The birth and near death of licensed black music radio in London : 2010 : Choice FM, London

 31 March 1990 was the memorable day when London‘s first licensed [South London community of interest] black music station, ‘Choice 96.9 FM’, arrived on-air. Until then, the availability of black music on legal radio had been limited to a handful of specialist music shows, even though about half of the singles sales chart was filled with black music. The decision by then regulator the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA] to license a London black music station was part of a huge government ‘carrot and stick’ campaign to rid the country of pirate radio. On the one hand, new draconian laws had been introduced that made it a criminal offence even to wear a pirate radio tee-shirt or display a pirate radio car sticker. On the other hand, the establishment knew that some kind of olive branch had to be offered to the pirate stations and their large, loyal listenership.

Many pirate stations, having voluntarily closed down in the hope of becoming legitimate, were incensed when the IBA instead selected Choice FM for the new South London FM license. Its backers had no previous experience in the London pirate radio business, but had previously published ‘Root’ magazine for the black community in the 1970’s. Although it was impossible for one station to fill the gap left by the many pirates, Choice FM tried very hard to create a format that combined soul and reggae music with news for South London’s black community, which was precisely what its licence required. The station attracted a growing listenership and it brought a significant new audience to commercial radio that had hitherto been ignored by established stations. With Choice FM, the regulator succeeded in fulfilling two aspects of public broadcasting policy: widening the choice of stations available to the public; and filling gaps in the market for content that only pirate radio had supplied until then.

In 2000, Choice FM won a further licence to cover North London with an additional transmitter. For the first time, the station was now properly audible across the whole capital and had access to more listeners and more potential advertising revenues. Its listening doubled and, at its peak in 2006, Choice FM achieved a 2.8% share, placing it ahead of ‘TalkSport’ and ‘BBC London’ in the capital. Choice FM had no direct competitor in London, although indirectly some of its music had always overlapped ‘KISS FM’ [see blog]. The station’s future looked rosy.

However, the Choice FM shareholders must have realised just how much their little South London station was worth, at a time when commercial radio licences were being acquired at inflated prices. Already, in 1995, Choice FM shareholders had won a second licence in Birmingham, but had then sold the station in 1998 for £6m to the Chrysalis plc group, who turned it into another local outlet for its network dance music station ‘Galaxy FM’. At a stroke, the black community in Birmingham had lost a station that the regulator had awarded to serve them. Black radio in Birmingham was dead. The die was cast.

The then regulator, the Radio Authority, had rubber-stamped this acquisition, stating that it would not operate against the public interest. The Authority requested some token assurances: at least one Afro-Caribbean member on the station’s board; an academy for training young people, especially from the black community, in radio skills; and market research about the impact of the format change on the black community. None of these made any difference to what came out the loudspeaker. Birmingham’s black community was sold down the river.

Changes in UK media ownership rules were on the horizon that would soon allow commercial radio groups to own many more stations within a local market. As a result, in 2001, the UK’s then largest radio group, Capital Radio plc, acquired 19% of Choice FM’s London station for £3.3m with an option to acquire the rest. In 2003, it bought the remaining 81% for £11.7m in shares, valuing the London station at £14.4m. The Choice FM shareholders had cashed in their chips over a five-year period and had generated £21m from three radio licences. What would happen to Choice FM London now?

Graham Bryce, managing director of Capital Radio’s London rock station ‘Xfm’ (which Capital had acquired in 1998 for £12.6m), said then:

"Our vision is to build Choice into London's leading urban music station, becoming the number one choice for young urban Londoners. Longer term, we intend to fully exploit the use of digital technology to build Choice nationally into the UK's leading urban music station and the number one urban music brand."

Capital Radio and subsequent owners seemed to want to turn Choice FM into a station that competed directly with KISS FM (owned by rival EMAP plc). But they never seemed to understand that KISS FM was now a ‘dance/pop’ station, whereas Choice FM had always been firmly rooted in the black music tradition of soul, reggae and R&B. Such semantics seemed to be lost on Choice FM's new owners and on the regulator, but certainly not on Choice FM’s listeners, who had no interest in Kylie Minogue songs.

In 2004, Capital Radio moved Choice FM out of its South London base and into its London headquarters in Leicester Square. The station’s final link with the black community of South London it had been licensed to serve was discarded. In 2005, Capital Radio merged with another radio group, GWR plc, to form GCap Media plc. In March 2008, [offshore] Global Radio Ltd bought GCap Media for £375m [see blog]. In July 2008, Choice FM managing director Ivor Etienne was suddenly made redundant. One of the station’s former founder shareholders commented:

“I’m disappointed that the new management decided to relieve Ivor Etienne so quickly. My concern is that I hope they will be able to keep the station to serve the community that it was originally licensed for.”

However, from this point forwards, it was obvious that new owner Global Radio had no interest in developing Choice FM as one of its key radio brands. In the most recent quarter, the station’s share of listening fell to an all-time low of 1.1% (since its audience has been measured Londonwide). Sadly, the station is now a shadow of its former self, even though it holds the only black music commercial radio licence in London (BBC digital black music station ‘1Xtra’ has failed to dent the London market, with only a 0.3% share).

This week, news emerged from Choice FM that its reggae programmes, which have been broadcast during weekday evenings since the station opened, will be rescheduled to the middle of the night (literally). One of the UK’s foremost reggae DJ's, Daddy Ernie, who has presented on Choice FM since its first day, will be relegated to the graveyard hours when nobody is listening. From 2003, after the Capital Radio takeover, reggae songs have been banished from the 0700 to 1900 daytime shows on Choice FM. Now the specialist shows will be removed from evenings, despite London being a world centre for reggae and having more reggae music shops than Jamaica.

Station owner Global Radio responded to criticism of these changes in ‘The Voice’ newspaper: “Choice [FM] has introduced a summer schedule which sees various changes to the station including the movement of some of our specialist shows.”

Once again, the regulator will roll over obligingly and rubber-stamp these changes. For Global Radio, the endgame must be to transform the standalone Choice FM station into a London outlet for its Galaxy FM network. At present, London-based advertisers and agencies can only listen to Galaxy on DAB or via the internet. A London Galaxy station on FM would bring in more revenue for the brand as a result of more listening hours and its higher profile in the advertising community. It would also provide a direct competitor to KISS FM London (ironic, because Galaxy FM had been launched in 1990 by an established commercial radio group as an out-of-London imitation of successful, London-only KISS FM). Global Radio’s argument to persuade the regulator will probably be that Choice FM’s audience has fallen to uneconomic levels. And whose fault was that?

Already, Global Radio’s website tells us that “Choice FM is also included as part of the Galaxy network” which “consists of evolving mainstream music supported by entertaining and relatable presenters.” And yet, according to Ofcom, Choice FM’s licence is still for “a targeted music, news and information service primarily for listeners of African and Afro-Caribbean origin in the Brixton area but with cross-over appeal to other listeners who appreciate urban contemporary black music.” How can both these assertions be true of a single station?

For the black community in London, and for fans of black music, this will be the final straw. Just as happened in Birmingham, the new owner and the regulator will have collectively sold Choice FM’s listeners down the river. Another station that used to broadcast unique content for a unique audience will have been wilfully destroyed in order to make it almost the same as an existing station, playing almost the same content. We have many commercial radio stations, but less and less diversity in the music they play. Radio regulation has failed us.

For Choice FM, the writing was on the wall in 2003 when Capital Radio bought the station and one (unidentified) former DJ commented:

“Choice [FM] was there for a reason [to be a black music station for black people], but that reason changed [since] 13 years ago. That’s why you’ve got over 30 pirate stations in London. If Choice FM kept to the reason why they started, you wouldn’t need all them stations. But Choice has become a commercial marketplace. They’ve sold the station out and they should just say they’ve sold the station out. What’s wrong with that? They have sold the station that was set up for the black community and they know they’ve done the black community wrong. But they’ve made some money and they’ve sold it. Why not let your listeners know?”

For me personally, as a black music fan and having listened to Daddy Ernie for twenty years, I am much saddened. In the 1970’s and 80’s, I had found little on the radio that interested me musically, so I listened to pirate stations and my own records. During those two decades, I actively campaigned for a wider range of radio stations to be licensed in the UK and, by the 1990’s, I had played a direct role in making that expansion of new radio services happen successfully. Where did it get us? Now, years later, I have gone back to listening mostly to pirate radio and my own records (and internet radio). I am sure I am not the only one.

The radio industry and the regulator seem not to understand one important reason why radio listening and revenues have been declining for most of the last decade. They need to examine how, through their decisions, they have consistently sold down the river their station audiences and the very citizens whom their radio licenses were specifically meant to serve. Listeners vote with their ‘off’ buttons when station owners renege on their licence promises and the regulator lets them. Choice FM is sadly just one example.

In 2006, a lone enlightened Ofcom officer, Robert Thelen-Bartholomew, had asked at a radio conference:

“Is there room to bring the content of illegal stations into the fold? One way or another, whether we like it or not, we have a large population out there listening to illegal radio. Why do they listen? We are trying to find out. But, if you listen to the stations, they are producing slightly different content and output [from licensed stations]. Some of it is very high quality. Some of it is very interesting. So, what options are there for bringing some of that content into mainstream radio?”

