Swinging Radio England

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Don Pierson in 1964
Don Pierson in 1964

Swinging Radio England ("SRE") was a top 40 offshore commercial station billed as the "Worlds Most Powerful" that operated briefly from 3 May to 13 November of 1966 from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England. While the station was dubbed as a pirate radio station, its actual operation took place within the laws of the day and its offices were located in the heart of the West End of London. Its representation was by a company formed earlier in the year to represent in Europe the ABC radio and television stations of the United States.

Both the studio and the 50,000 watts AM transmitter of Swinging Radio England were located in two separate prefabricated rooms lowered into the two holds of the MV Olga Patricia (later renamed MV Laissez Faire), a World War II vessel built in the USA as a supply ship. The station shared the studio and transmitter holds with a 50kW AM sister station named Britain Radio which was billed as the Hallmark of Quality and broadcasting a format of easy listening music.

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[edit] Origin of the station

Swinging Radio England was the brainchild of Don Pierson who lived in Eastland, Texas, USA. According to an interview conducted by Dr. Eric Gilder with Don Pierson which was published by Sibiu University Press in Romania during 2001, Don Pierson got the idea to start Swinging Radio England following the success of his earlier venture called Wonderful Radio London.

The unique format of SRE was built around a hybrid collection of sounds and formats. Like those of Wonderful Radio London, its jingles were made by PAMS in Dallas, Texas as part of "The Jet Set" series 27 that was originally made for WABC, New York. Its rapid fire bannerline news format, at 15 minutes past the hour was borrowed from WFUN in Miami, Florida. The on air staff were known as boss jocks, although the offshore version bore only a slight resemblance to the style of broadcasting performed by KHJ in California which had originated the name. (See footnote section below regarding Tommy Vance on KHJ in November 1965 and Radio Caroline South in January 1966.)

[edit] Station transmitters and antenna system

Don Pierson delegated all transmitter and antenna work to the LTV-Continental Electronics (CEMCO) company in Dallas, Texas as a turn-key operation. Before assigning the job to CEMCO, Pierson had obtained advice from consulting radio engineer Bill Carr of Fort Worth, Texas who had performed work on the antenna construction of Wonderful Radio London. When Pierson began to run out of time in getting the twin stations on the air due to difficulty in getting financial underwriters for the project, he revised his plans. The project was divided into three segments: the ship; the stations and advertising. As a result of this development it was not until the beginning of 1966 that a final contract was completed with CEMCO. While the engineering side of the twin stations was rushed, CEMCO relied upon their extensive experience of performing similar work for various agencies of the United States government. However, while Carr understood the necessity of working within the limited boundaries of time and money available to commercial ventures, CEMCO were used to working on massive projects underwritten by governments where time delays and cost overruns were normal practice.

[edit] Studios

The studios for both Swinging Radio England and its sister station Britain Radio were located in adjoining rooms, and like the transmitters which were housed in a prefabricated building lowered into one of the holds of the ship, the two rooms were located in a similar building which had been lowered into the second hold of the ship.

When Don Pierson first planned the station in 1965, his engineer Bill Carr had suggested 665kHz and 795kHz or 815kHz as frequencies for the twin stations. But by the end of November of that year, Don Pierson had still been unable to finance either the purchase of a ship or the finance of two offshore radio stations. By the time that financial arrangements were finally completed, the New Year of 1966 had arrived and so he decided that in order to make up for lost time it was necessary to speed up the operation. This was divided into a ship purchase and a package purchase for both stations and the antenna to be designed, manufactured and installed by Continental Electronics.

Both radio studios were originally going to be fully automated using the same ideas that Don Pierson had previously planned for Wonderful Radio London. At that time, some stations in the USA were using this method to program both easy listening and top forty formats because they required fewer staff which in turn resulted in keeping expenses to a minimum. However, at the last moment Don Pierson was persuaded by one of the disc jockeys that he hired from nearby WFUN in South Miami, to make a further purchase for the top forty station to install a Collins Radio control board and to staff the station with live announcers who would live on the ship.

