Radio Trent/Leicester Sound/Trent FM

As I've spent the last weekend in Nottingham I thought it would be more than appropriate to post a look back over the many jingle packages (and superb ones at that) used by Radio Trent and Trent FM over their first 20 years on air.

I've been a bit weary about posting this as the man behind many of the packages Len Groat is a regular poster on Jinglemad with tons of stories about the station and it's jingles so if you're reading this, you're more than welcome to make any corrections and extra info.

Here goes.

Radio Trent began broadcasting in the Nottingham area in July 1975 where the first presenter on air was John Peters.

The jingles were produced by Johnny Arthey with the tagline
"Sounds Like You Want To Hear".

1975 Jingles - Johnny Arthey

The jingles and a few additional packages continued throughout the remainder of the decade and presenters included Kenny Hague, Dale Winton, David 'Kid' Jensen and a certain Len Groat who would go on to make the overall sound of the station one of it's main priorities.

An early example included these special cuts by JAM for various presenters from packages such as "Best Country", and "Logoset".

1978 JAM Presenter Jingles

The early 80s saw the arrival of what was to become the UK's most established radio jingle producers Alfasound Tapetrix, and Len having known Steve England for a long time went to the company and ended up becoming essentially their number 1 client.

1980 Jingles - Alfasound Tapetrix

The first of these packages in 1980 took influence from the Pepper Tanner "Simple And Free" package which many believe lead to the WNIC JAM packages in the late 90s. Here are a few examples with the Trent jingles preceeding the originals.

It also established the tagline "Your 24 Hour Friend"
which would be used throughout the decade.

1981 saw a package containing more of the same with a rather superb station song at made specially for "The Summer of 81".

1981 Jingles - Alfasound Tapetrix

Two packages came in 1982 again along the same sort of lines and continuing to use Alfasound's vocal and musician talents to their highest.

1982 Jingles Part 1 - Alfasound

1982 Jingles Part 2 - Alfasound

Another package came in 1983 with a rather good set of presenter IDs.
The melody logo used before the presenters name was also used in the news intro which can be heard in this aircheck with Danny Cox,
although it just misses out the end.

1983 Jingles - Alfasound

Due to the Musician's Union ban on overseas jingles on commercial radio, it was the British companies who had to up their game and during the 80s they were on top form.

It was evident that Len, and Alfasound were trying as much as they could to replicate the Dallas sound in their jingles even to the point of ones that sounded almost very similar to the real thing in the case of this selection of cuts from those above that were very similar to JAM jingles.

Especially as some of them had been used on both Radio 1 and Radio 2.

Jon Wolfert at JAM wasn't impressed, and understandably so as Steve actually brought a resing of the first cut when he was at Picadilly Radio.
However around a decade later, some of the Alfasound cuts would end up on GEM AM with Dallas vocals in a bizarre twist of fate.

However as if that wasn't bad enough two Chiltern presenters AKA "The Bastard Brothers" decided to send up the company with several spoof Trent jingles, although personally I find the above example hilarious.

In 1984 following the bankruptcy and closure of Leicestershire's Centre Radio lead to the eventual purchase of the license for the area resulting in Leicester Sound which began broadcasting in September of that year.

1984 Jingles - Alfasound

The station would share evening and overnight output from Radio Trent, and brought several cuts from the previous pacakges as well as new custom cuts for both stations.
I like the contemporary "younger" sounding cuts from 2.36 onwards and the cracking travel bed based around the theme to "Cagney and Lacey" at 5.11.

And not forgetting that superb jingle sung by Clifford T. Ward near the end.

Oh, and there's also another rather impressive theme song as well.

What you could call passionate presentation.

Synthesizers and electronic effects seemed to have made an effect by the mid 80s and Trent's next package helped to prove this but keeping the real instruments in as well in places.
There's a rather good one at 2.07 which sounds as if it was influenced from the great song by Debarge "The Rhythm Of The Night".

And of course there's what has to be possibly my favourite news intro used by Radio Trent which lasted up to the end of the 80s at 3.32.

