Contact 94 was a radio station that broadcast from Lessay in Northern France to Normandy and the Channel Islands between September 1988 and November 1991.
[1] Contact 94 launched at 6 am GMT on 5 September 1988 by former Radio Caroline disc jockey,[2] Kevin Turner.
On the opening night therefore Paul Easton broadcast between 11 pm and 3 am, with a sustaining music tape filling the remaining hours until resumption of live programming the following morning.
[1] The station used a 950 MHz link between the studios at Lessay and its transmitter and one humorous incident in the stations history was when this signal was overcome by the ETACS analogue mobile phone signals on the island operated by Jersey Telecom in collaboration with Cellnet,[4] the result being that some local mobile telephone calls were in fact broadcast on Contact 94's FM frequencies.
[9] English broadcasts were produced by the station between 6 am and 8 pm, French transmissions followed this and the overnight hours were provided via satellite by Radio Nova.
[24][25] Contact 94 was owned by an Anglo-French consortium,[9] whose original members included the Jersey-based businessman, travel agent,[8] tour operator[1] and hotelier[8] Stephen Clipp[1] and the French restaurateur Alain Tardiff.
Those running the station at the time decided to enter the bidding process for the license and as a result, the decision was made to close Contact 94.
[1] After closure the equipment was removed from the La Campagnette studios, although apart from this they remained intact even some seventeen years later.
The Jersey Music Radio bid was led by property developer David Overland, who was joined by local resident John Billington, Paul Roberts of Hamptons International, Winston Allen, Derek Young, Chris Tanguy and, Chris Kirby and Jon Myers, both formerly of Contact 94.