26. LAST TIN OF TUNA, IN LONDON ENGLAND

Shortly after the former US minesweeper Density (renamed Galaxy) arrived off the coast of Frinton-on-Sea (Essex) in the second half of December 1964 listeners -like myself- immediately were charmed by one of the most successful American jingle packages. It was created by Pams of Dallas and consisted mainly of the so-called series 18 “Sonosational”. The initial jingle repertoire had been further enhanced by scores of clever edits. It was Radio London's early programme director Ben Toney, a Texan, who had overseen the production of Pams Radio London jingles.

In the 50's and early 60's US stations had developed a tradition of using a superlative connected with a station name, like “Colourful KQV” and “The Mighty 690”. Jingle beds had been composed to allow for such superlatives. That's the reason why Radio London became “Wonderful Radio London”. The station was also referred to as “Big L”. A lesson learnt when years later we were managing local station Radio Dynamo in Knokke-Heist (Belgium) and called it “De Grote Dee” (The Big D).

Creating Radio London's jingle package to a large extent meant adapting jingles that had been made for other stations in the States. That is why unexpectedly also a jingle in Spanish was lurking in the series: “Esta es la estación número uno en London England es mi favorita. Wonderful Radio London, Olé!”. (6th jingle) This caused some confusion. Because the jingles were so fast and slick not everyone could easily understand some of the lyrics, especially when they were suddenly confronted with a foreign language. Hence it is no surprise that 10 year old John Bennett was completely baffled by Big L's 'Spanish jingle'. It resulted in a beautiful piece of mondegreen. John thought he heard “It's the last tin of tuna in London England, see the ballerina. Wonderful Radio London. Olé”.

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24. WONDERFUL RADIO LONDON EVEN IN CHURCH

In the second half of 1964 more fortbased stations took to the air along the British east coast. In the Thames Estuary Radio City (ex Radio Sutch), Radio Invicta (later rebranded as KING and subsequently as the legendary Radio 390), started broadcasting from derelict World War II forts. Then arrived the heavyweight.

With many offshore stations already on the air Wonderful Radio London came late to the party. But when Big L started transmissions on 266, just before Christmas 1964, the station sounded so much better than Caroline and the other broadcasters. Especially the jingles made the station come across slick and professional. Also, from the start ‘Big L’ offered a very strong signal. One could hear it everywhere. And that was literally true.

In those days -although I was 17 and an outspoken atheist- my mother still forced me to attend church on Sunday. For a long time I had been most unwilling to do so, especially since my parents stopped going to church years before. To survive an hour’s worth of tedious boredom I usually took some Franz Kafka (my favourite author), disguised as a prayer book. With the advent of Radio London attending mass became less of an ordeal however.

It so happens that the new PA-system in the church at Zeebrugge was not properly grounded. Apart from producing a hum, the whole system also conducted itself as a very crude receiver. The result was that when sitting next to any of the loudspeakers in the church one could hear Radio London in the background. As the priest only made sparing use of the microphone, Big L’s programme could be enjoyed almost without interruption. This sort of gave a whole new meaning to “Go to the church of your choice”, one of the Pams-jingles that Radio London used from time to time over the weekend.

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23. THE AFTERMATH OF THE REM AFFAIR

In the dying days of TV-Noordzee viewers had been encouraged to become members of the TROS, an acronym for Televisie Radio Omroep Stichting. This organisation aimed at and succeeded in becoming one of the official broadcasters in The Netherlands, as the number of its required members grew in leaps and bounds. Just a year after the demise of the REM-project the TROS was given time slots in the Dutch public broadcasting system. It became the first of the so-called broadcasting pillars (omroepzuilen) to programme the kind of light entertainment the public really wanted to hear and see. Up to that time the other ‘pillars’ had mainly focussed on issues such as education, religion, culture and politics. The growing popularity of the TROS programmes soon forced the original Dutch broadcasters to follow suit.

After Radio & TV Noordzee was forced off the air at the end of 1964 the REM Island lay derelict for ten years. From 1974, when the tell-tale mast was removed, until 2004 the platform was used by the Dutch government to automatically measure sea temperature, salt concentration and wave height. In addition also meteorological information was collected. Early in the new century the measuring platform, which had been renamed “Meetpost Noordwijk”, had outlived its usefulness. In 2004 the construction was put up for sale, but no buyer was found. Two years later, in September, the remainder of the former REM-island was dismantled with the help of the large pontoon crane Rambiz, supplied by the Vlaamse Berginsmaatschappij Scaldis. In 1987 the enormous crane had also been deployed to right the capsized Townsend Thoresen ferry Herald of Free Enterprise off the coast of Zeebrugge.

The upper structure of the REM-platform was temporarily stored in the port of Vlissingen. Later it was purchased by the housing association De Key and moved to Amsterdam, where in July 2011 it opened as a restaurant. 

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22. SPECIAL LEGISLATION FOR THE OCCASION

Politicians in The Hague however were not charmed by tv-programming from the high seas. They rushed through the so-called “anti-REM-wet”, legislation making broadcasts from structures on the Dutch Continental shelf illegal. That became possible because of a UN-resolution concerning the rights of coastal states over their part of the Continental shelf. This led professor Eric Suy, a resident of Knokke-Heist (Belgium), to publish a study in 1965 about the “Volkenrechtelijke aspekten van de REM-affaire”. From 1974 to 1983 Suy was Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs at the United Nations.

