Farewell Medium Wave

Farewell, dear friend.

AM has fallen silent across a chunk of Europe as engineers in France, Germany and Luxembourg flicked the switches and turned off their Medium Wave signals at midnight on New Year's Eve. Au revoir.

Amongst others, Deutschlandradio closed down its seven Medium Wave transmitters; and Radio France, France Info, France Blue RCFM and France Blue Elsass all went dark. RTL also finally turned off the famous 1440 (208m) Luxembourg apparatus which had carried our 'Luxy' service until 1991.

In the UK, the BBC has quietly begun to shut down some of its power-hungry BBC local radio AM transmitters, using the cunning plan of turning them off for a ‘trial‘ and seeing if anyone notices. Many though still battle on. Commercial radio’s local AM business is in peril too, with many frequencies kept breathing by leaning on parallel brands and sharing business overheads.  If the little chicks had to feed themselves, most would likely perish.

BBC 5 Live still delivers appreciable audiences on AM as do Talksport and Absolute. The national scale of those stations adds bulk to the UK AM total listening hours figure, but one imagines that the costs of transmission and the Ofcom licence fees mean that the owners, UTV and Bauer, can see the day when they wouldn’t trouble to contest their AM licences. DAB alone would work better for them.

Radio 4 boasts a clutch of Medium Wave transmitters, but its prize possession remains its powerful 198 Long Wave transmitter, beaming out from an antenna slung from the 700' high masts at Droitwich. The closure of that would be for the BBC what the poll tax was for Maggie.  Don’t mess with Middle England. Woman's Hour sounds best with the warm rounded AM sound booming out a Hacker.  It may be apocryphal, but it is suggested that this dusty transmitter relies on valves which can no longer be replaced. Like much of the ageing AM transmission infrastructure, it’s long past its best. Mind you, in the words of Stephen Butt (@KibworthStephen), this transmitter is 'the most resilient part of the BBC's radio system - with copper wire feeds'!

It’s all to be expected. When a superior option exists, the market moves elsewhere. FM easily took the AM territory, although it took a little time, dictated by FM radio set availability. The DAB parallel is clear.

From 1967, the BBC launched local stations solely on FM albeit a little prematurely for the new band's usefulness. They were subsequently afforded Medium Wave back-up to help their audiences thrive.  Without that support, they might have suffered the digital death of One Word or Core.

By the early seventies, it was seen as the other way round for commercial radio, broadcasting proudly in stereo on FM, with Medium Wave as support. Having said that, the audience remained largely AM in those early days owing to set availability – hence the wavelengths forming part of those familiar early stations idents: ‘2-fifty- sevunnn – Swansea Sound’; ‘Capital – 194’; and the luscious ‘Beacon – 303’.

I recall rusty Cortinas only had Medium Wave sets. Actually, our Vauxhall Victor didn’t even have that – we used to bung a red tranny on the parcel shelf at the back when returning from Skegness.

It did have its magic. But – let’s be honest - it's pretty foul to listen to.  AM has had its day. The burring when you switched on your cake mixer; the overseas stations marching to our shores overnight; the Doctor Who noises as you drove under electricity cables; and that curious 'Luxembourg effect' on 208 when it sounded like poor Bob Stewart and his Stuyvesant fags ads were being turned inside out.  

'In every hearse that goes by, there's an AM listener', quotes @_DavidHarber.

So, the end must be nigh for our beloved AM after around a century of use.  It's done us proud.  BBC 5 Live (1994), Atlantic 252 (1989) and Laser 558 (1984) were likely the last UK AM stations  to launch with sufficient scale to disrupt.  Its death, however, is evidently likely to be slower here than other parts of Europe, where 'the old is giving way to the new'. Both DAB and FM sound much better – even though maybe they don’t quite sound like ‘radio’.

And - when it is all over - at least we won't still get those intense letters from Norway proclaiming they have heard our stations and demanding a QSL reception acknowledgement. Yes, it was indeed us. But surely you have your own stations to listen to? Or some gardening or something to do?

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In Praise of the Tape Cassette

Kenny was unbelievably excited as a kid when he was given his second tape recorder as a gift.  Radio anoraks will understand how enjoyment was amplified manifold with a second machine. One machine meant you could record and play; two enabled you to copy and mix.

These were simple times. The Radio Times was printed on toilet paper; Morecambe and Wise ruled on the black and white telly; and Ed Stewart broadcast on Christmas mornings on medium wave from a magic carpet.  But most importantly, yes, these were the days of audio tape cassettes.  A devilishly clever transparent plastic box housing a plastic gubbins laced with mucky brown tape.

