Century Jingles and IDs

For the September 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 (click the link to hear it sung for the original station), originally sung for a radio station in Dallas called KVIL. Although the travel bed was actually a weather bed from another KVIL package by a different jingle company, TM Century, also in Dallas. Very Dallas!

The station voice was Nick Coady for many years although he only introduced the news and phone-in shows and did drop-in liners for the Century 21 News programme - there were no VO 'liners' or drop-ins to start with. Male American voiced sweepers were introduced a couple of years after launch but due to their quirky scripting and limited number were quite 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 jingle 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. The 'lunchtime phone-in' and 'Saturday night' ones were later additions not produced with the original launch set. There was also a general use version sung of this same cut which used the lyric "100 to 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 personally, it always sounded a bit 'over-cooked' and seemed a bit of a step down from such superb JAM jingles they had launched with.

Just before the Capital Radio take-over of Century, a custom JAM package was made for all three Century stations at the same time. It is 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 commmercial production out to Alfasound, it was one of the reasons cited as to why Alfasound closed. The commercials for larger campaigns often used rather catchy and not actually annoying 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 track). Quite a feat to have adverts you could sing along with!

Most jingles played after ad breaks were unintentionally preceeded by quite a loud 'click' noise, which was because the Pontop Pike transmitter in the north (101.8FM) played different adverts to the Bilsdale transmitter in the south (100.7FM) of the region. The click was presumably from some automatic remote switch when both transmitters started broadcasting the same programme content together again. It did sometimes chop of the very start of jingles. Some examples are below.

