Talk:Swinging Radio England

POV stuff removed from article - some of which looks like it belonged on a discussion page anyway. Lee M 01:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Swinging Radio England brought to Britain the US sound of American Radio, tight, bright and it flowed! Stations like Radio London and Caroline, not only "borrowed" the jingles but also tried to copy the sound (echo etc) But the combination of a London accent and trying to sound like they came from the Bronx, sounded false!....same happened in Britain in the 1980's following Laser's success...and in the 1990's with Atlantic 252 from Ireland....


 * In fact Boss Radio had been and gone in the States, when SRE came on air in 1966, the stations started playing a different kind of music, less Top 40 more album tracks, and music stations started broadcasting on FM.


 * Although SRE certainly was a leader as far as broadcasting was concerned, with many of the ideas still in use across the world...


 * SRE played the US hits first, and introduced the sound of Motown etc, long before the other pirates and the BBC to Britain!


 * After all before SRE, many of the offshore stations were populated by ex BBC announcers or people on their first radio gig trying to sound hip..how funny that must have sounded!


 * SRE had people who certainly from the US had 8 or 9 years solid broadcasting experience behind them!


 * Radio has moved in since the 1980's, but give a listen to many of the commercial stations broadcasting today in Britain..and they still have yet to match the energy and polish of those pioneering stations!


 * Of course many of the offshore stations of the 60's/70's and 80's broadcast American religious programming, it accounted for a large amount of their income....


 * Incidentally Laser 558 could hardly be described as laid back, with people like Jessie Brandon, Charlie Wolf, and Liz West telling Britain and Europe that "You are never more than a minute away from music"


 * Certainly in London and the South East of England, everyone was listening!


 * Interesting that the success of Laser etc was also matched in Ireland by stations like Nova, Sunshine, Coast 103,South Coast Radio and ERI


 * Who quickly realised that the public wanted less Discjockey and more music.....


 * Whilst in Britain it was (and still is the case) of more discjockey less music!

POV Cleanup
The article originally contained only factual material citing sources including Eric Gilder and Svenn Martinsen, but it seems to have degenerated into comments by people who had no knowledge of the station or the times during which it operated. I agree with Lee M's removal of nonsense comments, but the addition of comments about Radio Caroline is not relevant due to the fact that during the 1960s Radio Caroline was a professional commercial radio station operated by members of the British Establishment, and later it came to be a free for all operation run on a shoe string by amateurs. (Contrary to popular opinion, Ronan O'Rahilly was not the driving force behind the original Radio Caroline, he was a mere figurehead. The station was financed in 1963 by bankers, a magazine publisher and other members who would be considered to be a part of the British Establishment of the early 1960s. This included the people behind Radio Atlanta which merged with the Radio Caroline organization in 1964.)

With regards to the twin station concept, it is not technically possible to compare what Caroline was able to do in the later 1970s and early 1980s with what SRE/BR accomplished during the 1960s, due to the fact that like everything else, things were a lot more primitive back then. This article should be based more on the continuing web site work of Svenn Martinsen of Norway who has been able to compile authentic, documented source material from various contributors involved with the stations. The Martinsen site has become the gold standard by which to judge all current articles about this subject, and unlike this article, the Martinsen article has a long list of citations and documented footnotes supporting it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.128.82.238 (talk) 03:01, 23 December 2006 (UTC).

In line with my comments above I have now added contributions to the article itself and I intend to add references to support the citations.Fragilethreads