Quoting a previous Alan Milewczyk contribution:-

On the other hand the
North ship played a very eclectic mix of music, but based around the UK
charts and the American Hot 100. Through Caroline North I have a very
good knowledge of the American charts of that era as the records were
regularly played that were US hits, that never charted over here but
nevertheless were worthy of exposure and airplay.

I've never really understood why the two stations were so radically different. You certainly seem to have had the better bargain 'oop North' whilst those of us that were 'Sarf' seem to have been left with all that was embarrassing, non-creative and BBC-like.

Why was there such a difference? Was it each station was pandering to a different set of needs (after all, all main popular music was coming out of Merseyside [should that be Merseyland?] at the time)? Or was it that the North ship just got lucky with personnel?

I think that with all histories being London and the South-East centric, the North ship also loses out on being talked about a lot by the media when they do a 'catch-up', yet is seems it was the more innovative and creative.
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* Christopher England just said that *