End of radio era as transmitter that created Radio Forth legends Jay Crawford and Steve Hamilton is turned off

In 1973 Radio Clyde was the first commercial independent station in Scotland based in Glasgow, providing a service the BBC could only envy with Jack McLaughlin, the Laird O’ Cowcaddens, Tiger Tim Stevens, Ross King, Dougie Donnelly, Paul Coia, and headed up on the lunchtime flagship show by former Radio Scotland pirate and Kirkcaldy Hospital Radio founder, Richard Park. Their template of local news, phone ins, football commentary, and local music was a proven success and in January 1975, Radio Forth opened on 194 metres to cover the Lothians and Fife. Both these frequencies will cease soon along with Radio Tay on 1161 and 1548kHz covering Perth, Dundee and north Fife, what was Moray Firth Radio (MFR) on 1107 and what was West Sound on 1035kHz.

The Bauer radio group has been serving the frequencies with Greatest Hits Radio, so the networks lost their local identity some time ago – but some will have cherished memories of those pioneering days of Radio Forth in Fife.

It was an ambition of mine to join our local radio and at one time I had seven shows in one week at Forth, I still had a day job at Fife Council and was DJ at discos at weekends. The heroes of the day included Steve jack, the ‘hunk of funk’ Graham Jackson, Christopher John, Ken Haynes, Edinburgh Rock host Jay Crawford and the late Steve Hamilton.

The Radio Forth roadshow was groundbreaking in its day. Taking over an indoor venue they would bring a huge rig, disco lights and a star DJ who would play for an hour at peak time and run games and giveaways before the back-up jock closed the show. I’ve done both and while the fee was good, you had to buy your own merchandise to give away. There were some great nights at Cuinzie Neuk Kinghorn, Abbotshall Hotel, Birksgate, and Dutch Mill.

The first live radio from Fife was from the Garrison Discotheque on the Esplanade, Kirkcaldy but the landline and cues were poor. Quality improved when they opened a shop at 222 High Street Kirkcaldy with one side selling phone accessories and the other radio merchandise. They would broadcast at least one show a week from the shop, usually with me in Edinburgh playing the ads and the records. The stars of the day would join them live in the shop - Bruce Forsyth, Bobby Davro and rock band Nazareth.

The annual charity on air auction would have a team of helpers staffing telephones as listeners would bid on a range of donated items which changed every 15 minutes. Audience figures went up and they played no music- so they even saved money! In the hard winter of 1978-79 they set up Snowline for four days as the country grew to a standstill. By phoning the station listeners were able to gain help, provisions and support from what was award-winning programming.

In 1984 Forth split the frequencies with normal programmes on the medium wave and Festival City Radio on 96.8FM to coincide with the Edinburgh Festivals. Mike Maran and I presented the late night show with guests we chose ourselves which included Owen Dudley Edwards, Richard Demarco, Rab Noakes, Angus Deayton, Dana Gillespie and radio legend Brian Mathew.

Over the years they went through many branding labels, but the writing was on the wall as DAB was promoted as the new messiah to save radio. Radio apps and online streaming then showed how poor the AM signal really was. These days with 24-hour music playout systems and affordable technology to produce online streaming radio it seems no need for the ever-declining medium wave audience. I do remember a time though when you could name all the daytime presenters and knew all the evening specialist shows like Transistor Boogie, Stepping Out, Breaker Breaker, the Open Line, Play It Again Tam or Monday Monday presented by myself and Mark Hagen.