Seemingly, none. The last FM commercial radio licence the regulator offered in London was more than a decade ago. Last year, when two small South London FM stations (one licensed for a black music format) were closed by their owner, the regulator unilaterally decided not to re-advertise their commercial radio licences (see my story here). A pirate radio station has not been awarded a commercial radio licence by the regulator for two decades.

Why do pirate radio stations still exist? Because, just as in the 1970’s and 1980’s [see blog], there are huge gaps in the market for radio content that – in spite of BBC radio, commercial radio and their regulators – remain unfilled. It is no coincidence that the share of listening to ‘other’ radio stations (i.e. not BBC radio and not commercial radio) in London is near its all-time high at 3.1%.

Farewell, Choice FM. I knew you well for twenty years.

And, irony of ironies, we are in Black Music Month.

[thanks to Sharleen Anderson]

[Originally published in 2010 at https://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/choice-fm-rip-birth-and-near-death-of.html . Three years subsequently, 'The Guardian' published a remarkably similar, shorter article 'RIP Choice FM' authored by Boya Dee.]

KISS FM rejected, government awards first London-wide radio station in 16 years to its jazz codger chums : 1989 : Jazz FM, London

 Alongside the revolution in television broadcasting, a similar battle of the airwaves is being waged on the radio. Will this forever wipe away the narrow choices offered by existing stations? Or is it possible to have faith in a revolution being waged from Downing Street? Grant Goddard examines the background to the first franchise application in London and looks at the way ahead for both winners and losers.

It was a little after 6am when Gordon Mac made his first phone call to the Independent Broadcasting Authority [IBA]. This was the long-awaited day when it would be announced whether his station ‘KISS FM’ had won the new London radio licence. But, despite an assurance that someone would be at work in the IBA’s Radio Division at this time, a recorded message merely told him to call again during normal office hours.

Mac was bursting to know whether the last seven month’s work making a huge written application to the IBA had been a success. KISS FM had earned an enviable reputation as London’s best dance music station during four years of pirate broadcasting.

But transmissions had been stopped from December ’88, in line with the government’s demands, to try and win the single London FM licence advertised by the IBA.

Mac left home in a hurry and drove across town to the KISS FM office in Finsbury Park. The rail strike had already clogged the streets with traffic, leaving him too much time to ponder the outcome of this crazy licence lottery.

By the time he reached the office just after 8am, the day’s post had already been delivered. The embossed IBA envelope enclosed a two-page letter, but the second sentence said it all: “I am afraid the decision is, for you and your colleagues, a disappointing one.”

Thirty other applicants were opening similarly apologetic letters across the city, but there was one group who could now celebrate in style – ‘London Jazz Radio’ [LJR] had just won the first new city-wide music radio licence since ‘Capital Radio’ in 1973.

The IBA’s press conference that afternoon was a strangely defensive affair. There were not many questions about LJR, but plenty of time was spent discussing why KISS FM had failed to win. Though the IBA refused to elaborate on the relative placings of the 31 losers, KISS FM was definitely in the short-list of five or six, and most probably the runner-up.

The awkward sensitivity shown towards KISS FM’s rejection reflects an awareness that they were certainly the public’s choice for a new London station. KISS FM was the only applicant to have already established a strong awareness among Londoners of its name, its music and its presenters.

The recent success of KISS FM team members Coldcut, Jazzie B, Richie Rich and Derek B in the pop charts has confirmed the station’s role as an important catalyst in the growth of home-produced dance music.

A further embarrassment was caused as this affair was the second occasion in recent years when a carrot has been dangled in front of pirate broadcasters to induce them to quit the airwaves. And the second time the carrot has been unexpectedly pulled away at the last minute.

The first voluntary pirate shutdown happened in 1985 when the Home Office encouraged them to apply for experimental community radio licences. Then, after lengthy prevarication and the receipt of 286 applications, the plan was abandoned.

The second carrot was offered last year with the unveiling of the IBA’s ‘incremental contract’ scheme for 21 new stations. Only those pirates who quit the airwaves before 1 January 1989 would be allowed to apply, so several stations (including KISS FM) duly complied and shut down. So now that the London licence has been awarded to a wholly non-pirate group, it was hardly surprising to see yet another carrot pulled out of the bag and shoved in KISS FM’s face.

“KISS FM put in a very strong application,” admits Peter Baldwin, the IBA’s director of radio. “IBA members felt very strongly that there were a number of applicant groups who could have been offered a contract, and we are seeking the government’s agreement to release additional frequencies so we can broaden the offers to these applicant groups.”

So KISS FM could be given a licence soon as a sort of prize for runners up?

“One has no idea where KISS FM will come in that,” says Baldwin, “but I’m bound to say that, given the government’s attitude towards pirate broadcasting, I think it would be imprudent for anyone to go back on the air if they have an aspiration towards broadcasting [legally].”

But this third carrot sounds equally precarious if it depends on the IBA’s success in evincing government agreement to more stations.

“Two more FM frequencies could be available in a short space of time – six to nine months,” explains Baldwin. “It would be for the government to decide. The IBA’s view is ‘should the listeners of London who haven’t got certain genres of broadcasting have to wait 18 months for that moment to arrive?’”

So the message to KISS FM is: sit tight, don’t do anything stupid (like return to piracy) and, some day soon, you may yet win a licence if we can persuade the Home Secretary of its political expediency.

Back in the KISS FM office, the disappointment of not winning is evident in the grim faces of a small group of station staff and presenters who are answering a stream of phone calls from well-wishers and listeners wanting to know the outcome. Three bottles of champagne sit unopened on the corner of Gordon Mac’s desk, where they remain unnoticed for the next week.

Mac himself is busy supplying quotes to enquiring journalists and does a live phone interview on the BBC London station ‘GLR’ with sympathetic soul DJ Dave Pearce. Some members of the KISS FM team who are not so close to the sharp end of the operation are unenthused by the carrot consolation prize, but Mac understands the need for cautious diplomacy now more than ever.

Seven months have already been spent raising more than £1million in capital, and a five-figure sum has been sunk into the application procedure to date.

A carefully worded press release is prepared, expressing “extreme disappointment” that KISS FM did not win the licence, but backing the IBA’s demand for more frequencies to be allocated to further London stations. KISS FM’s campaign focuses on 104.8 FM which becomes free in November when ‘Radio 1’ vacate their temporary London channel.

KISS FM presenter Heddi [Greenwood] still feels the need for more direct action to satisfy the dozens of listeners who have phoned up asking what they can do to help. Over the next weekend, she visits several London clubs and solicits more than 3,000 letters of support addressed to the Home Office demanding the release of further frequencies for stations such as KISS FM. Gordon Mac delivers them personally to Douglas Hurd’s office exactly a week after the IBA’s fatal announcement. No acknowledgement or response is returned.

Mac seems to be treading a fine emotional line between huge personal disappointment at the outcome of several years’ hard work and cautious optimism that a licence still remains within the realms of possibility.

“Whether it takes three months or three years,” he says to GLR, “we will carry on campaigning until we are given the chance to be a legal radio station in London.”

In a more salubrious part of town, champagne bottles are being put to good use. London Jazz Radio’s nine-year campaign for a licence has paid off handsomely, particularly with its development of an all-party parliamentary lobby to argue the merits of its case.

The station’s founder, David Lee, is a 59-year-old jazz musician whose distinguished career has included TV themes, jingles and the writing of Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren’s 1960 hit ‘Goodness Gracious Me’. He wrote to the IBA suggesting the idea but received a faintly dismissive reply explaining (wrongly, in retrospect) that new legislation would be necessary before such a station could be introduced.

So Lee started on the road for the necessary legislation to be enacted. “I happened to bump into a guy I’d known but hadn’t seen for over 20 years, who was an amateur drummer but also a member of the Gilbey’s Gin family and working as a board member of Grand Metropolitan Hotels.” This was Jasper Grinling, ex-managing director of International Distillers, ex-director of corporate affairs with Grand Met, and now chairman of LJR.

“He happened to know an MP by virtue of his high rank,” continues Lee, “so we asked him and, in a very short time, we had a 14-strong all-party group. I call it my ‘Parliamentary Jazz Band’. Based upon that parliamentary support, we felt we could start to move. We would literally have got nothing without it. It allowed us to get the ear of people of reason.”

The MP Bowen Wells is now a director of LJR, as is Lord Rayne, ex-chairman of London Merchant Securities plc. Fellow shareholders include Lord Colwyn, Lord Dormand, Earl Alexander of Tunis, Viscount Portman and four other MPs – Jim Lester, Tom Pendry, John Prescott and Nicholas Scott.

The “people of reason” Lee reached included the Home Secretary himself. Before the award of the licence, Lee admitted: “I have great admiration for Douglas Hurd and, if it hadn’t been for his understanding, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today.”

“He was one of the first people to realise that it is quite wrong for a place the size of London not to have a station to represent so large a minority. He realised it and made sure those ‘people who know’ realised it.”