Audio Clips from Century Radio

These clips were recorded by myself 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 drive size at the time was only 850Mb (running 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
	1994	14s	"Bringing us together, keeping you in touch. All across the north east - Century". Lovely tingly JAM jingle used from station launch. I've kept the 'click' that you'd hear when both north and south transmitters rejoined after ad breaks.
	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 very start 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. That's over 33,500 plays!
	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.
	1995	19s	The inimitable Century news intro used every hour for over 2 years. Using the KVIL sonic logo (although seemingly not on the KVIL Celebrate jingle demo on the JAM website, so maybe a custom for Century?), voiced by Nick Coady. On this occasion the news intro was fired a little early, so we almost get to hear the complete track before the IRN newsreader starts. And yes, for whatever reason even the studio original seems to have that loud click near the end!
	1995	37s	'Who's in it to win it' competition intro by John Morgan then another by Nick Coady (VO). With dynamic 'outro' into music if they didn't win. Montage of 3 clips.
	1994	6s	Century Traffic intro. This was actually a resing of a KVIL Dallas weather bed from TM Century rather than JAM where all the other Century jingles were from. It was looped and went on for several minutes. I only ever heard the end-sing once on a really snowy day when there was loads of road problems, and it coincidentally was perfectly timed with the end of the actual report. I think it even bemused John Morgan who made reference to hearing the end of it for the first time (and how long the report was!).
	1994	8s	Traffic outro (I think used in their Century 21 news hour).
	1995	1:32	A montage of the US voice-over liners that didn't last very long. They were good, and were the first 'drop-in' liners they had used (having only JAM jingles as IDs) but there weren't that many so they grew old quickly.
	1995	7s	"The Moose is loose!" Nick Coady voice-over for Canadian DJ Moose Evans on overnights (live - not voice-tracked!).
	1994	11s	Mike Elliot phone in liner (before he became 'Mike the Mouth') voiced by John Morgan.
	1995	24s	Mike Elliot phone in liner with harder-edged rock style music for his new 'shock jock' status after his return from being taken off air. Voiced by John Morgan.
	1994	7s	The end sing of the weather bed. This sing used on air is different to the version on the original jingle package master, which did sound a bit weird, so they must have had it redone.
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 around this period, as Autotrader sponsored the travel bulletins. Based on the theme tune for 70s US TV sitcom 'The Jeffersons' which no-one in the UK would have been aware of. 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.
	1995	30s	Sealtight Windows jingle. A bit annoying, to be honest! To the tune of 'Old Macdonald Had A Farm'.
	1994	51s	Hartlepool Historic Quay advert, which had recently opened in 1994. Using numerous sound effects from the museum. The advert is not sung, but does use the instrumental 'We Are Teesside' theme at the end as the project was funded by the Teesside Development Corporation. The quay was actually themed around a late 17th century port (not 18th century as the advert!).
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
	1994	2s	"Century 21 News" liner
	1994	26s	The close of Century 21 News. "Across the north east, Century 21 News". Then the start of a South Cleveland Garages jingle.
	1994	1:05	Edited montage of Century 21 liners.
	1994	3s	"Hit and miss on the TV tonight"
	1994	4s	"Century tonight - what the papers say"
	1994	2s	"The day's top stories"
Promos
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 coup presenter when the station was launched as he had not long since left national BBC Radio 1.
	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 'Bringing us together' imaging jingle.
	1995	29s	Country Countdown USA with Lon Helton. A syndicated radio show broadcast 2 - 5pm on Sunday. This promo with JAM jingle bed and co-host Garth Brooks with custom end tag from Lon mentioning Century. It was sent to Century on a DAT tape and once when that week's new show didn't arrive in time, they played the previous weeks again!
	1995	41s	Crazy Gardening Phone-In promo. I missed a little bit off the start. It's a bit Vic and Bob inspired with Adam Eden singing, Gary Philipson, and John Simons.
	1995	50s	Barbara Dickson at the Sunderland Empire concert promo. Voiced by Andy Hodgson.
	1995	29s	Free National Lottery ticket giveaway. Summer 1995. John Morgan explains. Not sure how many weeks they put your numbers on for. Always seemed a weird idea to me, but I suppose it was cheap to do and they could do a 'giveaway' every hour. Morgan was really into the lottery and would buy many tens of tickets himself when there was a rollover.
	1995	30s	Dish of the Day on the breakfast show, with Newboulds the butchers. Voiced by Andy Hodgson.
	1995	30s	Surreal Crazy Gardening Show promo using the Prince & The New Power Generation - Gett Off intro. John Simons.
	1995	30s	Crazy Gardening Show promo montage.
	1995	41s	Lunchtime at the office. The first and only time this JAM jingle was used on air. John Simons.
	1995	40s	Morgan in the Morning promo with Andy Hodgson. "Giving away a single bed a day"!?
	1995	45s	Morgan in the Morning singing his own song. Upon reflection - bizarre!
	1995	45s	Mike The Mouth promo montage. Two clips.
	1995	29s	Legendary Tyne Tees in-vision continuity announcer Neville Wanless promo - nostalgic music show on Sundays from 7 to 10pm.
	1995	28s	Paul Gough - Saturday night promo. Voiced by Tony Fisher.
	1995	20s	ex- Radio 1 Simon Bates Golden Hour promo.
	1995	9s	Tyne Tees in-vision continuity announcer Bill Steele promo. Sunday at 2pm. I can't help but feel Bill had been forced to do this - "That one'll do"...
	1995	51s	Eurodisney coach holiday offer with Century, voiced by John Morgan. £199 per adult, for 3 nights, kids under 17 go free.
	1995	39s	John Morgan promotes the final week of the Breakfast Gamble in a fairly subdued way. Missed the beginning.
	1994	55s	Comedic promo from Andy Hodgson and Tony Fisher to promote family day at the Regal Greyhound stadium in Sunderland. Century family day out. Then a contrasting Century 21 news sting!
	1994	24s	Clipped winner promo for a competition giving away a HOUSE worth £50k. Century was an exciting station to listen to with prizes like that - can you imagine how much that prize would be worth today?! No other local radio came close.
	1995	28s	Tony Newman lunchtime phone-in promo.
	1995	40s	John Morgan promotes the Breakfast Gamble.
	1995	60s	Andy Hodgson narrates a promotion for a Lindisfarne concert at Newcastle City Hall which would be simulcast on Tyne Tees Television. Mike Elliot, very closely linked to Lindisfarne, continued to play this even after the concert had happened so he could sing along!
Quirkies
Listen	Year	Duration	Description
