Pennine Radio/The Pulse

My Dad's hometown calls on our next visit with a look back at the jingles from Pennine Radio and The Pulse Of West Yorkshire, broadcasting to the Bradford area.

It all began in 1975 when Pennine Radio launched with a presenter line up including Steve Merike, Peter Levy, and the late Roger Kirk.

The jingles were by EMIson who around the time were the closest thing the UK had to a jingle company.

1975 Jingles - EMIson

Just before launching Jon Wolfert at JAM had sent over a tape containing ideas for a potential jingle package from Dallas with various melody logos including one based around the "95-PEN" logo from the recently produced "Backseat Music" package.

The concept didn't make it to air and around a year later, a few of the WPEN jingles were airing on Radio 1.

In 1979 the station became one of the first clients outside of Manchester for Alfasound Tapetrix resulting in this package giving an indication of what was to come from the UK's top jingle company throughout the 80s and 90s.

1979 Jingles - Alfasound Tapetrix

Five years later in 1984 the station returned for another package expanding on the earlier Alfasound package with cuts based around different musical decades as well as some rather bizarre instrumental cuts for the specialist shows such as the classical one, the folk one, and the Asian one.

1984 Jingles - Alfasound

Towards the end there's a slower version of the station's signature tune from the 1979 package which I presume was played in the darker hours of the day.

Around 1986 Pennine began sharing it's nighttime programmes with the newly established Viking Radio in Hull and shortly after they acquired Radio Hallam to form the Yorkshire Radio Network.

They initially launched with a generic package featuring the vocals of Jimmy Helmes that can be found in the YRN post above and in 1988 they brought another custom package with a bigger selection of cuts.

1988 Jingles - Alfasound

An aircheck of a station promo and an intro to the news magazine from this era can be heard here.

In 1989 the station split their frequencies and became Pennine FM with the AM frequencies becoming Classic Gold.
The jingles on FM were resings of JAM's "Nonstop Power" and "Laser Image" packages with Alfasound vocals as well as new custom Alfasound tracks.

1989 Jingles - Alfasound/JAM Creative Productions

In August 1991 with ratings on the slide, a relaunch was due and so the station transformed itself into "The Pulse" or Pulse FM to give it it's on air name at the time.

This saw the station's first fully fledged JAM package with JAM vocals and I like how they use the seven voice group on jingles originally done with 5 voices for the American stations.

The Pulse 1991 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions

The bods inside the station also produced a demo for the presenters explaining the jingles and I like how they give certain cuts specific names such as the "Melons" one at 3.30 and if you don't get the gag, then I'm not going to tell you.

1991 In-House Demo

There's also the "Cleo" one at 1.14 so called because the sax riff apparently sounds like something Johnny Dankworth would have done.

Hallam FM also used the same cut but had the sax riff removed, possibly because the melody sounded exactly the same as the one used by Radio 1 at the time, which was a sensible idea.

In 1994 a custom package was made for the station by JAM with a lot of the cuts based on a synthesized pulse.

1994 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions

There was also another in-house demo produced featuring the voice of John Wells and showing a really good perspective of how the jingles were used.

1994 In-House Demo

More jingles followed in 1995 to complement the exisiting package with cuts taken from JAM's "Energy" package originally done for NRJ in France, and also from ALFA's custom package for Galaxy 101 in Bristol.

1995 Jingles - ALFA/JAM Creative Productions

There's also a rather superb custom news intro near the end although the version that didn't make it to air was even better.

It can be heard here with the traffic jingle.

In 1998 and into 2000 the station started using jingles or should that be
"music imaging" by the newly set up Vibe Music And Audio Imaging ran by fomer YRN presenter Sandy Beech.

The jingles themselves can be heard here via the Music 4 website.

We'll end our journey here although in 2008 the Pennine FM name returned to the area on the station formerly known as "Home FM" for the Huddersfield area.
Sadly it wasn't to last as the station shut down in April this year when a buyer for the station could not be found.

And that's more or less a colourful insight into the on air sound of independent radio in West Yorkshire.

Thanks to David Barras, Simon Hirst, Dave Nightingale, Mark Hodgkinson,
David Hemsley, Dan James, Aston McNeil, Christian Spooner, and Rob Thornton.