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Offshore Radio
Royal Academy
Offshore Radio
Celebration
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Radio Academy Celebration of 60s Offshore Radio - 4th August 2007 (page 2)
Part 1 - “The Sound of the Nation”
This was a look back to Radio Caroline’s early days with Bryan Vaughan and Keith Skues, newsgathering with Nick Bailey and Graham Webb and the days just before the Marine Offences Act with Roger Day. The session was chaired by Mark Story, Head of Radio, EMAP. The picture to the left shows Bryan, Nick, Roger and Graham.
Bryan was with Radio Atlanta at the start. Allan Crawford, the owner, also ran his own music publishing company and looked to Atlanta as a way for promoting his label and artists – Bryan soon found himself playing covers of hit records by unknown artists. Also, in those days, the majority of Atlanta’s programmes were recorded in their London studios.
Keith joined soon afterwards, but by then, the Mi Amigo was now Caroline South, with a two-week on and one week off DJ roster. He described how the DJs would be kept busy while onshore leave. The picture on the right shows Keith and Bryan.
Graham Webb, described how the news service was introduced after Caroline had moved to 259, with newsgathering being directly lifted from the BBC itself. His was the voice on the famous “Radio Caroline Newsbeat – fast and factual” jingle.
Nick Bailey read the news on both Caroline ships and talked how all sorts of initiation tests were devised for new staff, such as getting them to climb up the mast!
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Bryan Vaughan
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Nick Bailey, Roger Day and Graham Webb
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Roger Day joined the station pretty late in the proceedings, shortly before the Marine Offences Act was due to come into force. As going out to the ships meant you were leaving the country, you had to have a valid passport. Unfortunately, he discovered his was due to expire, so on August 14th he had to leave the ship to get his passport renewed.
The panel talked about how they liked seeing the visitors coming out on pleasure boat trips to do the tours of the offshore stations – unfortunately, officially visitors were not (officially) allowed on board.
Roger described those days as the best of radio – he deplored the dire state of commercial radio today. He put the blame fair and square on the accountants who ran today's stations, rather than the people who had passion for radio and the music, I was the first to applaud Rogers statement, a view which was endorsed by all there. I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that some of those responsible for running today’s commercial radio were chairing the panels! But it needed saying. The fun had gone out of radio and it was hardly surprising that stations were losing listeners.
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