Wonderful Radio London
Wonderful Radio London was a commercial station, with studios and transmitter aboard a former US Minesweeper anchored three and a half miles off Southeast England from late December 1964, until 3 PM on Monday, August 14, 1967.
Origin of the Station
Wonderful Radio London was the brainchild of Don Pierson who lived in Eastland, Texas, USA. According to an interview conducted by Dr. Eric Gilder with Don Pierson which was published by Sibiu University Press in Romania during 2001, Don Pierson got the idea to start Wonderful Radio London while reading the Dallas Morning News. The newspaper carried an account of the start-up of Radio Caroline and Radio Atlanta from two ships which at that time were anchored off the coastline of Southeast England. Pierson said he was captivated by the fact that these two offshore broadcasting operations were the first and only all-day commercial radio stations serving England. Because Pierson was an entrepreneur, he compared the number of stations then serving the population of Northwest Texas where he lived, with these two stations serving the population of England. As he told his story, he concluded that he had an idea that would be worth a lot of money. Pierson caught the next available "red eye" flight from Love Field in Dallas to England where he investigated the British broadcasting scene for himself. Upon arrival he chartered a small plane and flew out over the North Sea above the two existing radio ships and after taking photographs, he returned to Texas with the idea of creating a station that was bigger and better than either of them.
Origin of the name
Wonderful Radio London was created by Don Pierson who took his inspiration for the station and for the name from two sources. The station was originally devised as an actual clone of Gordon McLendon's highly successful radio station KLIF in Dallas, Texas. Don Pierson wanted to use recordings from that station and remove the local commercials and then retransmit the tape-recorded output with local British commercials from his own ship anchored offshore. In other words KLIF in "Big D" would become KLIF broadcasting to "Big L". However, the PAMS jingles used by KLIF, which were an unknown concept in the United Kingdom at the time, were not entirely the same as those heard on KLIF, but those on heard over its Dallas competitor which branded that station as "Wonderful KBOX". The KBOX jingles resung for Wonderful Radio London by PAMS, then determined the name of the station as far as listeners in the United Kingdom were concerned because what they heard was "Wonderful Radio London" and "Wonderful Big L". The British authorities would not allow the registration of a British sales company called "Radio London" and so it was registered as "Radlon (Sales) Ltd." which was the name plugged on the air for advertising sales. The investors behind the project were based in Texas and they used a series of totally different names for interlocking companies for ownership purposes in order to disguise their interest. Today the station is still exclusively remembered as "Wonderful Radio London" while "Radio London" is now thought of in terms of either a local BBC station that later came on the air, or any number of IBA commercial radio stations that used the name "London" in their names.
Transmitter power
The station's RCA Ampliphase transmitter was rated at 50,000 watts (50kW), although it initially operated at just 17,000 watts. By contrast, its main rival Radio Caroline South had a Continental Electronics transmitter with a maximum output of 10,000 watts. In 1966 Caroline South upgraded to Continental Electronics 50kW transmitter and for a time Wonderful Radio London pretended to retaliate by claiming a new output of 75kW, although in fact it had never upgraded its original RCA 50 kW transmitter.
ReferencesMass Media Moments in the United Kingdom, the USSR and the USA, by Gilder, Eric. - "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu Press, Romania. 2003 ISBN 973-651-596-6
External linksWonderful Radio London Story
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