Testing, without a moniker, the name Radio Nova was fallen upon by accident – it seems inconceivable in the aftermath that it could have been called anything else. Just as the station would soon wow everyone else, Cary was himself wowed by a jingle, sung in French, for a Radio Nova planned for Nice by a friend of his who’d given him a cassette containing a recording of the Nova package of jingles.
From chriscary.com
…by another coincidence/quirk of fate, the ill-fated Radio Paradijs boat pulled into Dublin harbour for some maintenance work before it set off for the Netherlands. Here I met A J Beirens again (who was involved with RNI – Radio Northsea International and the launch of the Italian off-shoot which was called Radio Nova International).
We were busy testing our Dublin radio station – with no name. A.J. asked what we were going to call the station. I said: “You tell me.” As brain-storming goes a thousand names were thrown into the hat during the meeting and he thrust this cassette into my hands saying: “Look after this, it’s the only one there is. See what you think.” I was down the pub with Brian McKenzie that night and lo and behold spilt my drink over this damn cassette. Knowing how fastidiously correct A.J. was, I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d wrecked his tape – and hadn’t even yet listened to it. As luck would have it, after a good shake and a blast of a hair-dryer, the tape played back perfectly in Brian’s house that night, and then we heard this wonderful French rendition of the Radio Nova jingle (which of course made sense as it was to be broadcast in the Nice area of France). I was spellbound by the melodic sound of the jingle (made by Steve England). So what the hell – Radio Nova it was to be.
The very next day the jingles were transferred to cart and played out on air and the station identified itself as Radio Nova! A brand new star was born…
Studio at Herbert Street
The test transmissions included the French and English versions of the Radio Nova jingles. They played every 30 minutes as they were the only station IDs we had. The name was now set in stone. My previous contacts in California had already told me that Jam was the only jingle company to use, so I contacted Jonathan Wolfert and commissioned the original Radio Nova 88FM jingle package. Jonathan in turn pointed out the importance of the loyalty/feel-good factor and we added to the package the ‘I’d rather be in Ireland with Radio Nova’ jingle. When all the jingles arrived and were duly carted up I was the first station announcer. Ken Harley was our first Music Adviser, who worked his clogs off (literally) bringing to fruition every mad idea I had. Tony Allan (once we’d got him out of the pub) was already in Dublin doing voiceovers for Brian McKenzie’s Bay City Recording Studios and was added to the Radio Nova team. My knack always seems to have been to make the best of what’s given to me – and I was really lucky this time with Bay City, Tony, Jean (who wrote many of Nova’s commercial scripts) Brian and Ken already in town.
The first employee of Radio Nova was Mike Edgar (as Newsreader and Disc Jockey). Then came the impromptu arrival of John Clarke (who was auditioned on-air, given twenty ‘idiot’ cards with the only phrases to be said – which were ‘Nova Clutterfree’ and ‘Nova Playing Your Favourites’). Anne Laird was the first member of the administration team (and remained to the end of Radio Nova). Our first on-air ‘star’ was Terry Riley. Our first local advertiser was the Red Corner Shop, and Silvikrin Shampoo was our first national agency ad.
Because 88FM is predominantly used in the UK for BBC Radio 2, in odd parts of Dublin they clashed, to put it simply. Paul Cotter was seconded to change the exciter frequency until we found a slot – I think 88.5FM was the most successful). We hopped about quite a lot around 88FM trying to find the best and clearest spot. Clearly not the most professional way – but it worked. As we usually undertook this experimentation at 2am and had to hare around the streets of Dublin to see if the signal had improved. The phrase that summed it all up for me, at the time, was ‘Chris Cary – undercover, Paul Cotter – under stress and Tony Allan – under the influence!’
Chris Cary & John Clarke in the Radio Nova studio.
John Clarke Joins
John Clarke tells the tale of how he began on the station during an anorak visit, a story which serves as an indicator of how quickly Chris Cary’s eye for talent could kick in…
June the 1st 1981 was a Monday and the station was ‘testing’ on low power. Declan (Meehan) and I just dropped in to see what was going on!
By 4pm I had switched on the microphone and back-announced ‘There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis’ by Kirsty McColl.
By 6pm Chris gave me a job on Nova’s first breakfast show (which began the following morning) and ‘the great radio experiment’ began…from humble beginnings to the top of the mountain.
When Terry Riley (left) joined the station as a news reader he joined John Clarke on those early morning shifts and they'd' have a bit of a chinwag', as John puts it, at 7.30am and 8.30am with a focus on the morning's newspapers. The show would start at 6am and run for 4-5 hours, unique for the time.
As John explains:
The 4/5 hour shifts feed into the clutter-free format - there was no need to jock every 3 minutes when you were on air for 5 hours a day 6 days a week -
you did as many links in 4 hours that the Sunshine jock did in 90 minutes!
Radio Nova was an instant hit, despite only being on FM (VHF!) at the start. It didn't need (or make use of) large glossy ads in newspapers or on billboards. The listeners did the job for them; the word was spread by the station's enthusiastic listening audience. In mid-August, an article in the Irish Press was already describing Radio Nova as the talk of the town and by the end of August transmissions were around the clock.
John Clarke offers his insight:
Initially, early listeners thought the radio station was European. You must remember there was nothing on the FM band of note - well RTÉ had token broadcasts in VHF and even BBC Radio 1 were 4/5 years behind Nova before they ventured into FM - and I believe Nova’s initial marketing was "word of mouth"; everyone began to say "have you heard..." and most radio listeners didn’t fully realise they actually had an FM button on their radio, and when they flicked from AM to FM they discovered Nova with a pristine sound and the music sounding like their favourite LP.
Talking about Nova playing everywhere, I remember being on holidays in Spain and Portugal in the early 80s and hearing Nova on the beach and by the pool! The Irish took the station (via cassette recordings) on holidays - that’s how Big Radio Nova was and it was the soundtrack of your day (home & away). Yes, it was THAT good.
By the time Cary’s station was up and running, Sunshine had managed to capture a fair proportion of the available audience and was making big money. Cary, apparently, had tried to buy his way back in but Robinson decided against it. The two men had different ideas. Cary’s idea for Sunshine had been for a high-powered station hitting as much of Britain as possible to tap into the largely untapped lucrative advertising market there. Robinson was not so brash.
Sunshine’s signal found itself outputting a community-style of broadcasting with plenty of chat. It had become a great radio station and Dublin was already lucky to have it.
Dublin was even luckier to be touched by the whirlwind genius of Chris Cary and Radio Nova had now embarked on what was destined to become an incredible journey.
The photograph above of John Clarke and Chris Cary is one of the earliest to come out of the station - and there's a backstory!
John tells us:
Always liked this photo (yes black n white in the colourful world of radio NO*VA in its humble beginnings) it appeared in Hot Press. It was the first bit of PR we received. On the same day 'an international magazine' were also in the building doing a feature on Chris and his latest venture. They also took some photos and off they went: "The Article will be in next month's publication and we’ll send you a copy." So the end of month came and went...no sign of the magazine. I remember asking Chris: "Any sign of that 'international article'...wait for it...Chris replied: "Oh, it was stopped at customs, the magazine was of the ADULT variety and it was confiscated!" True Story - and that’s Show Business!
