Century Jingles and IDs

For the 1994 launch, a large jingle package was sung by JAM Creative Productions of Dallas (through their agents Alfasound in the UK), re-singing the KVIL Celebrate package, although the travel bed was from another KVIL package by a different jingle company, TM Century. The station voice was Nick Coady for many years, although he only introduced the news and phone-in shows - there were no VO 'liners' or drop-ins. Male American sweepers were introduced a couple of years after launch but due to their quirky scripting were short lived (e.g. "If your postman doesn't listen to Century, leave the dog out, and don't feed him!" and "Morgan doesn't break rules, 'cos he doesn't have any! Century's Morgan in the Morning"). Century had a sung presenter ID jingle for every presenter, using the same cut so that their names could be swapped around with the other part of the jingle which sung the time of day that they were on air. The table below (apart from the Simon Bates one) shows the full list and how they could be edited for any presenter's shift change or fill-in:

The presenter's name vocals were provided as an acapella mix-out, so that it could be edited onto the front of any of the existing 'day part' jingles Century already had (morning, afternoon, evening, late at night). This means that from purchasing 10 jingles, they effectively have up to 81 useable jock cuts for each day part!

The only jingle that was used without the presenter name on air was the Lite Top 40 one. There was also a generic version sung of this cut which used the lyric "100 - 102, Century".

In 1997, under the direction of John Simons, Alfasound produced and sung a custom jingle package for Century which sung their new slogan "The heart of the north east", which was later re-sung for Wessex FM. To me, it always sounded a bit over-cooked. Just before the Capital Radio take-over of Century, a custom JAM package was made for all three Century stations. It was demoed on the JAM website for Mix (KIMN) in Denver. Capital then introduced Music4 (Vibe Music & Audio Imaging as it was then) custom jingle packages for the whole Century network, which also included Ocean FM.

Century's commercials were almost exclusively recorded and produced at Alfasound in Cheshire, and so when Century decided to build their own commercial production facility and stop farming com prodd out to Alfasound, it was one of the reasons cited as to why Alfasound closed. The commercials for larger campaigns often used sung jingles, such as those below for Everfresh (butchers), Catterick Caravans, Century Windows (not related!) and Autotrader (which used a 60 second TM Century gospel-style breakfast show jingle).

Audio Clips from Century Radio

These clips were recorded by me, starting with Century's launch in 1994 onto ferric cassette tape, then directly onto computer (to edit) and then onto minidisc (to archive). I had to archive them as my hard disk was only 850Mb back then (Windows 3.11, Pentium 75MHz, 16Mb RAM!), and MP3s were unheard of. Even so, minidiscs were £8 each, so for a teenager at school this whole project for me was a labour of love.
In 2010 I recorded the audio from the minidiscs back to the PC again, saving them as MP3 files for this website. Quality is pretty good in most cases, and they will certainly bring back memories of when Century ruled the airwaves of the north east! Naturally, all audio is copyright Century / Border Radio Holdings.

