have much choice.”

Dave Glass: “I’d been thinking of moving on for some time...I was a ratings winner. My views on ILR are unprintable. I’m totally against the idea of going off air at 7:30 p.m. It’s hard to believe that only 5% of listeners tune in after 7:30. Bryan Chalker had a big following...What Bradford says in print is correct but I’m worried that it won’t work...I believe that radio should entertain and not bore people. I hope that Radio West doesn’t get boring...”

John Bradford: “It is just untenable to go on letting the company lose vast sums of money and that’s why we’ve taken this action...Centre Radio was a terrible blow but sadly not a surprise...we have acted while the lights are on amber. We are not waiting until the lights have gone red and have been red for some time...it’s no use wasting time thinking “if only”...if local broadcasting is the name of the game, we’ve got one great trump card in our favour: we are a genuinely local company; we live here, we work here...”

Venue’s view: “Inconsistent, often irrelevant programming, a huge staff turnover, bad management, bad luck and an unfair dose of bad luck have all conspired against Radio West...Radio West has been dragged down a spiral of controversy and failure virtually since it began and the dirt will stick for a long time...the abrupt sacking of Glass, Chalker and Kelly has shattered an already shaky staff morale, despite official statements denying this...Get on with it. Bristol needs you, but not as much as you need Bristol.”

Andrew says: A lot to take in here! Dave Cash has put an extra nought in the first year profits, and I wonder what the “current policies” were that he objected to so much. Johnnie Walker mentions in his autobiography that Radio West was not well-run, and Chris Yates “swanned around” in his Lotus car, but I’m not in a position to apportion blame between these two senior executives. I’ll try elsewhere to analyse the reasons for the station’s early failure. Trevor Fry, of course, was one of West’s greatest successes, so I don’t know why Dave mentioned him in that way.

1984  

January: The station abandons the mix of in-house and TM Century jingles, and acquires the David Arnold package that it used until its last day.

Andrew says: I remember waking up one morning during the Christmas vacation, and hearing these for the first time on Roger Day’s breakfast show. I loved them, and felt that they tightened up the station sound enormously. They’ve lasted quite well: the news jingle is my mobile phone ringtone.

Spring: Weekend programmes are extended until 10 p.m.

Some more senior executives leave. Roger Day joins the new Invicta Sound in Kent, and Mike Stewart heads to Norwich to be programme controller at the new Radio Broadland. Mark Seaman becomes Programme Organiser.

Andrew says: And I visit the station for an interview with John Bradford, who has kindly agreed to talk to me about a career in radio. He successfully puts me off! Most of the interview is occupied with what would now be called “anoraking”, and John is particularly keen to talk about his new Breakfast presenter, Tom Clapton, who he has persuaded to Bristol from his old station, Mercia Sound.

August: Radio West starts to broadcast trailers which say, “The nights are getting longer...”

September: On Monday 3 September, Radio West restores almost all the cuts to its airtime which had been made in October 1983: the reduced schedule had only lasted 10 months. Weekday and Saturday programmes now finish at 1 a.m. and Sunday programmes at midnight. Andy Westgate joins the station to front the new late night show, which contains a phone-in element.

1985

April: Two of the station’s programmes, Including Paul Riley’s excellent classical music programme, are nominated for Sony awards. [Radio in Venue, April 1985 - Sony award nominations]

As the Venue piece says, another ILR station, GB Radio in Newport, goes out of business.

May: Rumours start to circulate that the station will “merge” with the strongly-established  Wiltshire Radio.

Summer: The “merger” is confirmed [GWR Promo]

A few West presenters leave. Tom Clapton, entertaining breakfast presenter, leaves radio and does his last show on 3 August. A few Wiltshire Radio presenters appear on the station: Dave Bowen does some lunchtime shows, Lynda Couch presents West Tonight, and Dave Barrett appears on the late night show while Andy Westgate covers breakfast. Finally, in late August, Ralph Bernard, the managing director of Wiltshire Radio, takes part in a late night phone in, to discuss plans for the new station. (I’m sure Andy Westgate was the presenter for this.) He reveals the new programme schedule [GWR's first schedule in Venue, October 1985] and says, among other things, that he’s been impressed by the popularity of Trevor Fry, and that “commercial radio doesn’t do classical music very well”, so he wasn’t going to continue West’s award-nominated classical music programme. Callers mainly criticise the reduction in hours for Trevor Fry’s show and Paul Phear moving to the overnight show (there was a wonderful moment when a caller confused Paul’s West start time of 2 p.m. with his new start time of 2 a.m.) The last caller was me! I tried to be positive, particularly about the introduction of 24-hour broadcasting, but I felt that Ralph Bernard, in charge of programming, didn’t understand what Radio Bristol was providing, coming as he did from Wiltshire (which had no BBC station) and, previously, Hereward (which also had no local competition). Invicta Sound had launched with a very similar format in late 1984, with Hereward’s former managing director Cecilia Garnett in charge, and had shifted abruptly to an entertainment-led format within six months, after which it became very successful.

