For Chris Cary, his
powerhouse and revolutionary Radio Nova was the dominant station in Dublin and
the greater part of Leinster. His station built its success on ‘broadcasting to
Dublin’ but for a broadcaster to cut his teeth on board Radio Caroline in the
North Sea, the conquering of his homeland was the next big adventure. Because
of his powerful transmitters on both FM and AM, Radio Nova’s signal travelled
across the Irish Sea, sweeping over the Isle of Man and reaching the coast of Merseyside.
Cary realised that he could tap into a newer and bigger market on mainland
Britain. National commercial radio had yet to arrive in Britain and in large
cities like Liverpool listeners had the basic choice of BBC local radio or an
ILR.
Radio Nova began
announcing that they were ‘broadcasting from Dublin’ and Liverpool, a city with
a large Irish diaspora, was the first primary target, with what he hoped would
be a powerful longwave transmitter to follow and cover a large swathe of
Britain. By late 1984, Nova was a popular choice for listeners in Liverpool,
challenging the positions of Radio City (ILR) and BBC Radio Merseyside. Other choices
including the national BBC Radio One were being quickly left behind. Cary
through his UK based company ABC Music Radio Limited opened an office in
Liverpool city centre at Suite 411, Cooper Buildings, Church Street. The two
legal stations in the city were hampered by regulations when Cary was not. Radio
City was limited to ‘9 hours needle time in every 24 hours’[1], while their BBC
counterpart was under even tighter constraints limited to ‘3 hours needle time
in 18 hours’.
To generate publicity in
August 1984, Nova divided it on air promotion of £10,000 into two prizes with
one to be won in Ireland and one in the UK. Problems arose as the Dublin phone
system was overpowered by the volume of entries and was deferred to a later
date but the UK winner was former Blackpool resident Sue Wheldon from the
Wirral, who was flown with her family to Dublin and collected her cheque from
Cary himself at Nova Park. By September their jingles were already promoting ‘Radio
Nova playing all over Liverpool..now’.
The station generated
more newspaper stories when they ran a competition to find new on-air personnel
including DJ’s and newsreaders. In October 1984, they announced that DJ’s on
Merseyside would be auditioned for the positions at the station that could earn
them up to £25,000 per year, considerably more than was offered at either Radio
City, Merseyside or even RTE Radio 2. The Liverpool Echo[2] was reporting
that through a locally based advertising agency, Nova was spending £50,000 on
promoting the station within the Merseyside and Lancashire areas.
The station despatched DJ’s
to headline gigs in the Merseyside area including their participation in an
anti-heroin campaign which was launched at Mr Pickwick’s nightclub in February
1984, headlined by Nova DJ’s.
Only a handful of British
advertisers used Nova and the office closed, this despite the fact that Nova
aimed their programming at a British audience with British news, weather and
traffic reports. As one commentator reported "What would the guy
listening in the Liberties, Dublin want to know about traffic jams on the
M6"[3].
No comments:
Post a Comment