As a result of this change of plan, most of the automation for both stations was moved to the Britain Radio studio in order to create more space for the new board and equipment.

[edit] Technical Problems

Among other suggestions made by radio engineer Bill Carr had been the erection of a 200 foot mast to which the transmitter signals would be shunt-fed to the top using a similar (but higher placed) method to the Wonderful Radio London ship station. On board ship at dock in Miami, CEMCO installed a second mast (attached to the original ship's mast) to support a third outstretched triangular boom. At the end of that boom was a heavy insulator that hung down to provide attachment for a large swinging cable that stretched down to the transmitters below deck. This cable shunt-fed signals to the top of the mast from which radiating antennas were then attached.

When the engineering on the mast was completed, Pierson had his doubts that it could withstand the stress of the Atlantic crossing and North Sea weather. He was advised by Tom Danaher who had designed the mast for Wonderful Radio London which Bill Carr had used for his antenna work, that the triangular boom of the CEMCO structure would fail due to the heavy stress place upon it by the swinging shunt-fed cable. Just as predicted by Danaher it came crashing to the deck a mere two hours after the ship had left port.

This was not the only problem facing the Olga Patricia as a functioning radio ship. Carpenters had been hired at the last minute to construct new sleeping arrangements for the additional staff made necessary by the change from automation to live presentation. The Collins Radio board had been delivered at the last minute and it was being wired at sea by Rick Crandall who was one of the first employees hired by Don Pierson to program the stations. When the radio ship arrived in Europe it was incapable of transmitting any programs due to a series of delays caused by the unavailability of CEMCO staff.

Against advice from attorneys representing the CEMCO turn-key contract, Pierson finally chanced voiding the CEMCO contract by hiring a British engineer to get the stations on the air with a improvised replacement antenna system. When the engineer succeeded in getting SRE as the first station on the air, another problem emerged. Bill Carr had originally suggested the use of three frequencies for the antenna that he believed that he would build, but Carr had also cautioned that research needed to be carried out on their suitability in Europe. The attorney for the radio ship venture accused CEMCO of failing to conduct this research when it was discovered that when Swinging Radio England finally got on the air, its powerful signal began clashing with a state-owned radio station in Italy and another of the frequencies was heard to be in use by a BBC network. When engineers eventually enabled sister station Britain Radio to begin broadcasting at the same time as SRE, it was because they had lowered the power output of its transmitter and used a new but inferior frequency. In order to resolve complaints from the Italian government to the British authorities about the SRE signal, SRE switched frequencies with Britain Radio. While Britain Radio was able to serve a large broadcasting area, the reception of SRE was anything but that of the "world's most powerful" and as a result of these complications SRE attracted little commercial support. Its sister station Britain Radio received sustaining income from broadcasting "The World Tomorrow" program presented by Herbert W. Armstrong and Garner Ted Armstrong.

[edit] Ownership and Management

Ownership of the venture resided with investors in North and West Texas. These investors formed loyalties to various factions and this caused tremendous infighting within the organization when the venture quickly turned into a chaotic financial failure.

Advertising sales were assigned to William E. Vick of Amarillo, Texas by the venture under an exclusive employment contract. Vick, whose family were also investors in the venture then moved his family to London where he formed a British company called Peir Vick, Ltd. Vick leased offices above which he also lived, at 32 Curzon Street in the Mayfair district of London. They were situated across the street from Radlon (Sales) Ltd., at 17 Curzon Street which had a similar contract to represent Wonderful Radio London.