Indeed, Hurd on several occasions cited a London jazz station as an example of the new type of radio service he was intending to introduce. In retrospect, this should have been observed as an omen that parliamentary lobbying had already proven effective, long before the contract for the new London service was advertised.

The IBA are understandably keen to stress it was their decision to award the licence to LJR, based upon their assertion that the station will cater for a wide variety of musical tastes. Paul Brown, the IBA’s head of programming, explains: “LJR is a jazz radio station but, in assembling their application, they did a lot of research which told them that an audience would prefer to have a jazz radio station that provided a wide spectrum of jazz including, for example, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, salsa and also some of the big band performances.”

The station’s research showed that 41 per cent of those adults sampled liked to hear jazz on its own, while 63 per cent preferred to hear it mixed in with other styles of black music. But LJR’s own programme plans actually reject these findings and propose a fairly narrow jazz-dominated music policy.

A computerised playlist system is planned which will schedule one Afro-Caribbean record every two hours, one “boogaloo/soul” record every two hours, and one R&B record every 12 hours. Hardly a great concession to broader tastes.

Yet the IBA insist that LJR’s intended schedule also include “a good range of music styles derived from and related to jazz, including big band music, vocal standards, R&B and forms of Latin American jazz.” This statement is inconsistent with LJR’s own description of their output as “20th century jazz and jazz influenced music” in their ‘Promise of Performance’ – the legally binding statement of their programme plans.

Selecting such a specialised music station would have proven a hard decision for the IBA to defend, particularly when other applicants such as KISS FM were proposing to integrate jazz alongside many other styles of music. So have the IBA now insisted that LJR adopt a more catholic music policy in order to make their choice more politically acceptable?

“We are specifying that there must be a broad spectrum of output,” says the IBA’s Peter Baldwin, “and therefore what LJR accept will be a Promise of Performance that the IBA will write for them and not necessarily reflecting exactly what they applied for.”

Confidence in LJR’s ability to incorporate diverse and newer styles of ‘jazz-influenced music’ is not instilled by the station’s choice of senior staff. Apart from the presence of DJ Gilles Peterson on the board, the average age of the other nine directors is 56.

All this political manoeuvring is pretty galling for the unsuccessful bidders for the licence, who see accommodations being made for LJR’s shortcomings and the IBA adopting a defensive attitude towards their choice of winner. Several applicants made a positive commitment to jazz programmes alongside other neglected forms of music. KISS FM had already enrolled Gilles Peterson as a member of their own jazz presentation team.

When LJR comes on-air in February [1990], the proof of their commitment to these diverse music styles will be evident from their first day’s programmes. In the meantime, KISS FM can only wait for a Home Office decision as to whether additional frequencies will be allocated to further London stations. The KISS FM team will not return to pirate broadcasting, but will continue to campaign for the right to have a legal dance music station in London.

A week after the IBA’s announcement, Gordon Mac called a meeting of KISS FM’s staff and presenters to explain the whole situation. There was righteous indignation among many of those present that, once again, the government had pulled a fast one and made empty promises to the pirate community, while at the same time rewarding their own friends.

There were predictions that pirate activity in London would increase as a consequence of general ill-feeling towards the authorities. There was even an undercurrent that KISS FM had been duped by the second carrot-on-a-stick and would be foolish to wait for the outcome of a further open ended half-promise. Several members of the KISS FM team were absent from the meeting. Jonathan More and Matt Black (alias Coldcut), Hardrock Soul Movement, Jazzie B and Norman Jay were all in New York attending the ‘New Music Seminar’. It’s a dreadful irony that, while many of the individuals involved in KISS FM’s championing of British dance music have recently reaped huge popular success, the station itself is now off-air and still waiting for its day to come.

Last Monday, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd finally agreed to licence two more London-wide FM radio stations. After taking legal advice, the IBA has determined that it must publicly advertise these two new contracts, inviting bids from previous applicants and new groups by a November deadline. KISS FM will be one of more than 50 likely applicants, and the outcome will be announced by the end of the year.

The writer is a supporter of KISS FM’s campaign to secure the new London waveband.

[First published as ‘Kissed Off’, New Musical Express, 26 August 1989, p.31]

[This was a small part of the bigger story recounted in my book ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio to Big Business’ about pirate radio [see blog], the station’s subsequent licence win [see blog] and successful relaunch [see blog]]

The great brains robber fearful his collar will be touched : 1991 : Gordon McNamee, KISS 100 FM

 “If this gets out, we’re screwed,” my boss told me. Actually, I have paraphrased because at least one expletive was guaranteed in this man’s every sentence.

He looked very worried. I was baffled. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

“I don’t just mean ME,” he added in response to my bafflement that maybe he mistook for insouciance. “I mean YOU too, everyone in this building, this entire business. We are all f……” I will stop there. You can probably guess his favourite expletive.

He thrust the inside pages from a Sunday tabloid newspaper across his desk and indicated I should read. It was a large news story about an apparently notorious drug dealer involved in sundry nefarious activities who had just been nabbed by ‘the law’. I had never heard of him. I was still completely baffled.

“Without these people, we wouldn’t be here,” my boss explained with deliberate ambiguity. I ran a lightning-fast Poirot-style drawing room denouement through my mind:

• Surmise the newspaper suspect is genuinely criminal
• I had never met him
• I had done nothing criminal
• My boss is evidently freaking out
• Maybe HE is mixed up with this criminal
• Maybe HE has done something illegal
• Something SO illegal that it would close down our business which, Hercule indicates, is licensed by the British government.

Oh dear. Will I still have a job tomorrow?

This was not how I had anticipated my regular Monday morning eight o’clock drop-in to my boss’ penthouse office. He looked more than worried. He looked scared stiff. As if the Metropolitan Police might come knocking on his office door within the next hour. I had recently watched horrified as certain of his sacked employees had been frogmarched out of the building by a security guard upon this man’s cruel orders. Perhaps the boot was about to pass to the other foot, this time with the addition of handcuffs and a blue flashing light outside on Holloway Road.

He took the newspaper back from me, turned it back around and sat there in silence, staring at the article. He chose to elucidate nothing further for a full minute, so I bade him farewell, got up, closed his door behind me and returned to my own office downstairs. It was the strangest start to my week. I was left just as baffled. My boss never said another word to me about this incident. He did not need to. Its significance was betrayed by his changed demeanour from that day onwards. Gone was the happy-go-lucky faux bonhomie he had always oozed. From now on, he would behave as if a gunman might burst into the room and shoot him at point-blank range.

In previous years, it had been evident to those of us working for London pirate radio station ‘KISS 94 FM’ that there were dodgy things going on under our noses in its open-plan Finsbury Park first-floor office. Unlike its competitors who mostly attempted 24/7 radio services, our station had only broadcast from Friday to Sunday. How come rivals had been regularly raided and shut down by the government, or sometimes by their enemies, whereas KISS had been so rarely, if ever, forced off-air? Press articles had regularly alleged that violence, industrial sabotage and criminal activity were rife within London’s pirate radio business [see blog]. Some involved criticised this as the perfect fabricated excuse for the authorities to raid illegal stations, close them and prosecute their operators. But was there some fire behind this convenient smokescreen?

Every week, KISS had held numerous rammed club nights in venues across London, collecting the door money in cash. Hundreds of pounds, thousands on busy holiday weekends, would be counted out and bundled up on an office desk, to be dispatched out the office front door in the hands of station co-founder Gordon McNamee’s personal assistant, Rosee Laurence. Those substantial cash revenues did not appear to be reflected in the subsequent published accounts of McNamee’s company, Goodfoot Promotions Limited. Where that cash went I never knew. I had realised that, despite my training in economics and accountancy, it was best not to ask or get involved in the financial labyrinth of this illegal radio station.

McNamee regularly described his business style as “ducking and diving”, defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “the action of cleverly doing everything you can in order to succeed, or to avoid a situation, even when this may not be completely acceptable or honest.” For those familiar with the popular 1980’s British television sitcom ‘Only Fools and Horses’, McNamee would have fitted right in with its cast. His gift was his East End gab. He could persuade almost anybody to do almost anything … that would ultimately benefit himself. Running one of the dozens of London pirate stations had at least corralled a useful boundary to his ruthlessness. However, that limitation evaporated once he hit the radio jackpot.

What happened next was all my fault. After KISS FM’s first attempt to win a legal London radio licence had failed, McNamee slumped into lethargic depression and paralysed inaction. I stepped up to the challenge of initial defeat by instigating a lobbying campaign with co-worker Heddi Greenwood to persuade the government to advertise further radio licences (which succeeded [see blog]) and, then, by managing and writing a second licence application (which succeeded against all odds [see blog]). To achieve this, I had to make the difficult decision to sacrifice my job editing a new monthly black music magazine ‘Free!’ that I had just founded [see blog]. My motivation was my long involvement in London pirate radio during two decades, since when I had dreamt of Britain’s first legal black music radio station. Eventually, I made that happen.