September: A few minutes after midnight on Sunday 8 September 1985, Radio West closes down for the last time. Mark Seaman makes the final announcements. [Closedown 080985] [Mark Seaman – last announcement]

For the rest of the month, the transmitters broadcast rather ghostly test transmissions for the new station, with extended local news bulletins at peak times provided by Radio West reporters. Wiltshire Radio transmissions continued as normal, with the addition of an overnight music programme.

October: At 6 a.m. on Tuesday 1 October 1985, GWR opened for business. Bristol’s breakfast show, presented by Steve Orchard and Richard Evans, was, like the two other GWR-AM breakfast shows in Swindon and “Bath” (effectively West Wiltshire, using transmitters near Chippenham), primarily news-based, and certainly carried a great deal more speech than Tom Clapton’s version! Trevor Fry followed at 9 a.m. and at 11 a.m. Johnnie Walker’s programme came from the Wootton Bassett studios. Bristol had a local programme again at 2 p.m. with Telephone Exchange (West’s Radio Market), and the stations joined up at 3 p.m. for Dave Barrett’s Afternoon Show. This carried local arts news between 3 and 4, but at least there was some music between 4 and 5. The station split three ways again at 5 p.m. for the news-based drive time show GWR-PM. Evening and overnight shows, featuring mainly music, were presented by Mark Baddeley, Bob Harrison and Paul Phear.

Andrew says: I didn’t like the sound of the new station. It had David Arnold jingles, but these were much longer than the old West jingles, and some of them sounded like dirges, particularly one which was very frequently used which took ages to say “Gee double-you ar, twen-ty-four hour ra-dio”. And the talking! It was interminable! Most of the nine hours of needletime appeared to be concentrated from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. There was six hours of news a day. Johnnie Walker got it right with his excellent “phone-out” between 12 and 1, but the breakfast and drive-time shows were, to my 21-year-old ears, deadly dull. It was all very different to the commercial stations I could get in Oxford, for example Chiltern Radio. Maybe that was the intention: Radio West had apparently gone for too young an audience, and perhaps I wasn’t welcome! Fortunately for me, Red Dragon Radio launched within two weeks. I had good reception in Fishponds, and that became my No.1 choice for listening: we moved to South Wales in October 1986 anyway.

Beyond 1985

GWR made more money, but the audience figures didn’t really move very much. I believe the first JICRAR figure for the combined area was 31%. It became difficult to compare GWR’s figure with Radio Bristol’s, because the stations covered very different areas.

As the GWR schedule evolved over time, Paul Phear soon moved off overnights, first replacing Mark Baddeley on the evening show, and then moving into his old afternoon drive slot. Andy Fox did some overnights for the station. Trevor Fry’s show was first reduced to 8:30-10 a.m. and then restored to 9-11 a.m. when Johnnie Walker left for Radio One in January 1987. Mark Seaman moved into Johnnie’s 11-2 slot. Andy Westgate took over evenings. By this stage most of the station’s presentation was being handled by ex-Radio West staff, in both its transmission areas (the West Wiltshire/Bath optout was dropped after a few weeks in 1985, due to “poor reception”). News began to lose its prominence: although the breakfast shows remained double-headed, the drive time show GWR-PM was soon reduced to 5-6 p.m. and then to a news bulletin between 5 and 5:15 p.m.

In November 1988, like many other ILR stations, the station split its AM and FM frequencies. AM became Brunel Radio which had an interesting mixed format, including a mid-morning phone-in and light classical music at drive time. Needless to say, this didn’t last very long. GWR-FM became a much more music-based station as needletime restrictions were removed.

The GWR group continued to have a presence in the Watershed until 2001, when the studios moved to Passage Street. The station’s building is now Mackenzie’s Café Bar, which, curiously, advertises “the finest DJs”.

This is not the place to discuss the GWR group, and its future contribution to what was local radio. Brunel Radio quickly became Brunel Classic Gold, and then the Classic Gold network. And GWR-FM, and the stations absorbed by the ever-growing network, became the home of the “better music mix”. Most of the stations absorbed, like GWR itself, are now called Heart. At the time of writing, they carry seven hours a day of regional programming. Classic Gold is now Gold, a wholly nationally-networked oldies service.

Mike Brown at mds975 has a wide range of material connected with WR, GWR and Brunel Radio, supplied by Julian Watson who has also provided material for this site. Thanks to you both!

[ The former studios, now a bar, in Summer 2011]

Andrew’s Amateur Analysis: Why it didn’t work

Everyone seems to be agreed that Radio West had a “wretched start” (Tony Stoller, Sounds of Your Life, the history of Independent Radio in the UK), but what made the start so wretched? Various people have given their views. It was a long time ago, but I’m going to try to make some pronouncements.