Vick entered into two exclusive contracts with two British companies. The first contract went to Peter Rendall and Associates who handled all of the public relations and extensive and expensive parties to launch the stations. In turn Rendall introduced Radiovision Broadcasts International, Limited (RBI), which had been formed in January 1966 as a subsidiary of Pearl & Dean whose reputation had been established by selling space on British cinema screens. The creation of RBI had been triggered by the intention of the ABC radio and television networks in the USA to expand the sale of their program sales and broadcasting interests in Britain and Europe. The ABC connection with British media had begun many years earlier when it entered into a working relationship with Rupert Murdoch.

These media moves coincided with continuing and intensive rumors that as a result of lobbying by prospective commercial radio interests culminating in the arrival of Radio Caroline and then Wonderful Radio London, the British Government was about to license two 50kw commercial radio stations to be located in two different British cities. As late as December 1965 Pierson had been advised not to go ahead with his new offshore stations but to seek these two licenses instead. A compromise was seen in the prefabrication of the CEMCO transmitters and studios which could be immediately unloaded on land should such licenses be granted.

Unfortunately for all concerned the engineering work never succeeded in making the offshore stations fully operational and RBI failed to sell enough advertising to make the venture profitable, which the public relations firm spent large sums of money promoting the stations. However, an application was submitted by William Vick to the GPO radio licensing authority for licenses to bring his offshore twin stations on land.

[edit] Noteworthy events

Two major parties were thrown by Peter Rendall and Associates to introduce RBI to advertisers, with the second of these parties being held at the London Hilton hotel and promoted in the press as "The Party of the Year". This star-studded affair was followed by a nationwide live music tour called "Swinging 66" for which the headline act was the Small Faces.

Swinging Radio England made its arrival on to the British airwaves with the Mitch Miller recording of "Yellow Rose of Texas". This first tune was followed by playing the PAMS jingles in succession, which resulted in them being copied, edited and rebroadcast by rival Radio Caroline South on another ship anchored close by the Olga Patricia.

The last minute decision by Don Pierson to allow Ron O'Quinn as Program Director to change the automated system of broadcasting to a live format was the most controversial of all. O'Quinn, who had previously been a disc jockey at WFUN, hurriedly borrowed every kind of format gimmick that he was familiar with in the broadcasting area of Georgia and Florida, to create a hybrid sound heard only in England (or anywhere else in the world) via "SRE". The key to this hodge-podge was the renaming of the djs as "boss jocks", a term borrowed from KHJ on the West Coast of the USA who were using it to give a brand form of delivery that replaced their former laid back air delivery. Even without appropriating the "boss radio" brand SRE was anything but laid back. It was a like a top 40 station on steroids where everything had echo, was shouted, had either a genuine southern US accent or English voices feigning what came to be called a "transatlantic accent". Even its news presentation style which had been used on stations such as WFUN and KBOX in Dallas, was full of buzzers, beeps, echo and full-throttle delivery. It was the exact opposite of conversational speech. An example was in the top of the hour station identification announcement (which was also accompanied by a drum roll): "This is “SRE-Swinging Radio England. Broadcasting 4 1/2 miles off the Frinton Essex Coast on 227 metres, 24 hours a day, in excess of 50,000 watts of power. SRE, first and foremost is BOSS!" While many British and Continental European teenagers where excited by the these sounds, they did nothing for the advertisers and coupled with the technical problems they gave SRE a very short life. By November of 1966 it was all over.

Of the American staff of SRE who left a brief but memorable mark on the minds of British listeners were Rick Randall, Boom-Boom Branigan and Larry Dean. It was Larry Dean who became a master of O'Quinn's hybrid sound and turned it into the most exciting noise that had ever assailed the ears of British and European teenagers in 1966. In recent times Rick Randall has mused that perhaps Don Pierson had been right after all and that more polish, control and saving of expenses would have been achieved had Swinging Radio England been an automated station.