However, once the licence had been won, McNamee’s demeanour changed significantly. Newly attired in a sharp Paul Smith suit and shirt, he set out to hobnob amongst bigwigs with money whom he convinced that the station’s application had succeeded due to HIS entrepreneurial skills. Although he had only five GCSE certificates to his name (amongst them woodwork and technical drawing) and was barely literate, having “bummed out of school most of the time”, his ego started to believe the ‘rags to riches’ story that press profiles were painting around him. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1980’s propaganda promised that any East End barrow boy could ‘get rich quick’ through hard work in London’s financial and corporate sectors. It was the era of ‘loadsamoney’ when huge advertising billboards posted around London promoted local talk radio station ‘LBC’ with the slogan ‘GREED IS GOOD’ in massive letters.

Whereas pirate era meetings had previously been held within our open-plan office, McNamee now held them privately elsewhere with who knew whom and with outcomes unknown. He had always convinced the press that the pirate KISS FM was a ‘collective’ of its DJ’s even though it now seemed to operate more than ever as his fiefdom (KISS FM DJ Jazzie B’s “be an asset to the collective” lyric proved similarly shallow). Secrecy became endemic. McNamee’s domestic arrangements had always been sketchy, which I had presumed was the product of his ‘wife plus mistress’ private life. But he had progressed from being cagey to obsessively clandestine.

Weeks before the now legal KISS 100 FM launched [see blog], McNamee insisted I visit his new home for a Sunday business meeting and lunch. However, its address was apparently so confidential that I could only be told it by phone as I stepped into a taxi at the start of my long journey from one end of London to the other. I had to swear on my life that I would never share its location with anyone. Upon my late arrival (after the taxi ran out of petrol), I entered an expansive Edwardian house in Dulwich filled with expensive stuff, including huge blown-up photos of McNamee on walls throughout. The place was a shrine to both the man’s ego and the decadence favoured by the nouveau riche. I had to hide my disgust, as I had yet to be rewarded for my work winning KISS FM its licence. I was living in a damp suburban top floor flat without central heating.

It was galling to see McNamee showing off such opulence even before our new radio station had launched. Where had he got the money to buy this home? Where had he got the money to buy £90,000 of share capital in the newly created ‘KISS FM Radio Limited’ company that would be operating the licence? No explanations were offered to any of us who had been involved in our supposedly ‘collective’ enterprise – now HIS business – before it had won the licence. I had been promised rewards (shares, a bonus, an immediate salary) for my efforts winning the licence, none of which McNamee honoured. He was proven to be a cold-hearted liar in his treatment of me. There must have been others whose talents he exploited and later discarded.

I never knew if the Monday morning ‘criminal’ incident in his office was connected somehow to these apparent financial shenanigans that had suddenly made him ‘rich’. What I do know is that McNamee was never the same again. After Easter, he started to work a bare minimum of hours at the station. My office overlooked the private car park to the rear of the building so that, every morning, I would hear him arrive at precisely nine o’clock in the morning and then leave at precisely five o’clock in the afternoon. During the day, McNamee was no longer seen around the building. Apart from his presence at meetings, I rarely saw him to talk to any more. There was a lot of whispering around the building that things were going very badly for him.

Whenever I had to visit the top floor to see McNamee in his office, he would usually be sat behind his desk, doing nothing in particular. Often not, he would be staring at the latest share prices on the Teletext pages of his huge colour television. He seemed obsessed with the notion that he was some kind of entrepreneurial whiz-kid. He even started comparing himself in conversation to Richard Branson, the boss of the Virgin empire. Often, I would find him listening to old soul or jazz-funk records in his office, rather than to KISS FM. It seemed as if he was barricading himself into his corner office on the top floor, trying to ignore the realities of the radio station that were going on around him.

He clearly lacked the management skills to make the station a successful business, having appointed as departmental managers ‘outsiders’ who failed to understand our unique radio product and who all failed to meet their targets. I was the only ‘insider’ to head a department and became the only manager to meet my target (one million listeners per week by end of Year One) some six months early. Consumed by his own failings, I could see McNamee grow to despise me for my success. At one stage, he even told me: “Do you know what I hate about you, Grant? You’ve got the answers to every bloody question. And they are always bloody right.”

What he failed to grasp was that my expertise was derived from education, training and experience. I had not been born on a council estate with it. Unlike him, I had been involved in the radio business for two decades. Unlike him, I had implemented a (then) radical music policy that had turned around the fortunes of a large British commercial radio station (Metro Radio, Newcastle) a decade earlier [see blog]. Unlike him, I had managed people since the 1970’s. Unlike him, I may not have possessed the gab, but I had a range of skills that were necessary to launch a successful radio station from scratch … and that is exactly what I did. Inevitably, having managed the station to ratings success, I was deemed no longer necessary to McNamee’s increasingly paranoid behaviour and was ejected without an ounce of gratitude [see blog]. Then he slandered me in a national newspaper, bizarrely accusing ME of ruining HIS radio station [see blog]! 

Jump forward to June 2024. The same Gordon McNamee was honoured with the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for “services to music”. It seems totally appropriate that it was bestowed upon him by the most corrupt, dishonest self-serving British government observed in my lifetime, run by a Prime Minister and staff convicted on 126 occasions of breaking COVID lockdown laws they themselves had legislated. Many current Tory politicians still idolise Margaret Thatcher and the ‘policies’ that helped her dominate 1980’s British politics. In 2022, Prime Minister and former Goldman Sachs banker Rishi Sunak had even asked on camera a homeless man if finance was a business he would “like to get into”, a scary echo of that Thatcher propaganda.

During my media career, I have had to work for a clutch of bosses whose activities appeared somewhat non-legal, several of whom were eventually prosecuted, two of whom were sent to jail. That is a sad reflection on the calibre of people who rise to the heights of British business where ‘meritocracy’ seems to have been labelled a dirty word … by those who are already installed on top.

[See also ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]

My application wins our tiny black music pirate station a valuable London-wide radio licence : 1989 : KISS 100 FM

 It was only just daylight when I suddenly realised that the phone was ringing. It seemed to take me ages to drag my weary body out of bed, as the phone continued to ring long and hard. Who on earth would want to phone me at this early hour on a Saturday morning? I toyed with the notion that it might be my former girlfriend, who seemed determined to inflict as much hurt on me as possible, despite our relationship having ended abruptly through her own infidelity and lies.

But it was not her. It was [‘KISS FM’ managing director] Gordon McNamee, calling me from his mobile phone. He said he was standing in the middle of his local park, walking his dog, accompanied by his mother. I could hear in the background that it was pouring with rain. McNamee asked if I had the home phone number of any of the Independent Broadcasting Authority [media regulator IBA] staff so that he could find out whether KISS FM had won the licence. I asked him why he was so anxious to find out at such an early hour in the morning. McNamee told me that ‘Music Week’ magazine’s radio correspondent, Bob Tyler, had rung him at home at around eight o’clock that morning to find out if he knew who had won the licences. McNamee admitted that he had heard nothing, despite knowing that the decisions had been made by the IBA at its Thursday meeting and should be announced imminently. McNamee told me that he had stayed at the KISS FM office [in Finsbury Park] all day Friday, but there had still been no phone call from the IBA, so he assumed that KISS FM had lost the licence for the second time, and had returned home.

Bob Tyler had phoned McNamee a second time at around nine o’clock that morning to say that he had just heard a rumour that KISS FM had won a licence, though there was still no means of official confirmation. McNamee, feeling agitated and frustrated, had decided to get out of bed and take his dog for a walk in the local park. Halfway across the park, it had started to pour with rain. Then, just as he, his mother and his dog had run for shelter, McNamee’s mobile phone had rung again. This time it was Richard Brooks, media editor of ‘The Observer’ newspaper, offering his congratulations to McNamee on KISS FM’s win of one of the two licences, and asking for a comment to include in the next day’s issue. McNamee thanked Brooks for his call, but emphasised that he himself had not been told the news and so would have to obtain official confirmation from the IBA before he could say anything publicly. Brooks assured him that he had seen a letter sent to one of the losing applicants which definitely stated that KISS FM and easy listening applicant ‘Melody Radio’ were the two winners. McNamee promised to ring him back as soon as possible.

There was jubilation in the park, despite the torrential rain. McNamee and his mother leapt up and down with excitement, watched by an astonished old man who was also sheltering from the storm. The old man asked them what all the fuss was about and, when McNamee told him he had just won a hotly contested radio licence, the old man offered him a celebration roll-your-own cigarette and apologised for not having a cigar. Now, McNamee needed to find out from the IBA if the news was true, and why it had been broken to him by a journalist, rather than in an official IBA communication. That was when he had rung me. I told McNamee that I probably had the home phone number of one of the IBA officers, if the paperwork had not disappeared from my flat, so I would find it and try to obtain official confirmation. I quickly found the home phone number of the IBA press officer, Stuart Patterson, on the top of an old press release he had sent me. I called him and, although he himself refused to confirm or deny whether KISS FM had won, he promised to arrange for someone from the IBA radio division to call me as soon as possible.