1986 Jingles - Alfasound

The following year saw possibly the strongest most energetic package custom produced for Trent and Leicester Sound to coincide with the launch of Radio Trent in Derbyshire on 102.8 FM and 945 AM, which even Len Groat himself has said was his favourite jingle package out of the lot that were done.

1987 Jingles - Alfasound

The stand out cuts include the jingles for different dayparts, and yet another energetic traffic jingle at 3.02.

In October 1988 Trent followed in the footsteps of many commercial stations by splitting their frequencies on AM and FM. Trent and Leicester Sound continued as usual on FM whilst AM saw the launch of what many will consider to be one of the UK's best oldies stations GEM-AM, GEM standing for Great East Midlands.

The jingles from the station can be found on the post below.

On the 1st of January 1989 a brand new jingle package was introduced on FM and the first fully fledged jingle package to include cuts recorded in Dallas.
This was a mixture of custom Alfasound tracks with US vocals and resings of two top Century 21 packages that brought an even more energetic and lively sound to what became permanatley known as Trent FM.

1989 Jingles Alfasound/Century 21

On purchasing a new jingle package, the station would normally produce an In-House demo explaining how they would be used with the 1989 package being no exception, introduced as always by presenter and production enthusiast Danny Cox introducing the package for Trent FM and the questionably named "Sound FM" for Leicester.

1989 In House Demo

The Century 21 jingles, especially those from the Proton package didn't really have enough room for lyrics and were very fast but midway through 1989 Alfasound brought the rights to selling JAM jingles in the UK and Steve had reconciled the earlier problems with Jon evident on the earlier Trent packages.

Len was quick to act and brought a brand new package of JAM jingles mainly consisting of cuts from "The Best Show 2" amongst other cuts from various JAM packages and more custom cuts from Alfasound including a new news intro.

1990 Jingles - Alfasound/JAM Creative Productions

Personally I thought this package was a bit of a comedown from the previous package in terms of moving forward into the 90s, but I like some of the shorter shotgun cuts from "The Best Show 2" at 1.14.

The following year saw a return to form with quite possibly the best JAM package made up of a wide range of JAM packages such as "Breakthrough", "Q-Cuts", "Power Station", and "Omni-Trax".

1991 Jingles - Alfasound/JAM Creative Productions

Not forgetting the superb station songs as produced by Alfasound with some stunning vocal solos that for me anyway, have managed to tug at the heart.
I love how the last cut changes tempo and key at 5.20.

The demo for presenters below includes extra cuts from the "Sunset Blvd" package designed for shared programming overnight with GEM-AM.

1991 In House Demo

In 1992 Trent and Leicester Sound were acquired by Midlands Radio who owned BRMB in Birmingham and Mercia FM.

Leicester Sound's jingles were now made by Muff Murfin done in the same style as Mercia's, whilst Trent continued into 1992 with another package where the stand out cuts were the ones from "CoolJam" including the rather impressive "Catwalk" cut near the end.

1992 In House Demo

1993 saw another JAM package but the demo for presenters this time round featured the voice of John Wells adding extra impact accompanying a stunning package including cuts from "Hyperlink", "Turbo Z", and "KIIS 90".

The KIIS 90 jingles are particualrly effective, especially the new news intro based around cut 18 from the original package.

1993 In House Demo

Ironically, the demo pays attention to the addition of a cut for
"The Summer Of 94" which in the end was never used at all.

By the end of 1993 the Midlands Radio group had been brought by GWR who held meetings "to decide what people wanted from their stations".

In March 1994 Trent FM relaunched as "The New 96 Trent FM" whilst 102.8 changed it's name to "Ram FM" designed specially for Derbyshire.

Len Groat had departed from the station around this time and a great history of radio jingles had more or less been tarnished by the heavilly formatted and uninspring regime of GWR who induced their "Better Music Mix" policy over the East Midlands.

The one thing GWR and Global to this day will never be able to do is to remove the memories of the jingles from listeners past and present, and many jingle fans around the world.

Thanks to Dave Nightingale, David Barras, Aston McNeil, Rob Thornton,
Mark Hodgkinson and of course Len Groat for various audio and information.