Tony Blackburn - on Radio 1 ceasing jingles

As a seasoned radio veteran, Chris Moyles loved his jingles. Whilst the target audience and Radio 1’s  approach suggested maybe something more contemporary might be in order, Moyles proudly commissioned close harmony idents as lengthy as the ad breaks on most commercial stations. So wrong for Radio 1, Chris knew they would become right. And I loved them. 

So, when Moyles gave up the breakfast show reins, handing them to floppy haired Nick Grimshaw, the brief for the new imaging pitch in August 2012 was a touch different: "The new Breakfast Show will sound young, exciting, big and confident. It needs to stand out and not sound like any previous BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Shows. The new theme will need to sound slickly produced and original, including a significant element of live instrumentation and an identifying motif”. So, a move away from the long Radio 1 tradition of commissioning the cream from the World’s greatest jingle companies. And a great, great press story which even made, as you can hear here, a Radio 4 story.