It was only a few minutes later that David Vick, the IBA’s principal radio development officer, called me. At first, he was pre-occupied with explaining to me the protocol of the IBA announcement, and did not tell me outright that KISS FM had won:

“Hi, it’s David Vick from the IBA. I gather you’re the only people who haven’t got the news officially yet ... I’ve just had a quick word with Stuart, obviously ... We’ve told the winners that they might expect calls from journalists. What we’re anxious not to happen, and maybe it’s a false hope now, is for journalists to ring losers before they’ve got their letters. But clearly, the Christmas post is so unpredictable that our best laid plans have fallen apart this morning.”

“I didn’t ring Stuart as a journalist,” I interrupted. “It was the KISS FM side ... Did we get it or didn’t we?”

“Yes, of course you did,” answered Vick.

“Oh, brilliant,” I screamed. I was elated. Until now, I and the rest of the KISS FM team could only have dreamed of this moment when the IBA would ring us to say that we had won a radio licence. Now, it had really happened. I was very tired. I was still shattered from the long journey home [from a holiday in The Gambia the previous evening]. I had only just woken up, but I was also incredibly happy that my hard work on the licence application had won out in the end.

“Congratulations,” said Vick, while I gasped with joy at the other end of the call. He remained far more composed than I was right now, and he continued to explain the detail of the announcement: “I don’t know how The Observer got hold of it. Clearly, one of the losers has talked to The Observer fairly early on this morning, because they’ve been hot on the trail from quite early on. So congratulations on that.”

I was still laughing and whooping at my end of the conversation, as Vick continued: “We normally do ring winners on Saturday morning but, this time, we’ve been playing it so laid back and ultra cool that I hadn’t actually planned to do that. All the letters seem to have got through, but clearly some of the most serious applicants have given business addresses, and they’re the ones who haven’t actually got the letters. You’re not unique. We’ve had a vexed Lord Hanson [of Melody Radio, the other licence winner] ring us this morning, asking what’s going on and why is he being rung by journalists.”

Vick continued: “You and Lord Hanson have been in the identical situation this morning of being rung by The Observer and others at the crack of dawn, and not known what was going on ... What we didn’t want was for losers who haven’t got their letters this morning to find out from the newspapers either on Sunday or ideally on Monday ... We had a terrible botch-up with the Post Office on one of the previous months. And, this time, I rang the district postmaster yesterday afternoon and said ‘look, we’ve got another run of letters going through.’ And he said he’d do his best to catch them the moment they arrived at the sorting office and hustle them straight through for us. And he’s clearly done the job with unfailing skill and everything’s arrived this morning. But the ones going to business addresses, yours and Hanson’s and some of the other quite serious applicants, have ended up hearing about it through the grapevine as a result.”

“Oh, this is brilliant,” I gasped. I was still far from composed and I was barely taking in Vick’s pre-occupation with the minor points of the procedure. We had won! That was all that was important to me right there and then. We had won! Vick continued regardless: “We told everybody our press release would be [published] Tuesday morning. But I’ve spoken to Peter Baldwin [IBA director of radio] and Stuart [Patterson], and that’s clearly crazy now, so we’re going to issue the press release early Monday morning. So, if you could bear to at least smile inwardly and say as little as you can to the press until then ...”

I was muttering words of agreement without really taking in all the detail that Vick was relating. He could tell my excitement was getting the better of me, so he suddenly changed gear: “Well done. We’ll obviously have a lot to do with each other in the months ahead. One of the things we’ve said in the letter is that, if you could come in [to the IBA office] and meet us all in the next couple of weeks, that would be super.”

“We would love to,” I replied, still giggling uncontrollably. Once more, Vick was keen to discuss the nitty gritty, right here and now on a Saturday morning: “Very well done. It was an excellent application. The trouble is that you’re going to get a lot of griping comment now from people saying that they [the IBA] only did it to keep the pirate lobby happy. The fact was that it was a bloody good application that got it on merit, because we certainly wouldn’t have given it to you if the application hadn’t been deserving of it.”

It was incredibly pleasing to hear Vick credit the KISS FM application after all the hard work I had put into it. I felt that, finally, I had been vindicated for my insistence to McNamee that the whole licence application had to be as perfectly presented as possible on this occasion. I thanked Vick for his kind comments, and he continued: “I think, to be honest, that the extra six months actually did you a lot of good. Not that the first application was bad or anything but, in this one, you had clearly learnt so much over the last six months, and you had strengthened it in so many ways. And, fortunately, by majoring on the new release aspect of the daytime [music] playlist, you’ve given us a very solid peg to hang the ‘diversity’ point on. Because, when ‘Capital [Radio]’ and others predictably start complaining, we can actually point to the fact that you are going to be playing the music before it gets in the charts, and they will play it after it gets in the charts, which gives greater diversity.”

Since its launch in 1973, Capital Radio had been London’s one and only commercial pop music station, and it was still eager to defend what it considered to be its own rightful territory – a monopoly over playing pop music in the capital. The IBA was charged with widening the choice of radio stations available to listeners, whilst not duplicating the existing output of Capital Radio. The emphasis I had placed in the KISS FM application on the station’s championing of new music had proven to be precisely the argument the IBA could use to defend a decision to award KISS FM the licence. Admittedly, Capital Radio did play dance music within its programmes, but it only played songs that were already in the ‘Top Forty’ singles chart. KISS FM would be playing mostly new releases, before they gained widespread popularity. My strategy for the KISS FM application had worked exactly as I had intended, which Vick confirmed as he continued to relate the detail: “The press release actually says that KISS FM has been chosen as a station that will be in the forefront of music tastes and that’s your market position, as we define it.”

McNamee must have returned home by now, so I gave his home telephone number to Vick and thanked him for calling me so promptly. It was absolutely brilliant news and I was still utterly ecstatic. I tried to phone McNamee straight away, but Vick must have managed to get through to him first. I continued re-dialling for several minutes, until the phone eventually rang. McNamee was shouting down the phone to me over the top of a loud conversation I could hear in the background:

“Grant, you c*nt,” he greeted me, in his typically perverse way. “We’ve got it! I can’t believe it! David Vick just phoned me and we went through the whole lot. I can’t fucking believe it.”

There was loud laughter in the background and McNamee already sounded drunk on the news, in spirit, if not in reality: “You’ve got a job! Your gamble worked out. We’ve all got a job. Fucking wonderful! It’s wonderful! It’s just unbelievable. I’m going to be down at Dingwalls [nightclub in Camden] tonight and the whole world will be, I should think. I’m going to phone everyone today. I’ll talk to you later on. I’ve got to phone all the bosses, and I’ll talk to you later.”

McNamee was right. My gamble had paid off. I had believed that KISS FM could win the licence, if only someone was prepared to work hard on the application this time around. Then, when McNamee had failed to take up the challenge, I had decided to take on the task myself. While McNamee had been pre-occupied with his initial failure, I had been determined to turn KISS FM’s second application into a winner. Asked subsequently what had persuaded the IBA to award KISS FM a radio licence, David Vick answered: “A well-researched application and musical knowledge.”

It was pleasing to know that my strategies had been proven correct. It was my detailed research and my belief in KISS FM’s musical expertise that had swung the licence bid. Now, here I was, having learnt the good news only hours after arriving back in the country. If KISS FM had lost its licence bid this second time around, I would have had no job to return to. Plus, my flat had been deliberately and spitefully emptied [by my former girlfriend whilst I had been away]. But these things did not matter to me anymore. The dream I had cherished for so many years of a legal black music radio station in London was about to become a reality at last. I had played my part in turning that dream into reality. I was absolutely thrilled. For me, it was literally a dream come true.

[Excerpt from ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business: The Inside Story Of A London Pirate Radio Station’s Path To Success’ by Grant Goddard, Radio Books, 2011, 528 pages]

The genesis of black music radio in London ... still unfulfilled : 1970-1984 : Radio Invicta 92.4

 I only knew 'Roger Tate' (real name Bob Tomalski) through listening to his programmes on the radio. He was a DJ on 'Radio Invicta', London’s first soul music radio station, launched in 1970. Invicta was a pirate radio station. Back then, there were no legal radio stations in the UK other than the BBC.

The notion of a campaign for a soul music radio station for London had been a little premature, given that no kind of commercial radio had yet existed in Britain. But that is exactly what Radio Invicta did. As Roger Tate explained on-air in 1974:

“Who are Radio Invicta? You may well be asking. Well, we’re an all-soul music radio station. We’re more of a campaign than a radio station, I suppose. We believe in featuring more good soul music on the radio.”

By 1982, 'Black Echoes' music paper reported that Radio Invicta was attracting 26,000 listeners each weekend for its broadcasts. By 1983, Radio Invicta had collected a petition of 20,000 signatures in support of its campaign for a legal radio licence. There was sufficient space on the FM band for London to have dozens more radio stations. By then, local commercial radio had existed in the UK for a decade. But nobody in power wanted to receive the station’s petition and Invicta’s Mike Strawson commented:

“I have tried to speak to the Home Office about it, but it shuts the door.”

