Key Market Media. The Vinyl Frontier - Caroline's Album Gold

Title: The Vinyl Frontier - Caroline's Album Gold
Type: Oldies/Documentary, Classic Rock/Documentary
Format: 3-hour weekly program
Hosts: Bob Lawrence
Recommended for: Oldies, Classic Rock, Personality AC, Generalist
Programming tool: Audience builder, image and brand enhancer
Commercial opportunity: Six minutes of local commercial avails per hour

The 1970s, and the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline begins a new lease of life. The Caroline ‘Good Guy‘ DJs of the 60’s who had epitomised England’s Swinging 60’s with their Jolly Roger mid-Atlantic banter, dispensed with their ‘mop-tops’ grew long hair and beards and introduced US underground FM style radio to Western Europe.

Album ‘cuts’ from The Eagles, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Heart were heard across Europe from the hulk of Radio Caroline’s ship the Mi-Amigo which in 1972 had sneaked out of the Amsterdam canals where it had rusted away for four years since it had been impounded at sea. At the end of the decade, the Mi-Amigo would sink battling its last Force 9 North Sea Gale, in the meantime it would once again revolutionize music radio in Europe.

Experiencing a less glamorous existence than the super-star 60s DJs, presenters climbing aboard the ‘Love - Ship’ Caroline in the 70s lived a collective existence. The ideal DJ would also be an engineer, chef and guru for love, peace and ‘good’ music spreading positive vibes in an era of the Vietnam War, Watergate, social strife and lava lamps.

Passion for music remained the prime qualification however, and Radio Caroline once again challenged the music industry with its free-form album format. With record companies nursing conventional pop radio to follow the single release schedule from new albums, Caroline’s rebel DJs would anticipate single releases from albums and also play tracks from albums deemed by the ‘suits’ to be ‘unsuitable’ for mainstream radio airplay. Supported, often financially by the artists themselves, a new swathe of bands were again championed by Radio Caroline including Supertramp, Roxy Music, Barclay James Harvest. In the latter part of the decade the new wave sounds of bands like Television, Blondie, UK Squeeze and The Clash could be heard round the clock.