[Paul]

As mentioned in another thread, Wise Buddah were commissioned to create an update package for Radio Aire. The new package sees Aire now having a complete resing of the Contemporary Cuts package along with some new custom cuts.

You can listen to the new cuts here

[MartinS]

Paul – many thanks for posting a link to a montage of the new cuts – it’s good to hear them at last following the recent news that they were on the way.

In my early years as a jingle buff it was always special to me when the UK “Leeds based station formally known as anything containing the word ‘Aire’” changed their jingles and imaging (and often specific name too)! I do listen to the station a lot and keep a good ear on their current station sound.

I read Paul’s post a few hours before I was able to listen to the new jingles at home – so I was trying to imagine in my mind (again) what some of the cuts may sound like. From the Jinglenews,com montage I it seems that they’ve only had two more contemporary cuts jingles re-sung (cut 6 ‘Dance’ and cut 9 ‘weekend’) yet a further four cuts custom created. I’m just trying to predict what the names of the four custom cuts may be!

Paul – you mention in your post that Aire now have a full re-sing of the WB Contemporary Cuts package – are you sure about this? I’m assuming that the montage contains all of the new cuts, as I seem to remember you mentioning the fact they were going for six new cuts in a previous post. If I’m not mistaken they still don’t have resings of cut 7 ‘rock’, cut 14(?) ‘top ten at ten’ and cut 12 ‘breakfast’.

It’s a real shame about cut 7 ‘rock’, as I think this would have gone great in front of certain tracks by Leeds band Kaiser Cheifs! Cut 14 would have been good sung as “Griffo.. the top ten at ten… aw yeah… rad-ioo aire” – although maybe not , as the official station name contains the ’96.3’, which would be hard to fit in! Not sure about cut 12 ‘breakfast’ – that’s probably my least favourite cut in the CC package and I think it would sound weak alongside the existing Wise Buddah Simon Logan Breakfast cuts and the many other breaksfast show cuts used from JonesTM and Sharpsell.

Anyway, onto the new cuts that they do have…

I do like them and they seem to have a distinctive sound. It’s maybe a low point that they all same to have female only vocals, however I wouldn’t be surprised if they have alternative mixes of some with additional or alternative male vocals. A re-sing of the CC cut 7 ‘rock’ may have gone some way to increase the female/male vocal balance across the cuts. Although to be fair the original set are probably more dominantly male vocals.

• 1st cut (CC cut 6 ‘disco’) – I can hear this going well in front of a lot of songs the station plays.

• 2nd cut (CC cut 9 ‘weekend’) – I’m surprised at this one. Has it been sung for a station before, I’ve just heard the “key to Manchester’s weekend” sing that Wise Buddah did as a demo cut. It sounds better than I expected and can imagine this being used well as a potential post news hour show opener, possibly not every hour though – it got tedious hearing cut 2 ‘dance’ (with a very scripted talkover) at the start of every hour in 2006 and most of 2007! A mix with a few less ‘oooahhs’ would be better on air me thinks!

• 3rd cut (custom #1). “dance trance”? At first listen memories of the Radio Aire 2001 Reelword Kiss London re-sings came into my head! It certainly has a much stronger end station name sing than those cuts did, and I like the note ends on.

• 4th cut (custom #2) “happy loiner”? Nice and catchy and certainly very usable. Probably my favourite of the four customs.

• 5th cut (custom #3) “Yorkshire chill”. Nice and relaxing but still very alive, like the two cities the station serves.

• 6th cut (custom #4) “yeah”. Probably my the least favourite one of the customs. A bit to heavy in the ‘yeahs’ – more of them than if you add all the numbers together in the Leeds area code (113) !

All in all I would have liked to have seen them go for the full Contempoary Cuts package 2 years ago and now be introducing a completely new custom package, the custom cuts give me the confidence that Wise Buddah could do more good themed sung imaging. Given the situation, I do hope that they continue to use the original 2006 cuts too, as I’ve really grown to know and like most of them a great deal.

As many people here may agree, jingles with the station name alone can get tiring though, even when used with a preceding ‘The best of…. bah” vocal over the top of a short ramp cut. Why couldn’t a large station like 96.3 Radio Aire been a bit adventurous and have some other vocals sung, even if only for occasional use? I admit that the “the best of the 80s, 90s and now” is a bit of a mouthful to sing, however there are plenty of other vocals they could sing for occasional use, which would pin the station close to the city of Leeds, ‘e.g. “We are Leeds”…. “Your weekend’s alive in Leeds”, “Backing the Rhino’s” Sorry, perhaps just me with the over emphasis on jingles having a geographical or local element – again!