Radio Invicta eventually closed for good on 15 July 1984, the date that the new 'Telecommunications Act' had dramatically increased the penalties for getting caught doing pirate radio to a £2,000 fine and/or three months in jail. By then, 'Capital Radio' had enjoyed its licence as London’s only commercial radio music station for eleven years. Its monopoly reign was still to run for a further six years.

It might have seemed in 1984 that Radio Invicta’s fourteen-year struggle to play soul music on the radio in London had come to absolutely nothing. The Invicta team went their separate ways after the pirate station’s closure. Roger Tate continued his career as a successful technology journalist. After his death in 2001, aged only forty-seven, one of his friends, Trevor Brook, spoke of Tate’s determination to play soul music on the radio in the face of opposition from the government and the radio ‘establishment.’ His eulogy at the funeral of his friend included these comments:

“The government told the story that there were no frequencies available. Now Bob was not stupid. He had enough technical knowledge to know that this was simply not true. So, either government officials were too dim to realise the truth of the situation ... or they were just lying. Nowadays, we have 300 independent transmitters operating in those same wavebands, so you can probably work out which it was. Anyway, in Britain, the result was that any proper public debate about the possible merits of more radio listening choice was sabotaged by this perpetual claim that it was impossible anyway.

So, we had pirates. Other countries which had not liberalised the airwaves had pirates as well, but some of them took the refreshingly realistic approach that no harm was being caused, and they permitted unlicensed operations to continue until they got round to regularising the situation. Ambulances still reached their destinations and no aeroplanes fell out of the sky. Not so in this country though. The enforcement services here were too well funded and the established orthodoxy too well entrenched. That 'frequency cupboard' was going to be kept well and truly locked!

Bob had thrown himself into running a regular soul station, Radio Invicta. He built a studio, tore it apart and built a better one. He eventually sectioned off part of the flat as a separate soundproofed area. He built transmitters - and got them working. But Bob was nothing if not multi-skilled, and he excelled in producing the programmes themselves. Using nothing more impressive than an old four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, Bob would create highly polished jingles and station identifications. ‘Roger Tate, super soul DJ.’ Other stations, both official and unofficial, listened to what Bob and his colleagues did and their ideas were copied or imitated.

Faced with the authorities, Bob was remarkable, because he was absolutely fearless. He was certain they were in the wrong and, given enough time, were going to lose the battle. It was a war of attrition and only perpetual piracy was ever going to bring about change. And he was quite right about that. The government kept winning the battle in the courts but began to lose the moral one. Eventually the law was changed. 

Do we have free radio now? In the sense that anybody can decide to start up a new magazine, find the finance and get on with it, no, we don't have that for radio. The process is bound up with a longwinded regulation and approval process involving a statutory body which has had its fingers burnt in the past by the odd bankruptcy and the odd scandal. So they play safe and issue more licences to those who already have stations. The consequence is that originality and creativity get crushed into blandness and mediocrity. My own teenagers constantly flip between stations in the car, but they don't care enough about any of them to listen indoors. Fresh people don't get to control stations. Behind boardroom doors, they might think it privately, but in what other industry would the chairman of the largest conglomerate in the market dare to say publicly that even the present regime was too open and, I quote, ‘was out of date and was letting inexperienced players into the market’? That is a disgraceful statement. Where would television, theatre, comedy, the arts, and so on be, if new and, by definition, inexperienced people didn't get lots of exposure? The industry is stale, complacent and rotten. Bob, there are more battles out there and we needed you here.”

Ten years later, these words are just as pertinent. It is hard to believe that a bunch of enthusiastic soul music fans who wanted to play their favourite music to their mates could have posed such a threat to the established order. But the history of radio broadcasting in the UK has demonstrated repeatedly that ‘the great and the good’ consider the medium far too important to let control fall out of their hands. Their arguments, however ridiculous, were taken completely seriously because they were the establishment.

Peter Baldwin, deputy director of radio at the 'Independent Broadcasting Authority' [regulator], said in 1985:

“We wouldn’t want to be dealing with two current local stations [in one area]. If it’s Radio Yeovil [operating as the only commercial station in Yeovil], well, that’s okay ... But we couldn’t subscribe to competition [for existing local commercial pop music station 'Swansea Sound'] from Radio Swansea, unless it was in Welsh or concentrated on jazz – and there probably wouldn’t be sufficient demand for that kind of service.”

James Gordon (now Lord Gordon), then managing director of 'Radio Clyde', wrote in 'The Independent' newspaper in 1989:

“It has to be asked whether there is really evidence of pent-up demand from listeners for more localised neighbourhood stations ... Eight to ten London-wide stations would be enough to cater for most tastes.”

David Mellor MP told the House of Commons in 1984:

“The government do not believe that it would be sensible or fair to issue pirate broadcasters with licences to broadcast. To do so, on the basis suggested by the pirate broadcasters, would be progressively to undermine the broadcasting structure that has evolved over the years.”

However, within five years, the government did indeed license a pirate radio station to broadcast in London. Once Invicta had disappeared in 1984, it was superseded by newer, more commercially minded, more entrepreneurial pirate radio stations – 'JFM', 'LWR', 'Horizon' – that played black music for Londoners. In 1985, a new pirate station called 'KISS FM' started, quite hesitantly at first. Its reign as a London pirate proved to be much shorter than Invicta’s but, by the time KISS closed in 1988, it was probably already better known than Invicta.

KISS FM went on to win a London radio licence in 1989 and re-launched legally in 1990. It carried with it the debt of a twenty-year history of black music pirate radio in London started by Radio Invicta and then pushed forward by hundreds of DJ’s who had worked on dozens of London black music stations. KISS FM would never have existed or won its licence without those pirate pioneers.

Sadly, the importance of KISS FM’s licence as the outcome of a twenty-year campaign seemed to be quickly forgotten by its owners and shareholders. The lure of big bucks quickly replaced pirate ideology during a period of history when ‘get rich quick’ was peddled by government as the legitimate prevailing economic philosophy. KISS FM lost the plot rapidly and soon became no more than a money-making machine for a faceless multimedia corporation.

Right now, there remains as big a gap between pirate radio and the licensed radio broadcasters as existed twenty years ago or even forty years ago. London’s supposedly ‘black music’ stations, KISS FM and 'Choice FM', now sound too much of the time like parodies of what they could be. Whereas pirate radio in London still sounds remarkably alive, unconventional and creative. More importantly, only the pirates play the ‘tunes’ that many of us like to hear.

The issue of how black music was ignored by legal radio in London, and then betrayed by newly licensed black music radio stations, is on my mind because of my new book ‘KISS FM: From Radical Radio To Big Business.’ It documents a small part of the history of black music pirate radio in London, and it charts the transformation of KISS FM from a rag tag group of black music fanatics into a corporate horror story. I was on the inside of that metamorphosis and it was an experience that, even twenty years later, remains a sad and terrible time to recall.

In 1974, Roger Tate had wanted more black music to be heard on the radio in London. Ostensibly, that objective has been achieved. But the black music I hear played on white-owned stations in London (there is no black-owned station) is a kind of vanilla 'K-Tel' ‘black music’ that is inoffensive and unchallenging.

If Croydon is the dubstep capital of the world, how come there is no FM radio station playing dubstep in Croydon, or even in London? How come I never hear reggae on the radio when London is one of the world cities for reggae? How come I had to turn to speech station 'BBC Radio Four' to hear anything about the death of Gil Scott-Heron in May? Why is it that Jean Adebambo’s suicide went completely unremarked by radio two years ago?

Legitimate radio in London seems just as scared of contemporary cutting-edge black music as it was in the 1970’s when Roger Tate was trying to fill the gaping hole with Radio Invicta. Nothing has really changed. Except now there exists the internet to fill that gaping hole. And FM pirate radio in London continues to satisfy demands from an audience that legitimate radio has demonstrated time and time again that it doesn’t give a shit about. Is it any surprise that young people are deserting broadcast radio?

Forty years ago, I listened to Roger Tate and London pirates like Radio Invicta because they played the music I wanted to hear. Forty years later, I find it absolutely ridiculous that I am still listening to a new generation of London pirates because they still play the music I want to hear. As Trevor Brook suggested at Roger’s funeral, our radio system is so consumed by “blandness and mediocrity” that “the industry is stale, complacent and rotten.”

Roger Tate R.I.P. You may be gone, but you and your campaign at Radio Invicta are as necessary as ever today. Sad but true.

[First published by Grant Goddard: Radio Blog as 'Radio Invicta: The Genesis Of Black Music Radio In London … Still Unfulfilled', 1 July 2011. Available as download.]

Mining for radio news in an editorial black hole : 2004-2007 : Paul Boon, The Radio Magazine

 Magazine editors. What do they do? “They create editorial calendars, develop story ideas, manage writers, edit content and manage the production process…” according to Google. Makes perfect sense. Except sometimes…

Journalism started for me in 1976 when I volunteered for student newspaper ‘Palatinate’ and attended regular meetings under editor George Alagiah who managed a team of section editors, discussed ideas for stories and sub-edited our writing efforts [see blog]. Subsequently I contributed articles to many publications, including ‘rpm Weekly’, ‘City Limits’, ‘For The Record’, ‘Jazz Express’, ‘Broadcast’, ‘Music Week’, ‘Jocks’, ‘NME’, ‘Now Radio’, ‘Music & Media’ and ‘Radio World’, whose editorial systems worked in much the same way [see bibliography]. There was dialogue, there were meetings, story ideas were passed upwards and downwards, teamwork and editorial direction were de rigueur.