·              The station spent far too much money on its premises. Various insiders have told me that the station was tied into a punitive lease on its bit of the Watershed. The site was prestigious, central to Bristol and easy for the public to access, but simply far too expensive. Centre Radio had the same problem with Granville House.

·              There was no music policy until February 1983. Presenters appeared to have the freedom to play exactly what they wanted, and indulged their personal tastes. This led to enormous gear-changes through the day. The afternoon show was very country-based, while at drive time American-style AOR featured strongly. The late show was all soul, which was probably an error up against John Peel. Dave Cash, in his Out West interview [Out West, October 1981] made a big deal of extensive market research that had been conducted. Did it say that listeners wanted country music in the afternoon and soul late at night? Here’s the station sounding very country, for New Year 1981/2. [Happy New Yee-Haar]

The new music policy sounded very heavy-handed at first. There was an A list, consisting of songs which had to be played at important times, such as coming out of a news bulletin. I vividly remember leaving work at the tax office at 4 p.m. and hearing Let’s Dance by David Bowie as the first record after the 4 p.m. news, every day for a week.

·              The station did not sound local enough, especially when compared with BBC Radio Bristol. Radio Bristol had an excellent audience compared to other BBC local radio stations. It was a difficult competitor as it was well-established and attracted a much older audience. But West could have detached large blocks of listeners from it by promoting the local angle, starting Helpline straight away, using more local presenters such as Trevor Fry and maybe trying to attract some of Radio Bristol’s presenters to join the station. John Turner, for example, made the move to commercial radio many, many years later. In its later years, the station did make an attempt to attract Radio Bristol’s morning man, the late Roger Bennett. Most of the station’s original presenters had come from Chris Yates’ former station, Radio 210 in Reading, or had associations with Dave Cash and Capital. None of the management had experience in running stations in areas where the BBC had a strong local station: there was none in Reading, BBC Radio London was weak, and head of news Mike Stewart came from BRMB and Beacon, where the competition was the weak BBC Radio Birmingham.

·              Little effort was made to promote the station when it launched. There was one advertisement in the Bristol Evening Post. I think there was something on HTV West. I didn’t see any billboards, or advertising in buses, or a mailshot. Some promotion came later, but it was too late.

·              The breakfast show presenter left. I don’t know why this happened. The original breakfast presenter did many weekday breakfast shows since, to good effect. The most likely explanation is that he audience he was appealing to was too young..

·              Listeners will give a new station about 15 minutes. And in the opening weeks, the wrong presenter was on breakfast, and the music was wrong...

·              There was a great deal of speech at important times of the day. Even by the standards of the time, John Hayes’ mid-morning show carried a great deal of talk. Of course, the station had to conform to needletime restrictions and IBA guidelines. But when I heard John in the same slot on Essex Radio in 1987, he played a lot more music. And some of the speech output was very self-indulgent and sloppy, as Mike Stewart said in February 1983.

·              The station lost direction after problems developed between Dave Cash and “the board”. When the station opened, it and the local media made a great deal of the chemistry between Chris Yates (representing “the board”) and Dave Cash. Obviously this chemistry broke down at some point in the early months. I think this conflict appeared on air in autumn 1982, around the time Johnnie Walker joined the station. The breakfast show’s format, which had been pleasantly relaxed with Mark Stevens as presenter, suddenly changed: frequent and annoyingly repetitive news updates were introduced, and Mark Stevens abruptly departed as host, being replaced by Dave Cash himself and, after a while, Trevor Fry. Dave had said in his Sunday morning show that the breakfast show was sounding great with the news updates, but it was obvious that not everybody agreed!

·              The changes to the station’s schedule in February 1983 added significantly to the programming costs, while not improving ratings. Although some attempts were made to promote the station better in Spring 1983, such as advertisements on buses and on HTV West, the station should have put scarce resources into the important daytime shows, rather than making documentaries in the early evening, which were expensive to produce and attracted very few listeners.

Having said all this, I still found the station very entertaining in its early years. The looseness of the output could be endearing, and I, and my friends at school, particularly enjoyed Dave Glass’s show and Tooki’s Sunday late show, which had little competition! But it was obvious that things weren’t quite right. As an aside, I don’t understand why the station attracted a mainly young audience, unless somewhere out there were hordes of youngsters who were looking for country music and soul. Radio One was extremely well entrenched with young people, because for many years, there had been nothing else.

In the later years, particularly after the restoration of hours in September 1984, the station sounded great, and did seem, from the callers, to be succeeding in its attempt to capture a slightly older audience. But the damage had been done, and by this stage, it was very difficult to promote the station properly due to lack of money, and, because of its history, it was not attractive to advertisers. The merger may genuinely have been the only way to save the station, especially after managers had been spooked by the closure of Centre Radio and GB Radio in Newport, which was in talks with CBC in Cardiff when the axe fell.

As one of the presenters once told me, “Radio West was great fun. Too much fun to last.”