Boss Radio - Swinging Radio England

Swinging Radio England

Swinging Radio England or "SRE" was the "home of the boss jocks and much more music." It began life in the spring of 1966 on board the former military landing craft MV Olga Patricia, renamed the Laisez Faire. It was anchored three and a half miles off the Frinton-on-Sea, Essex coast of Britain in international waters.

SRE was not so much a format as a hybrid of formats. It was totally unlike any other radio station that had previously been heard in Europe or probably anywhere else in the world at that time. While the PAMS jingles were the resung version of those heard on WABC in New York City, the high-power "bannerline" news presentation had been lifted from WFUN in Miami, Florida and the DJs were using the heavy echo and the forced approach of stations such as KBOX in Dallas, Texas.

The U.S. "boss jocks" who came over with the ship trained the few English air personnel how to develop this same style of presentation. Everything was "over the top" when it came to the 50 kilowatt transmissions of SRE. While some loved it most remained tuned to the more relaxed top 40 formats of its competitors such as Wonderful Radio London and Radio Caroline South.

Swinging Radio England shared the ship from which it broadcast with another 50 kW station named Britain Radio, a beautiful music format station which called itself the "Hallmark of Quality." These two 50 kW stations attempted to broadcast at full power by using caged antennas slung from a central broadcasting mast, which caused constant headaches for the radio engineers. Because of the difficulty in getting the two stations to stay on the air a lot of early investment money was squandered. Other problems also arose when the British government announced that it would introduce legislation to close all of the offshore stations down.

Because of the technical difficulties and the slow start, compounded by a lack of advertising, SRE was forced to sign off the air during November 1966 in a cloud of adverse publicity surrounding its London based advertising sales arm which went out of business in a hailstorm of debt.