In late 2004, lifelong radio industry buddy Bob Tyler called to say he was relinquishing his job as news editor of ‘The Radio Magazine’ and asked if I wanted to take over. I was desperate for paying work, having just returned from a poorly paid freelance contract in Cambodia and then been hung out to dry by ‘BBC World Service Trust’ whose promise of further, more lucrative work never materialised [see blog]. I had been applying for radio-related job vacancies but none had resulted in an offer. This was the second occasion that Tyler had passed on his editorial jobs to me, for which I remain eternally grateful.

I knew ‘The Radio Magazine’ as the only weekly publication for the UK radio broadcast industry, published as a colour A5 booklet. In May 1986, it had been launched as a scrappy paid-for fanzine named ‘Now Radio’ by Howard Rose, former pirate radio presenter under the aliases Crispian St John and Jay Jackson, filled with gossip and opinion for wireless ‘anoraks’. In October 1992, I had begun to write and publish a weekly four-page ‘Radio News’ newsletter [downloads here] which I photocopied and distributed for free by mail to a small group of people I thought would be interested, not as a competitor to Rose but complementary since my focus was hard news, information and statistical analysis of ratings.

Unexpectedly, within weeks of my newsletter’s debut, Rose relaunched his fanzine as ‘The Radio Magazine’ with a new layout and new features that looked remarkably similar to mine, such as an events calendar and analysis of ratings. This seemed somewhat coincidental, given his fanzine’s prior six-year, 177-issue history. Any ambition to eventually transform my tiny newsletter into a paid-for magazine had been effectively scuttled, so I persevered for twenty issues before ceasing publication. Unfortunately, ‘good ideas’ prove impossible to copyright and I had already learnt to my cost that the radio industry included people not averse to taking credit for my innovations.

Nevertheless, twelve years later, I was so desperate for income that the opportunity to write for ‘The Radio Magazine’ had to be accepted. Rose had tragically died in 2002 during routine surgery, bizarrely one week after selling his magazine business to Sir Ray Tindle, a local newspaper and radio station owner. Paul Boon had taken over as managing editor and had employed acquaintance Bob Tyler as news editor until now. Boon was asking me what payment I would require to do the job. I quoted him the National Union of Journalists’ rate per word for contributions to the very smallest publication. He responded by saying he would only pay half that rate. I was disappointed but reluctantly accepted his measly offer, reasoning that some income would prove better than none at all. After all, this job might not last long.

At the outset, I decided upon a financial survival strategy for myself. I would need to spend zero to gather news stories because my expenses were not to be reimbursed. This meant no phone calls, no interviews, no travel to meetings. I would have to depend upon second-hand sources I could cull from the internet, newspapers and magazines. In order to maximise my payments, I would submit as many news stories as I could write, since I was to be paid per word written. Doubtless, the magazine must be receiving dozens of press releases from every organisation connected with the UK radio industry. Naturally, as with my previous magazine work, I anticipated these would be regularly forwarded to me by the editor for a quick rewrite…

Except that they were not. I quickly learnt that no press releases, no news tips, no rumours, no nothing was forwarded to me by the magazine. There were no editorial discussions, no phone calls, no meetings, no guidance, no delegation of work. In fact, nothing at all except the odd emailed complaint about things I had written. I started work in December 2004 but, by New Year, Boon wrote a complaint to my predecessor Bob Tyler:

“I've just had David Bain of CFM on the phone complaining about an out-of-context story with the "wrong perspective" which was printed this week.  It was a local press story and as we all know local reporters do not understand radio and in this case printed a story which was not factually correct.  We then reprinted, courtesy of Grant the same errors. While I know it has been difficult to contact people at stations over the Christmas period I really think these types of story need to be checked out.  We are not in the market of producing overtly partisan stories which demoralise staff at stations. I had a similar call from another station before Christmas.” [sic]

Already, I was baffled as to why ‘The Radio Magazine’ functioned unlike any other publication for which I had worked previously. The managing editor was printing my stories mostly verbatim (fine), sometimes chopping their ends to fit a page (okay), changing my headlines (no problem), but otherwise was only communicating with me by forwarding complaints. Another one arrived in April 2005:

“We have been fending off an irate Simon Horne of Virgin Radio who says the article you wrote (Issue 681) was based upon a mis-quote published in the Scottish Daily Record (or similar paper). Furthermore he is upset that he was not contacted over the story to either check the facts or to give them an opportunity to respond.” [sic]

Surely, this sort of beef should have been with the journalist who had originally quoted the complainant’s words, not with me who had merely extracted the quote from a respected newspaper. Normally, you might expect a managing editor to defend their staff when they had evidently done nothing wrong, but Boon’s reaction in a further email to me was:

“We just cannot let this continue.  The Scottish press are notorious for getting facts wrong, heaven knows they have some big axes to grind up there. Time would have allowed for a quick call to the appropriate press officer, Collette [Hillier] can give you a list if you don't have one. Even an email would have given us some support.  Virgin are advertisers as well as news fodder, so treating them fairly seems only reasonable.” [sic]

Editorial ‘dialogue’ continued in a similar vein for my entire time as under-resourced news editor of the magazine. Every Monday morning, I emailed as many stories as I could muster, receiving no feedback other than occasional complaints from radio industry personnel who did not approve of what had been published. However, I was submitting so many news stories to maximise my earnings that the magazine regularly added additional pages to print them all, week in, week out…

Except for four issues per year when Boon required no news stories from me because, despite my training in statistics, he insisted upon covering the radio industry’s quarterly audience ratings results. Having collated and analysed radio station data since 1980, I regularly attended the RAJAR organisation’s press conferences announcing its latest numbers at a central London lecture theatre. Boon was present too but did not acknowledge me or seek to collaborate.

Apart from Boon (and Tyler), nobody was aware of my role providing the bulk of ‘The Radio Magazine’s editorial content, as a result of its news stories being published without author bylines. At the time, I was content with this arrangement because I was busy applying for full-time jobs in the radio industry and believed that I was unlikely to be offered employment if it were evident that I was reporting everything that was happening within the sector. 

My somewhat distant relationship with the magazine continued until March 2007 when I received an unanticipated email from Boon:

“I am sorry to say I have been forced to bring to a close the freelance arrangement we have with you for news stories. I am sorry. […] On a personal note, I’d like to thank you for the detailed and analytical dimension you have brought to your stories covering the radio industry in these stormy times. My thanks once again.” [sic]

It was the first (and last) occasion I received positive feedback from Boon. By then, I had thankfully found better paid work as a media analyst [see blog] so the resultant loss of earnings was less consequential. However, this apparent ‘warm glow’ of gratitude vanished almost immediately. Prior to my abrupt dismissal, I had registered for a free press pass to attend a forthcoming radio conference whose organisers then contacted ‘The Radio Magazine’ to rightly confirm my credentials. Boon responded to them bluntly:

“Grant Goddard does not work for this publication.”

I wrote to Boon accusing him of “rudeness” because, instead of simply explaining to the organisers truthfully that, since registration, I was no longer news editor, his words connoted I was a liar. Was he already seeking to erase my substantial and transformational involvement in his magazine during the previous two years? My suspicions were far from allayed by Boon’s response to me:

“I think rudeness is rich coming from you, but that is a separate issue. […] Just chill my friend - life is too short!” [sic]

On that sour note, our email correspondence ended once and for all.

In November 2008, Boon started a job with government regulator Ofcom’s radio licensing division in the same role I had held five years previously [see blog]. Perhaps he was sat at my former desk. Given that I (and predecessor Bob Tyler) had written 90% of his magazine’s editorial, I pondered whether any number of anonymous “detailed and analytical” news stories published in ‘The Radio Magazine’ might have accidentally fallen into Boon’s journalism portfolio. Any number between zero and the 848 I had written? Those words ‘detailed’ and ‘analytical’ might even have figured in Ofcom’s job description for the role.

During Boon’s subsequent “nine-year stint” at Ofcom, his CV states he was:

“Chapter Editor of the radio & audio chapter of Ofcom’s Communications Market Report an annually published in-depth insight into UK radio and audio developments.” [sic]

My work had once again passed through Boon’s hands! In 2003, having been The Radio Authority’s staff member with a maths/analysis background, I had been ordered to undertake a mammoth project to create for Ofcom the new regulator’s first historical database combining commercial radio licence, audience and financial information in a group of interlocking Excel spreadsheets. My complex formulae were required to summarise the state of the UK commercial radio industry, for publication in Ofcom’s initial annual ‘Communications Market Report’. Naturally, uncredited once again.