Even alternative resings for breakfast “Top Ten at Ten” really do increase the usabilty of a package, such as with Reelworld’s Key 103 2006 and JonesTM’s TFMradio 2007 packages. The Radio Aire cuts, although decent tracks, are certainly basic in terms of sung vocals.

Are they on air yet? I didn’t hear any yesterday but only listened between 6am and 7am and won’t have chance to listen until next week now.

I’d be really interested to hear other people’s comments on the new cuts / overall Radio Aire imaging. It’s quite different to it’s nearby sister BAUER stations (Hallam FM, TFMRadio, 96.9 Viking FM and Key 103), which is probably a good thing – it would be awful if they all sounded the same – like a certain other UK group’s ‘brand’ in the same market.

Crikey – I must have too much time on my hands. Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far!

Mart

PS. Here’s a link to the Radio Aire 2006 thread – where I posted my thoughts a couple of weeks ago following the introduction of Exeter FM’s contemporary cuts package, before knowing what the Radio Aire new cuts would be. http://www.jinglemad.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?38248

[MartinS]

Heard three of the new cuts on air yesterday and today

1, 3, and 5 in the montage posted by Paul, i.e. Contempory Cuts Disco cut and two of the Customs. In each case they were all used very effectively in that the presenter talked over the ramp up to the vocal.

[MartinS]

Thought I'd bump this one up again given the currently discussion on the Viking FM jingles. The imaging of Viking FM and Radio Aire as neighbouring Bauer ‘big city’ brand stations is now sounding very alike. It's almost like early 1992 when they were both airing JAM KIIS90! Although now they are part of the same group and have recently aligned in terms of voiceover artists.

As an update on Radio Aire it's great to hear that, as of this week, the daytime hour launching seems to have moved onto using ramp beds versions of a number of different jingles. This adds great variety and is far less tiring to hear than when they used the same cut into every hour. It's also a great improvement from their immediately previous practice of using a beat bed drowned with celebrity drops culminating in a vocal 'radio aire' a-cappella. Incidentally, their exact previous horrible top of the hour as now appeared on Viking FM – of course with the appropriate end vocal!

I particularly like the new ‘hour launcher’ ramp version of cut 1 (maybe better recognisable on her as the cut Paul M had re-sung for the Jingle Network Podcaaaast). Not sure if they've done this in house or whether it's an offical mix provided by Wise Buddah? On one of the uses I heard yesterday, I'm sure Liz Whittaker had pre-recorded her intro though, rather than talked over it live. Isn't part of the fun/art of using jingles being able to judge and utilise the talk space before the vocal?

[mbMember]

Is this a slow alignment to make the networking more cohesive? – smae voices, same jingle lengths for out of break use.

[LenGroat]

Oh dear….

Yet more thumpmumblethump jingles.

If one of you technical wizards created a montage of this package for various stations, I bet after 2 minutes most people would want to turn it OFF?

EVERY cut is the same ~ electronic ~ have the 'writers' of these never heard of piano, guitars, woodwind or brass instruments?!

[MartinS]

Michael – you could be very well right on the networking thing. I have noticed that Radio Aire and Viking FM have often had the same newsreader this week in core daytime hours. One of the bulletins must be recorded though – as the news is different. For a long time on Radio Aire news we've heard (before street interviews) 'Here's what these Yorkshire people had to say on the topic' and it's been obvious (by recoccurance of the same accents) that they were in a different part of the region, possibly using clips gathered by Viking FM or Hallam FM. The use of 'Yorkshire', rather than 'Leeds' made me suspicious of this.

Also in line with your argument, 3 out of 4 of the Yorkshire big city stations have that 'The confessional' show on a late evening – so standardised length imaging my be useful

Len, regarding your point about every cut being the same. I would like to think that with the 'hertiage' stations, such as Radio Aire, it's more to do with the cost verus benefit of the product rather than anything else. It's a lot cheaper to use synthesisers – is it really worth the cost of paying skilled musicians (on specific intstruments) when the average listener does not appreciate that level of detail in the imaging?