	1994	12s	Because Century in 1994 was one of the first stations in the world to be fully computerised (Pirate FM in Cornwall being the first), whenever there was a power-cut or a computer crash, an 'emergency' DAT tape was played until all the systems were rebooted and back to normal, which could take some time. 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!
	1995	1:03	Mike Parr - Lunchtime Phone-in. A montage of clips of the intro, sung jingle and post-break jingle. The topic appears to be fellow presenter Mike Elliot who had recently been taken off air.
	1995	5:32	From around the same time, Mike Elliot is back on air and asking for feedback from listeners on how Century could be improved. A brave topic! This is a montage of clips as recorded to tape. Listeners critiquing the station! And a bit of fibbing about the nightshift music show after his which was actually voice tracked at the time. I think the siren was when he cut someone off.
	1994	1:16	Test transmissions announcements in August 1994 voiced by John Morgan. Strangely, loads of people at my school listened to these, even though it was just a repeating DAT of music with these announcements and no jingles! This is a montage, some are clipped.
	1995	28s	In about 1995 Tony Fisher evidently found the original CD master of the jingles and started playing instrumental mix-out versions of the familiar jingles at the end of traffic reports with just the end-sing. Which to me was great. However, he messed this one up.
	1995	1:03	Montage of intros for John Morgan sitting in for Mike Elliot on the late night phone in. It was a free phone number to call in to Century.
	1996	31s	John Morgan introduced as John Myers on Century news talking about Century (actually Border Radio Holdings) buying Sun City, a radio station in Sunderland. So if anyone was in any doubt that John Morgan was in fact John Myers, this was the moment when he effectively 'came out' in public to the eagle-eared listener.
	1995	30s	Pre-news intro with voice-over detailing latest audience figures just released. Nearly 320,000 listeners tuning in each week.
	1995	11s	Tony Newman was parachuted in to replace Paul Frost (I think) and was prior to Mike Parr taking over. On this occassion he pressed play on two jingles at once. Not heard on this clip, he said, "That's what you get for having fat fingers!"
	1994	3:34	The end of a promo about advertising on Century, a jingle, the end of the weather bed, then what should have been Mike Elliot's intro but was in fact the mis-fired intro for "Who's in it to win it"...twice! Mike, ever the pro, covers well with Rod his engineer.
			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, the following day, 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 recording. After hearing the original version, I know why they had it re-done. It was a bit shouty and intense.
	1996	1:14	When John Morgan sat in for Mike Elliot 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 someone in Dallas, Texas. Remember, this was in 1995-ish before the internet was at all mainstream, so it was still 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 perfect, but I ran out of recording disk space on my 850Mb hard drive when this was happening! In 2024, after 29 years of searching through production music libraries, Shazam finally discovered that this music used is "Clockwise B" by Andrew Miller and Neal Shelton from the TV/MOR Themes production music library from 1990 by UPPM Records!
	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 a TV advert around this time.
	1995	32s	Ex-Radio 1 Gary Davies with a link from the Lite Top 40, mentioning Darlington, Vic Reeves, the Everfresh Pink Pig competition.
	1995	54s	John Morgan with 'another winner'. They win a mug. This clip features two.
	1995	15s	John Morgan news intro.
	1995	26s	Neville Wanless on the weekly nostalgia music show. Alas, this listener must not have been given instruction to say, "I'm a winner!".
	1995	2:00	Steve Philips doing his best giving away free lottery tickets and clocking up some more speech minutes. "I'm a winner!"
	1995	33s	Andy Hodgson jingle and talking to a competition winner. Truncated
	1995	53s	Steve Philips in the evening. A link and his jingle.
	1995	45s	Some clips from the Crazy Gardening Show who were doing the hourly "Who's in it to win it" win-a-car (and a caravan) competition. Also contains the SFX if they won, and a very short clip of the actual winner announcement of the car which was announced by Morgan later after it eventually turned into a postal competition.
	1995	14s	Very rare - John Morgan broadcasting soley on the Teesside 100.7FM transmitter whilst Newcastle on 101.8 heard the Lite Top 40 I think. This was when they started Middlesbrough football commentary on the southern transmitter only. Rare because presenters never ever mentioned individual frequencies of the transmitters - just "100 to 102FM".
	1994	3:48	Phil Matthews 'Cuddle on the Couch' dedications. This show was on Friday nights from 10pm to 2am with Mike Elliot's phone in on Sunday to Thursday until 1am.
	1995	1:28	Andy Hodgson introduces Claire Wilkinson doing the traffic report.
	1994	2:41	Mike Elliot's original low key country music style introduction for Century's late night phone-in from 10pm, Sunday to Thursday. Warning: don't have your speakers on too loud - Mike did like to shout! After he was taken off air by the Radio Authority, his intro changed to a more hard-edged shock-jock 'rock' style. Audiophiles will be able to hear the digital profanity delay starting to build up from the start.
	1995	4:35	Mike the Mouth, on 5th November 1995. After a fairly long 'firework display' (theatre of the mind) from the top of the Century building, his first caller must have sworn so immediately got dumped. The profanity delay starts accruing time and Mike has to pad for time before taking another caller while the delay builds up.
	1994	10s	Morgan introduces the Century Traffic report.
	1994	51s	Abridged Steve Philips "Who's in it to win it" with contestant.
	1995	3:38	Scoped Moose Evans aircheck. He was on from 1am to 5am, live. Interesting to hear an 'exotic' accent on regional radio back then, before the internet.
	1997?	25:01	Stu MacFarlane "Big Mac" who'd been a legendary Radio Tees / TFM phone in host, then moved to BBC Radio Cleveland, retired to Scotland then came back to the north east and was on Century at weekends - stepped in to produce the revised "Crazy Gardening Show", without any gardening experts on the panel. Although Stu did have some gardening knowledge, it was all a bit tongue-in-cheek as you will hear! Roger Kennedy does the weather at the end.
	1996?	19:33	Century gave away a £52,000 new build Wimpey Home as the climax of an on air competition. The finale was hosted in a marque with a live outside broadcast hosted by John Morgan and Andy Hodgson. Tyne Tees TV's Pam Royle picked the winner. This recording is a montage of the Sunday afternoon, including at the start, a moment where the competition music bed plays for some time and you can hear voices in the background including Mike Elliot, "it's still there". There's also the weather with Paul Gough just afterwards, some promos and a clip of Mike Elliot from that night. The main highlight was replayed on the breakfast show the following morning, and there is some clips of that too. What a prize!