Jingles
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1995	10s	"Music to make your day. 100 to 102 FM" Century jingle mix-out with American VO.
	1995	10s	Paul Gough, Saturday Night. This jingle was ordered after the initial launch package as a 'top-up'.
	1995	10s	Mike Parr, Lunchtime Phone-in. Another top-up jingle. The 'Mike Parr' vocals were provided as an acapella mix-out, so that it could be edited onto the front of any of the existing 'day part' jingles Century already had (morning, afternoon, evening, late at night).
	1995	12s	Mike Parr left BBC Radio Newcastle to present the lunch-time phone-in slot after Paul Frost left. This is a Nick Coady VO for the show.
	1995	6s	"Morgan doesn't break rules, because he doesn't have any! Century's Morgan in the Morning" American VO
	1995	13s	Steve Philips late at night jingle. Steve normally did weekday evenings, so this must have been a swing shift. As recorded - the transmitter feed when switching from the local adverts for the south of the region used to either pause for a few seconds and you'd hear a click before a jingle or as in this case, the first bit of the jingle is clipped off.
	1996	30s	A few variants of Nick Coady's Northern Electric sponsorship voice-over at the start of the weather jingle. This sung weather jingle played after each and every hourly news bulletin for over 4 years.
	1996	28s	A couple of John Morgan jingles from JAM from one of his 'wind-up' compilation tapes. They appear to be slightly speeded up on the tape.
Sung Adverts
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1995	60s	Autotrader jingle. Sung by Dallas jingle company TM Century (no relation!). The instrumental bed was also used under all travel reports, as Autotrader sponsored the travel bulletins around this period. TM Century also sung the Morgan breakfast show song and the "Century traffic" jingle for the station's launch.
	1995	30s	Catterick Caravans jingle. The owners were also featured on a "why you should advertise on Century" advert, praising the jingle and how it managed to fit the company's name into a lyric.
	1995	30s	Century Windows (again, no relation!) Sinatra pastiche jingle.
	1995	30s	Everfresh 'the pink porker' trade meat supplier jingle. Instrumental version also used as a bed for the 'pink pig' competition on the breakfast show.
Century 21 News Idents / Stings
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1994	12s	"Century 21 - non-stop news for the north east. The day's top stories". Nick Coady is the voice here, as for all the clips in this section.
	1994	8s	"Century tonight - what the papers say"
	1994	8s	"Following the sporting game, this is Century Sport" from Century 21 News
	1994	10s	"Across the north east, Century 21 News" break bumper
Trails
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1996	48s	Mix Descriptor 1, American VO
	1996	39s	Mix Descriptor 2, American VO
	1996	44s	Mix Descriptor 3, American VO
	1995	10s	A rather drunk sounding Andy Hodgson trail for the 'Sale of the Century', which was a precursor to eBay, but on the radio.
	1994	12s	Sale of the Century terms & conditions. I never managed to catch the start of these, and this recording is a 'cut and shut' job from 2 tapes. The bit missing at the start is something like "Callers are allowed to ...."
	1994	19s	Simon Bates Golden Hour trail. The star presenter when the station was launched.
	1995	49s	Bond-style Breakfast Gamble trail
	1996	43s	Breakfast Gamble "winning is easy" montage trail
	1995	39s	Breakfast Gamble £10k winner trail. Andy Hodgson is the voice.
	1995	39s	Breakfast Gamble prize list trail
	1995	30s	Breakfast show 'Everfresh' trail
	1995	1m 6s	Advertise on Century, Ideal Homes, John Morgan
	1995	60s	Advertise on Century, Octacon, Andy Hodgson
	1995	42s	Mike Parr trail for the Top 10 at 10. I remember this being played one evening during Steve Philips show. When you hear it you'll spot the deliberate mistake.
	1995	30s	The Century Job Club trail, public service broadcasting! Includes the 'click' as both Century regions re-join the main output feed after splitting for local adverts, and the 'Brining us together' imaging jingle.
Quirkies
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1994	12s	Whenever there was a power-cut or a computer crash, because Century was one of the first stations in the world to be fully computerised, an emergency DAT tape was played until everything was rebooted and back to normal. Andy Hodgson is the pre-recorded voice apologising. "Unfortunately we are unable to bring you our usual programmes. We'll try and return to them as soon as possible."
	1994	15s	As above. I seem to remember it happening with some frequency in the first few years on air!
			More to come....check back soon!
Airchecks (telescoped)
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1996	25:45	(Note: 24Mb file) John Morgan (but no Andy Hodgson on this occasion) broadcast from the Century office in Middlesbrough for a week, instead of Gateshead. The office had a Sonifex studio installed for this purpose, and was based over the road from Middlesbrough Town Hall. I think this could have been on 30 September 1996. It includes: Phil from Fenham with a rape joke, 'Who ate all the pies?' (Newboulds competition), Dave Goldring on news, Jon Briggs (R2) voicing AA roadwatch promo, a Morgan Wind-up and a (then unknown) Jon Culshaw voicing several ads.
	1996	26:26	(Note: 25Mb file) Morgan from Middlesbrough studios, as above. 1st October 1996.
	1996	39s	Steve Philips late at night aircheck.
	1996	4:08	John Morgan and a lottery ticket competition winner. Keeping Century's then 50:50 music/speech ratio up!
	1995	17s	Mike Parr weather intro and outro. I didn't record the actual forecast, but this weather jingle played without fail after every on-the-hour news update for about 4 years. The vocal style was a re-do of the version from the original jingle package. After hearing the original, I know why they had it re-done.
	1996	1:14	When John Morgan sat in for Mike Elliott on the late night phone in, he did a feature called "Morgan's Global Call" where he would dial a random number in a foreign country. Here he is calling Dallas, Texas. Remember, this was before the internet was at all mainstream, so it was still quite a novelty to talk to someone on the other side of the world! Sorry for the edits on this. This was the first time I had recorded directly from the radio onto the PC, so the quality is great, but I ran out of recording disk space on my 850Mb hard drive when this was happening! If anyone knows the background music on this clip, I'd love to know.
	1996	15s	A rare clip of Moose Evans on Century, 1am onwards. Music bed is an edited version of Apollo 440's Krupa which was being used on an advert around this time.