[edit] Footnotes

  • Ron O'Quinnwas the Program Director of SRE and he borrowed its style of presentation from several radio stations that he was familiar with. The term "boss jock" which O'Quinn substituted for disc jockey had begun with radio station KHJ in Los Angeles. By 1965, Richard Hope-Weston who was born in Oxford, England in 1940, had arrived at KHJ in Los Angeles from KOL in Seattle where he had been broadcasting under the name of Rick West. A condition of his new employment at KHJ was that he changed his name to Tommy Vance, since the station had a jingle already cut for that name. Tommy Vance arrived at the height of the British Invasion of the US music charts by British pop groups and his very pronounced British accent told listeners that KHJ had both the music and the authentic accent to go with it. By November of 1965 Tommy Vance was identifying KHJ as being in "Boss Angeles" on "boss radio" with "much more music", the last two expressions being used repeatedly by SRE the following year. When Vance received notice that he was likely to be drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces he returned to the U.K. and by January 1966 he was broadcasting on Radio Caroline South with a very pronounced "transatlantic accent" in order to demonstrate to British listeners his American roots in radio. At that time SRE was still months away from coming on the air. (See External Links below for examples of Tommy Vance on KHJ as a British boss jock, and on Radio Caroline South as a transatlantic disc jockey.)

During the short time that Swinging Radio England was on the air it launched the British radio broadcasting careers of Roger Day and Johnnie Walker, both of whom also adopted a transatlantic accent on SRE in order to mask their British roots. After SRE both men resumed to speaking in a more natural tone of English accent.

When SRE left the airwaves it was followed by a series of three Dutch language stations occupying the same wavelength during the short time that the transmitters remained on the air between 1966 and July 1967.

An example of a functioning automated top 40 station using the same PAMS jingles series 27 as SRE, but minus the "boss jocks" and shock news delivery, was WGNE-AM and in 1971 it was still using this format from its location at the Signal Hill Country Club in the city of Panama City Beach, Florida. WGNE-AM was primarily run by three adults and a teenager, with one adult managing the station and two adults recording programs and selling commercials. The automation was similar to that used aboard the Olga Patricia for Britain Radio.

Swinging Radio England was billed on its letterhead as "Worlds Most Powerful", a slogan used extensively by LTV-Continental Electronics in its brochures to describe many of its high-power company transmission applications for the Voice of America and U.S. Navy. Continental Electronics intended to provide Don Pierson with two functioning 50,000 watt transmitters using a common mast to support two antennas and a combining system that could potentially create one offshore station with 100,000 watts of transmission capability. Although the offshore station Radio Caroline (which returned to the airwaves under new management following the demise of the original Caroline Network company of the 1960s), offered two AM stations and one shortwave station in the 1980s from one ship, the power of these stations did not match the power potential of the stations aboard the Olga Patricia of 1966.

[edit] References

  • Mass Media Moments in the United Kingdom, the USSR and the USA, by Gilder, Eric. - "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu Press, Romania. 2003 ISBN 973-651-596-6 Contains exclusive interview with Don Pierson about his offshore radio stations.
  • Beating the Odds. The Untold Story behind the rise of ABC: the stars, struggles and egos that transformed network television. By the man who made it happen. By Goldstein, Leonard H. with Wolf, Marvin J. - Charles Scribner's Sons, New York; Collier Marcmillan Canada; Maxwell Macmillan International. 1991 ISBN 0-684-19055-9 (With reference to the early relationship between Rupert Murdoch and how and why ABC began international expansion.)

[edit] See also

  • Wonderful Radio London - Don Pierson's first offshore radio station.
  • Freeport Tortuga - Don Pierson's first attempt to create a freeport.
  • Boss Radio - In depth article about how the term came into use at KHJ in Los Angeles.
  • Radio transmitter - Information about the relationship between transmitters and antennas.
  • Voice of America - Scan down page to History section for information about the VOA radio ship Courier.
  • VLF - Scan down page to entry for Cutler, Maine. This was a CEMCO construction project of the world's most powerful transmitter (currently listed as 2 megawatts) used for submarine communication.

[edit] External links

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