'The Communications Market 2004 - Radio' by Ofcom from Grant Goddard

[None of the hundreds of issues of ‘The Radio Magazine’ appear online. My news stories for the publication are available to read at https://www.scribd.com/lists/3527224/Radio-broadcasting-industry-news-stories-by-Grant-Goddard ]

Some men see things as they are and ask "Why … change?" : 2003 : Neil Stock, Ofcom

 A colleague would arrive at my workplace some Mondays with evident cuts and bruises. A tragic case of domestic violence? No. He was a loyal fan of Millwall Football Club, a team characterised by its “historic association with football hooliganism” [Wikipedia]. Did I overhear anyone comment that it might be considered inappropriate to work in a government quango when resembling the runner-up from five rounds with Mick McManus? No. Colleagues alleged that this young buck was untouchable because he held finance qualifications that his boss lacked, despite their requirement to legally sign off public accounts. That same boss was then promoted to personnel director, despite having demonstrated to me a similar skills deficit, and then to deputy chief executive of our organisation [see blog]. Ho hum.

Relevant qualifications and experience appeared to be non-essential for appointment to the management class at The Radio Authority. If you possessed ‘the right stuff’, prior employment in a Norfolk chicken processing factory could prove appropriate for a job regulating Britain’s commercial radio industry. One woman in my small crowded office talked incessantly, inserting expletives into every other sentence. Did any colleague suggest this to be inappropriate behaviour, particularly when some of us were interrogating radio station managers by phone and recording our conversations? No. Once, an interviewee enquired if I was calling from home, having overheard swearing in our office. Er, no, I just work in a madhouse.

Arriving daily to cross the threshold of our office, I felt like one of those unsuspecting visitors knocking on the front door of ‘The Munsters’ home, only to be invited into a scary otherworld that was bafflingly grotesque. Why did I choose to stay there? Because it was the only job I had been offered after countless rejected applications during months of unemployment [see blog]. And I knew that my private hell would end soon. In several months’ time, the government would be merging several small regulators, including ours, into one new huge one to which staff would be transferred en masse. Well, with the exception of our only two visible minority colleagues, one of whom was dumped in the new regulator’s basement call centre, the other who was told she would have to apply for advertised vacancies despite her lengthy loyal service to our organisation. Which decisionmaker in our midst did we suspect of having never torn up their dogeared ‘NF’ membership card?

In order to prepare us for employment in a modern state-of-the-art regulator, The Radio Authority’s workforce was sent to a government conference centre to watch our new leader, Stephen Carter, talk us through PowerPoint presentations promising us a bright new future. I left these events finally feeling ‘hope’, though some colleagues seemed to sense ‘tyranny’, preferring the security blanket of a dysfunctional abusive ‘family’ already tainted by a corruption scandal exposed on national television [see blog]. Preferring paperwork to floppy discs, I suspect nobody in The Radio Authority had even needed to press the ‘PowerPoint’ function on their archaic desktop computers. Why should they bother?

Though I had never witnessed our department required to function as any kind of team, we were all sent on a ‘teambuilding’ awayday organised by one of those faceless global management consultancies. We were told to pull together to solve theoretical problems, to play childish games and express our feelings in ‘breakout’ groups. I was paired with a colleague from my office who admitted her early career objective was to work on ‘BBC Radio Four’s ‘Women’s Hour’ programme, though she had never sought training in radio production [see blog]. My own ‘learning experience’ from that session was something I had observed before – our privately educated elite expect to succeed in their chosen shiny career without needing to put in any graft as practitioners.

I lacked acting abilities, having always volunteered to organise the sound for school plays, but at our awayday I was picked to roleplay a radio licence hopeful whose latest application had been refused, in dialogue with the officer who had turned me down. Having endured enough of that day’s preposterous exercises, I threw myself into this role, choosing to feign a nasal Northern accent and imitate a persistent applicant from Stoke who felt the Radio Authority was discriminating against him. My colleagues laughed loudly at my desperate attempts to win the argument against my posh counterpart. In fact, my performance was art imitating life. I had heard work colleagues often lampoon the speech of a licence applicant from Stoke, despite his experience in radio broadcasting. Naturally, my play-acting did not dent their snobbishness one iota.

I had not understood how convincing my role had been that day until, during The Radio Authority chairman’s monthly walkabouts round our office, he would greet me using the ‘Wayne’ name of the Stoke persona I had adopted … and neither was he being ironic or witty. I had been renamed. I corrected him each month, but he insisted on addressing me on the next occasion as ‘Wayne’. Though he transferred to the new regulator, the majority of our senior management either were not offered jobs there or decided to accept redundancy, I know not which. Given that some had never used a work computer, preferring to order underlings do the grunt work for them, it was difficult to imagine them integrating within a modern office environment [see blog].

Everyone in our department received an email requesting our thoughts on how the radio licence application process could be improved. It had been sent by our team deputy Neil Stock, who had surprisingly been promoted by somebody somewhere to lead the radio division within the new regulator a few months hence. I had lots of ‘thoughts’ on the subject so started banging them out on my desktop computer. I was 875 words into my spiel before suddenly halting, asking myself what the hell I was doing providing free insights from hard-bitten experience. Earlier in my working life, I had spent months writing a radio licence application. Stock had never. That application had won up against 39 competitors [see blog]. I had started working in commercial radio two decades ago. Stock had never. I had launched a London commercial radio station that had attracted a million listeners per week within its first six months [see blog]. Stock had never. Might he not be harvesting ideas from his ‘team’ to convince his new paymasters that he possessed some kind of grand plan?

This suspicion was confirmed when, not having initially responded to his request, Stock reminded me repeatedly that he still required my contribution. He knew I considered the present application system deficient in almost every aspect because I had told him as much in previous conversations. However, I had nothing to gain from assisting his meteoric rise through the regulatory ranks without commercial radio experience. As is evident from the raw stream of consciousness I wrote then and reproduce (uncorrected) here, my verdict on my employer’s licensing system was damning as a result of having watched it contribute to an increasingly disastrous commercial radio sector in Britain. But criticising The Radio Authority meant criticising my new boss, so I never replied.

Months later, we had moved to the modern office environment of Ofcom. At last, it felt as if I was living in the present century. However, I sat at my desk day after day doing nothing, sidelined by Stock. Eventually he invited me to join his sub-committee tasked with updating the paper licence application form, which seemed like continued attrition to divine my insights. We met a couple of times, during which I retained my counsel about the disastrous system, since it was evident that Stock contemplated only minor amendments rather than a full-blown overhaul. At the end of our final meeting, Stock concluded our discussions by announcing that the application form would remain exactly as it already was, with only the old logo on the front page to be replaced by ‘Ofcom’. I was still working in a madhouse!

One day, everyone in the radio section received an email from Stock requiring their presence at a team meeting, a novelty as no such meetings had occurred at The Radio Authority. We all filed into the glass-walled room in the middle of our floor, waiting to be addressed. I wrote a header in my notebook and expected to jot some bullet points, but what followed left me open-mouthed and unable to note a single word. The sole topic of discussion was these former Radio Authority employees’ refusal to update their working methods to support Ofcom’s modernisation plan. Everyone in the room who spoke supported this strategy. I said nothing as my jaw had already hit the ground. My colleagues were a rabble of anti-revolutionaries. They wanted nothing to change. They were working in Ofcom’s office, drawing salaries from Ofcom, using Ofcom’s resources to hold this meeting … but they wanted to pretend they were still working at The Radio Authority. It was bizarre!

I was reminded of the ‘Luddites’ I had studied for economic history: textile workers in Nottingham who, between 1811 and 1817, had opposed factory owners replacing their labour with machinery. The government had sent 12,000 troops to quell their destruction of new equipment and violence against mill owners, after passing ‘The Frame Breaking Act’ that had made “machine breaking” a capital crime. Two centuries later, I was in the midst of a middle-class penpusher uprising where their disobedience was probably limited to not clearing their desks of papers before sneaking out to catch an early train home. Instead of armed troops, the most violent official response might be a polite e-mail etiquette reminder.

I returned to my desk in a state of disbelief. I must have attended hundreds of meetings during my working life, but that was the first where the consensus was to refuse to adapt to twenty-first century working methods. It felt like ‘Back to The Flintstones’. They would have been happier NOT to have computer terminals on their desks and a fast internet connection. I seemed to be in a minority of one, surrounded in our open-plan office by a couple of dozen paid-up members of the ‘Popular Front for the Liberation of Radio Regulation Reactionaries’. I was half-expecting a singsong of ‘Power to The People’ during our afternoon tea break.

I was SO disappointed. I had endured a miserable eighteen months’ employment at The Radio Authority, during which I had been shouted at repeatedly, told not to talk about ‘radio’, denied my yearend bonus and had failed my annual review on every criterion [see blog]. Despite my successful track record in radio, I had been treated like a troublesome child. The only thing that had kept me arriving daily for work in Holborn was the hope that the situation at the merged regulator would prove different. Yet, within weeks of Ofcom’s launch, I was witnessing the same crazy behaviours that my colleagues had carried across the Thames with them to recreate their own private Transylvania. Like Harker, I needed to escape the clutches of these vampires if I were to retain my sanity. Could I tie together enough bedsheets?