Anorak Nation: Discussion: Re: Radio Caroline North

No, Chris, the reason was much simpler. I never really understood until much later that the July 2nd 1964 "merger" of Caroline and Atlanta was one for marketing reasons only - so rather than competing against each other, they had their own geographical patch but could promote the stations using one "call sign". The ownership remained as before. Ronan's people ran their ship, Allan Crawford's theirs.

Allan, if you recall, had his publishing company and saw Atlanta as a vehicle for promoting his interests (ironically in much the same way as Philip Birch had Pall Mall Music, except BigL were far smarter about the way they marketed their product). Allan really misread what the public wanted bigtime. After all, we'd had a bellyful of the BBC Light Programme covering the hits of the days, the Ross McManuses and Danny Streets and the like and yet Atlanta and then Caroline South were churning out similar pap at the time. Whereas, the people that ran the North ship didn't have the agenda of a publishing company's products to promote. Don't forget that Programme Director Christopher Moore was American and Head DJ Tom Lodge altough British by birth, had spent time in Canada so their perspective was a different one. Tom did a superb job getting a really good sound coming from the North ship - in my book he is one of the unsung heroes. Unfortunately, in this "London/Home-Counties-centric" world, not only is the North ship's part largely dismissed but so is Tom's role.

In late 65 the South ship went bust (as BigL got the audiences and hence the advertising)), whereupon Ronan bought out Crawford's interests and put in Tom to oversee the changeover. Tom took Mike Ahern with him, pitting Mike alongside BigL's Tony Windsor for the lucrative 9-12 housewife slot. Tom was responsible for recruiting people like DLT and Rosko and turned around the fortunes of the South ship. Meanwhile, oops north we lost out. No two ways about it, 64-65 were the days of the North ship, 66-67 it was the South ship that kicked ass. The recruitment of JW in late 66 set the seal and the South ship had a very strong crew whereas, to be honest, the North shop lost a lot of its sparkle then, certainly as far as I was concerned.

Before Crawford got ousted, I would listen to the South ship occasionally as our mains radio was quite sensitive and could pick up the signal, but the South ship was really very dull, I'm sorry to say. The exceptions were the real personalities such as Tony Blackburn who did a cracking breakfast show. Keith Skues also stood out as very different in some ways with his various catchphrases but even he sounded very old school and establishment and dare I say it, very BBC. Whereas on the North ship we have Tom, Mike Ahern, Bob Stewart, Jerry Leighton, all of whom had personality and their own individual styles. But the music, Chris, oh, it was just superb. As I've said my knowledge of American Pop music from that era is superb, because of the heavy playing of tracks from the Billboard Hot 100. That too, crossfed the music played in the local clubs such as the Twisted Wheel, later to become tagged as the Birthplace of Northern Soul.

I wonder whether Ronan and his people played a canny game in the merger, knowing that Crawford's music policy was doomed to failure and that it was a matter of sitting it out until the inevitable happened. I guess we will never know.

Alan

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Alan Milewczyk aka The Pole with Soul
Soul pix on the net at www.soulman1949.com