In the meantime, in December 1964, the owners of the REM-island, announced that its TV operations had been sold to a British company, High Seas Television Ltd. Ownership of the REM-island itself was transferred to a Panamanian company. But it was all to no avail.

On the morning of December 17th 1964 a flotilla of boats accompanied by police helicopters arrived at the REM-island. Dozens of police officers disembarked, and at 7 minutes past 9, Radio Noordzee went off the air in the middle of Anneke Grönloh’s “Paradiso”. 

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21. TELEVISION THAT MADE WAVES

During the first half of August 1964 work continued on the REM-island off the Dutch coast. The antenna mast was completed and towered some 90m above the surface of the sea. The reinforced roof of the broadcasting and accommodation unit started to serve as a helipad and the official opening of TV Noordzee was set for September 1st. Every day after finishing my Summer job as a caddy at the Golf course in Knokke, I rushed home to point the rotary antenna in northeasterly direction, parallel to the coast, in the hope of catching the REM’s television debut. Each time I had my box camera at the ready. 

Then on Thursday August 13th the persistent background snow on the telly, purportedly some of the residual electromagnetic radiation left over from the Big Bang/Bounce at the start of the universe, was suddenly replaced by a picture perfect test card showing the sea, the REM-island and the lettering ‘tv NOORDZEE’. Media history was being made, but the start of television programmes from the offshore structure also caused dangerous waves in the Dutch parliament. 

Two weeks later the official opening of TV Noordzee started with Marjan Bierenbroodspot and Hetty Bennink welcoming viewers on a very windswept Rem-island. That was followed by a 20 minute documentary on the building of the broadcasting structure. Viewers in Holland were very enthusiastic about the TV-Noordzee programming which was aired before the official station Nederland 1 started its evening programmes and after this state-run broadcaster closed down around 22.00 hrs. 

To help finance the 9 million guilders REM-island operation, 7 million guilders worth of shares were issued. Such was the popularity of the project, that the issue was heavily oversubscribed. Many small investors became minority shareholders. On the date of issue, 13 August 1964, the share price was 20 guilders. As stated earlier, within 10 days, the value of the shares had rocketed to 143 guilders. 

By October 1964 audience surveys showed that TV Noord­zee had 2 million viewers every night. TV and radio from the REM-island were not on the air simultaneously. Radio Noordzee operated between 9am and 6.15 pm, and 15 minutes later the TV station signed on.

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17. MOR-STATIONS ON STICKS

In early Summer 1964, the Red Sands off the Isle of Sheppey -another of the ageing anti-aircraft platforms- was taken over by people who wanted to make a go of regional commercial radio in Kent. Subsequently test broadcasts were carried out on a number op frequencies. In the second half of July the newcomer settled on 985 kHz and called itself “Radio Invicta, your station on sticks on 306”. Reception in Kent, Essex and coastal areas in Belgium was excellent. Life on the solitary sea-towers was at first uncomfortable and sometimes fraught with danger. But for the people putting up the money, a fort-based operation cost a lot less to run. 

Although she could hardly be called a fan of this or any other station, Invicta’s more middle-of-the-road type of music was somewhat better tolerated by my mother than the output of most of the floating broadcasters. In the early evening reception on 306m became problematic however. Invicta’s power of just 750 Watts proved no match for a strong same-channel signal drifting in from Algiers. As the evening progressed no amount of turning the ‘tranny’ could prevent Invicta from being totally swamped out. 

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13. PIRATES OFF THE BRITISH MAIN

In 1964, like modern day successors to the 16th century French, Dutch and English privateers off the Spanish Main, suddenly a flurry of radio pirates popped up along the British Main, being the Essex coast and the Thames Estuary; often described as pirate alley. Un­like their Caribbean predecessors, who went after Spain’s sil­ver bullion, the pop pirates had set their sights on London’s adver­tising dollar in an attempt to break the monopoly of the BBC and the large record com­­panies. The pioneer in the race to lay claim to the lucrative London market was Radio Caroline, financed by Irishman Ronan O’Rahilly, who hoped to emulate Veronica’s success. A former Danish passenger ferry Frederica was bought, renamed Caroline and fitted out as a radio ship in the Irish port of Greenore, owned by Ronan’s family. After two days of tests off Felixstowe Britain’s first off­shore station opened officially on Easter Sunday, March 29th 1964. Ronan had been egging on everyone connected with the organisation in order to be able to inaugurate the station on that day. 

In fact, at the time, I only heard about Caroline going on the air on Easter Monday, as I was spending my school holidays in the small Belgian village of Beerzel (near Malines) where my maternal grandparents lived. My immediate problem was that Caroline’s broadcast on the announced 199m (in fact 1520 kHz) was too close to Belgian regional radio in Antwerp. But as luck would have it my niece Maria Goris, who had just married, was in possession of a large Phillips portable radio, which could be turned away from most of the splutter involuntarily caused by the Antwerp station on the adjacent channel. After a few minutes’ tuning and turning the sound of Caroline’s bell rang through the small house. It would change my life forever. Over the years the start of Caroline has also become a very important date to me personally. More than half a century later I still use it as an all important benchmark. In my life BC means ‘Before Caroline’.

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