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Big L |
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Big L |
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By July 1990, I had been running various radio
stations almost continuously for 20 years. I felt like taking a break from the day to day
running of a radio station and to just sit back and do programmes only. So I closed down Veronica Supergold and a new
station appeared run by Russell (DJ name: Ruski on the Radio).
Big L was chosen as the name of the new station. On the first Sunday in August Big L took
to the air using the same in-house main transmitter, link transmitter and transmission
site. This was the Chingford Hall estate in Chingford, East London using a 200w ERP stereo
main transmitter. The link transmitter was situated at Peter Sharpe’s then home
address in Silver Street, Edmonton, N9.
This later become a well known site to a certain gentleman within the DTI Radio Interference Dept. Amazingly though, throughout our time transmitting from this address we never suffered a studio raid. At a later date I spoke to him on the phone about another matter and in passing he mentioned the very obtrusive aerial that we had erected in the rear garden in Silver Street. I immediately said thanks for knowing that and never doing anything about it. Much to my surprise he then told me that he and his colleagues would often enjoy listening to us whilst they were out raiding other stations and that they appreciated that we were of a completely different kind.
As with Veronica Supergold, Big L’s format was
very similar being a mixture of oldies, Europop, a small amount of light rock and any
favoured records of the presenters. In reality the presenters would play pretty much what
they liked as everyone enjoyed the above music styles. There were no tedious playlists
with the same small selection of records in strict rotation sadly still to be found on
legal radio today (eg. Heart FM). This made our station very popular, even amongst people
working in the radio industry, as it was like a breath of fresh air on a crowded FM radio
band that had very little worth listening to.
The DJ line-up and transmission hours were virtually identical to that of Veronica
Supergold.
At the beginning of March 1991 Russell (aka Ruski on the Radio) decided that he would immigrate to New Zealand leaving all the staff of Big L high and dry. So between them, that Mike Andrews, Tony James, Steve Roberts and the rest of the team took me to the pub. They proceeded to get me well pi..., erm, inebriated and some how persuaded me to bring back Veronica Supergold. Transmissions recommenced from Veronica Supergold on 3 March 1991 using 101MHz FM Stereo. For further information please visit the Veronica Supergold page.
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