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Thameside Radio 90.2 |
The Thameside Radio 90.2 Story
Years of success
The station's personality grew and matured. The Birdman's jingles added a sense of humour. Listeners could buy Thameside branded t-shirts (costing £3.30) and sweatshirts as well as car stickers, pens and badges. The music policy became more up to date. Slowly there were fewer Beatles tracks and more by bands in the new wave movement like Squeeze and Ultravox. Again in contrast to the other stations now filling the weekend airwaves Thameside was unashamedly populist. Most London pirates had an agenda to promote a particular type of music, usually soul, Thameside simply aimed to give its listeners a good time by going out to actuall meet them and giving us a voice on the station. Alongside the improved content came an increase in transmission power. Thameside now reached most of London and many areas to the south and west.
After four years as Thameside Radio became a more accepted part of the FM band they started to receive more attention from the DTI who were responsible for patrolling the airwaves. Every so often broadcasts would finish early because a transmitter had been "raided". Because the station used radio links to connect the studio to the transmitters, and could even change transmitters mid way through the broadcast they generally managed to avoid personal attention but simply lost equipment. However transmitters aren't cheap or quick to build - this was beginning to have an effect on the economics of the station. There were a number of new people such as Piers and Ian the engineer who were becoming involved in the technical side of the station. A high point was the fourth birthday party. Pervious parties had been broadcast live from the open air or from halls. This one was held on a boat cruising up and down the Thames. Not only was the atmosphere wonderful but the sheer technical achievement of linking from a moving boat to a fixed site was incredible. Even the BBC had problems broadcasting the Boat Race live on the Thames, but Thameside managed to pull it off. After
the birthday the shows became longer.
Next: Thameside Radio - The end, perhaps> |
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Special thanks for mp3s, writing in or sending pictures to (amongst others) , Carol H, Olaf Star, Jessica D, Pyers E, Warren S, Stephen Sykes, John G, Mike E, itrilby for Radio Eric, Alex Wright, Aidan S, Dave "The Birdman", Alan Dolby, Rachel McIntyre (for Terry Anderson), Al at fmthen.com for the Thameside Radio Revisited podcasts, Terry/Decibel90 and Steve Scribbler. I know that a lot of Thameside listeners and friends would like to get in touch with each other again. If you are happy to have e-mail forwarded do write in. Even if you don't have any new information it would be great to hear from you.
Martin Wood |