Granted, I would love to hear more well 'detailed' produced packages, however everyone knows it's the case of so many 'other' (I'll be polite) radio stations now existing that the heritage have less of a market share and thus less revenue, less money for detailed costly jingles. I listened to JAM's KISS90/Beat/Turbo Z etc for years and noticed 'extra' elements jump out in them over the years, as they were so well produced to the nth degree of detail.

Today for example, XFM Manchester (which has taken some of heritage Key 103's share) plays a lot of guitar led songs – but they don't use sung jingles at all. However I'm not convinced that their choice not to use them is anything to do with the cost. Kids listening to XFM Manchester/Galaxy Manchester would not 'miss' jingles because they've not been used to them as much. My generation, 10 years older are more used to them on the heritage stations.

However, the heritage stations are often seen as too 'middle of the road' for the younger listeners – who want to feel part of one crowd or another. They would probably even consider many jingles to be 'cheesey' – although I hate that word and loathe it's use. It's very hard to produced effective sung imaging which matches a spectrum of today's UK music playlists without it sticking out like a sore thumb. Producers such as Reelworld/Jones TM should be credited for doing a great job here. Small companies like Wise Buddah do a good job, for relatively small outfits. Credit, the American product from the major producers usually does have that extra 'sparkle' – but is it always worth paying for if it adds nothing to listener recall? Credit to any UK station that decides to buy a British product.

So many people rave on about the Alfasound etc packages of the 1980s. If the ILR stations back then, most of which are todays 'heritage' stations had of had the budgets, would they have stayed in the UK? If British produced jingles were any better back then then why did BBC Radio 1, a comparative giant at the time, which a corresponding budget go over the Atlantic for so many years?

I'm just glad that they still use jingles fullstop. On arriving in Leeds a few times lately I've had to listen to the Wise Buddah Radio 2006/8 montages on my phone in order to get me in a 'Leeds' to cope with the place!

[danielwilson]

LenGroat, i agree, lets have some better intros, more classical, less electro!

[LenGroat]

MARTIN 'So many people rave on about the Alfasound etc packages of the 1980s. If the ILR stations back then, most of which are todays 'heritage' stations had of had the budgets, would they have stayed in the UK? If British produced jingles were any better back then then why did BBC Radio 1, a comparative giant at the time, which a corresponding budget go over the Atlantic for so many years?'

REPLY: Hello Martin

It's more complex than you realise and was nothing to do with cost but with IBA/ Musician's Union regulations.

Before ILR started the IBA under pressure from the MU agreed that only British MU musicians could be used on ILR jingles and other material. Also, any vocals were paid 'per layer' so if you stacked the vocals you paid the singers twice!

At Metro in 1974/5 we had TWO packages by PAMS Dallas. The IBA only found this out over a year after we put them on air. RESULT: these were removed and from 1976 to 1988 NO ILR stations were allowed to use US product.

Also in 1976 Radio 1 switched to JAM (a lucky coincidence for them…) THIS was why Radio 1 had an exclusive with JAM until 1988.

From 1988 onwards many ILR stations switched to JAM (including my stations Trent/Leicester Sound/GEM-AM) or other companies, and this continued until the mid 90's when ECONOMY on the few large radio groups led to the virtual demise of the sung jingle.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

Len Groat

[MartinS]

Len – thanks for taking the time to explain the situation re American/British product over time.

If anyone had been banned from using an American product I would have thought it would have been the BBC as a once staunch 'institution of Britshness'

It's always interesting to find out these pieces of jingle history, as my only true understanding of the jingles is from the point of how I appreciate them as a listener – I've never worked in radio/radio imaging at all.

[MartinS]

Not really related to the Wise Buddah package but didn't think it was worth starting a new thread.

Last week I thought my ears were deceiving me when I heard one of the old Reelworld Kiss Boston 2004 jingles (Simon Logan versions) on the breakfast show last week for the first time in over 2 years. Can't have been as a heard another, different one today. These were originally dropped when the first set of Wise Buddah cuts were introduced.

So Radio Aire now seems to be currently airing Jingles from three companies, namely Wise Buddah, JonesTM (Brekafast Gospel) and Reelworld. Similar situation to their neigbouring Bauer group sister, Key 103, where it's Reelworld, Jones TM and Cole Page.

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