The Yorkshire Radio Network

I've made several posts about the individual stations around the Yorkshire area, so I thought it would be good to post a selection of those done for YRN overall and the various jingle packages done for the AM stations.

The Yorkshire Radio Network began in 1987 when after a brief dalliance between Pennine Radio in Bradford, and Viking Radio in Hull, both stations and Radio Hallam began broadcasting overnight and introduced a syndicated jingle package across all three stations.

The melody logo for the network blended in those from Pennine Radio and Radio Hallam, with Viking Radio adapting their's to fit in with Pennine's as an individual station.

The first jingle package was rather brief but featured the stunning vocals of Jimmy Helmes who had previously sung on an earlier Radio Hallam package and would find later success as part of Londonbeat shortly after.

1987 Jingles - Alfasound

A few examples of how the jingles were adapted individually can be heard here, with a few individual jock IDs for Pennine, as well as their earlier traffic intro leading into the YRN bed to ease the changes.

There was confusion however as to whether the stations would be referred to as Viking, Hallam and Pennine, Pennine, Hallam and Viking, etc so Alfasound produced a few examples as heard here.

It's worth posting a selection of jingles proposed for the network by Manchester company LBS who had previously done a package for Viking Radio.

Personally I think they sound more contemporary with the music that was in the charts that the time compared to the Alfasound jingles and sound rather good.

YRN - LBS Jingles (Unused)

Although with the Alfasound packages, a more coherent and concise melody logo had been established and it managed to work across the network.

In 1988 a second package arrived with new news and traffic beds and a bigger selection of cuts with the majority of them being based around the name "Viking, Pennine and Hallam" which worked out well as the last notes ended on the Radio Hallam melody logo.

1988 Jingles - Alfasound

Viking was the first station to split it's frequencies with the new Viking FM buying a further set of jingles with new custom cuts.

They were later adapted for the network in 1989 when Pennine and Hallam began broadcasting on FM only as well as the stations first set of JAM jingles with UK vocals.

1989 Jingles - Alfasound

A promo marking the launch of the Classic Gold service and Hallam FM can be heard here.

On AM, all three stations re-branded to "Classic Gold" with Alfasound providing some rather impressive news, sport and travel IDs based around a few familiar sounding tunes.

Classic Gold 1989 Alfasound Jingles

The rest of the jingles followed along the lines of Viking Gold in 1988, by making use of classic PAMS jingles that can be heard below.

Classic Gold 1989 PAMS Jingles

In 1991 the station was brought by the Metro Radio group and the jingles on AM were changed to a resing of a package originally produced by Alfasound for Great North Radio in the North East.

Classic Gold 1991 Jingles - Alfasound

Although it was a resing of what I'd consider to be one of Alfasound's best packages, the staff at the station decided to produce a rather witty piss-take although rather than witty, it's more a case of being crude for the sake of it.

(Ignore the Bastard Brothers tag on the file itself, I wasn't sure about who produced at first)

Classic Gold Pisstake 1991

In 1992, following in the footsteps of Great North Radio, the AM stations changed their name to "Great Yorkshire Radio" with a rather nice set of JAM jingles from packages such as "Do It Again", "Digital Mix" and "Continuous Coast".

Great Yorkshire Radio 1992 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions

A few liners voiced for the station by Doc Morgan can be heard here.

Shortly after they changed their name to Great Yorkshire Gold and the 1994 demo from the Alfasound tapes can be heard below.

Great Yorkshire Gold 1994 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions

There were also a few additional cuts for presenters, including a superb version of one of the jingles from "The Beat 92" with a 7 voice group. That manages to wipe the floor with my version.

In 1996 the station brought a selection of JAM jingles as used on Radio 1 and adapted the melody logo as their own. They even brought the classic travel jingle.

Great Yorkshire Gold 1996 Jingles - JAM Creative Productions

Quite a lot of jingle collectors reckon that these were better than they were on Radio 1 although I personally think the ones with sonovox sounded better on Radio 1.

The station also made use of some of the original jingles used by Radio 1 that didn't mention the station name such as "Britain's Number 1" and "Be A Safe Driver".

In 1998 the AM stations rebranded to Magic, joining Leeds who had used the name since 1990 as by this time the station's had been taken over by EMAP.

They ended up selling the Pulse but had acquired Aire FM but despite the large amounts of networking over the years, they have managed to retain their individual names.

Thanks to Simon Hirst, Ian Arnold, Dave Nightingale, Mark Hodgkinson, David Barras, Aston McNeil, Christian Spooner and Rob Thornton.