The sight of an audio cassette excites a generation even now. Would it be a C60, C90 or C120? The latter could accommodate an entire edition of the BBC's Top 20 chart show, but it was frail and could die without warning. Would it be a bargain ASDA version, or a more resilient TDK, Agfa or Philips one. An old colleague reminds me he once interviewed the BASF Chairman, who was a little perturbed to find that his company, the largest chemical producer in the World, seemed best known for its cassettes.

The pause button on the cassette machine was a boon. It allowed we anoraks to record the bits in between records almost seamlessly, so we could assemble hours of 'bits of radio'. A clip here, a favourite presenter there, spiced with a great jingle with the beginning cut off. 

Playing through those cassettes now, it’s annoying to find the promise of a priceless piece of radio begin before it’s chopped off in its prime in favour of a jingle you’d already heard a million times.

Mind you, direct recording with an actual wire lead was a significant advance from the analogue method of simply holding the mic next to the radio speaker. Treasured recordings were accompanied by Mother yelling you down for tea, your brother squealing or the dog barking.

We’d assemble playlists of our favourite songs on cassettes.  Before the days of ‘shuffle’ the song order would be imprinted on our minds. Whenever one familiar melody cropped up on the radio, you’d be inexplicably surprised when a different one followed.

Cassette boxes were an artform.  Some teenagers would neatly design them with Valerie Singleton enthusiasm using a rainbow of felt tip pens.  Others would just label illegibly, next to a second scribbled-out note of the tape's previous contents.

Many cassette machines were battery-powered.  Record something with an ailing battery and it'd play back at double speed when you'd saved up enough pocket money for four new Ever Ready U2s.  I recall one listener once phoning up the music library at Trent asking deliciously tetchy librarian Jane to identify a song he'd recorded thus. Hilarity ensued.

Theoretically, one could splice on a tape cassette, but alas, the survival rate was low. You'd only do it usually if the alternative was cassette-death.  Such an operation was conducted with forensic care, using a special kit from Woolworths comprising an editing block with two metal levers, a razor blade, a baby screwdriver and some magical white sticky tape. Sellotape did work, but the prognosis was diminished further. A pencil was deployed to twiddle round in the hole to rein in escaping tape.

Those treasured old cassettes, secreted in boxes or crinkly old carrier bags, still just about play, provided a cassette player can be found.  As the tape disintegrates, however, much of the oxide is left on the tape heads and our fond childhood recordings sound as if played through a sock. I'm aware that 'the oven trick' can be used to restore reel-to-reel tape, although I fear cassettes may just melt.

With vinyl making a comeback, and even CDs enjoying a resurgence as people crave some physicality and audio 'ownership', maybe it's time to hail the official revival of the C60. May I suggest Adele release her next album on cassette only? And may I have a triple pack of blanks in my stocking?








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The 2015 Radiomoments Clips of the Year

No year-end is complete without a gratuitous chart or two. 

My Radiomoments Audioboom channel, now replete with over a thousand choice cuts from 1922 to the present day, and amassing over two thirds of a million listens, has had a decent year. 

But which clips reaped the most plays in 2015 from the UK’s radio lovers? This chart is built on exact AudioBoom stats, although, I confess, not audited to the BBC's exacting compliance standards.

5. At Number Five – an old favourite from 1991.  Johnners gets his leg over with, as the Radio Times might say, hilarious results.  When commentating for BBC Radio 3’s Test Match Special at the Oval, Jonathan Agnew mischievously suggested that Ian Botham had failed to "get his leg over"; and a classic radio corpse ensues.  You know what it's like.  You laugh at the wrong moment. The more you try to stop laughing; the more you laugh. And then just as you recover, your mind drifts back to why you were laughing in the first place; and off you go again. 

This clip proves that laughter is indeed infectious and that radio loves authenticity. Bar Morecambe & Wise, are there many short moments of laugh-out-loud television which endure quite like this?

4. Number Four – means a lot to a generation.  In this labour of love, attracting over 11,000 plays overall, hear the first breaths of the pioneering UK commercial radio stations. Marvel at their early spirit and ambition, the merry launch imaging, and the voices of jolly just-awakened chairmen. Witness the changes in presentation styles, music and talk policy and jingles as the years flow by from 1973 to 1988. I can never quite recall how I had time to edit and mix this.

3. At Number Three, a new entry as Chris Moyles debuts on the new Radio X. The clip, and the station, prove yet again that radio can still make front page news after a hundred years. Arguably, bar Evans, few presenters have managed to take their audiences with them from one station to another, not least after a lull. It’s a puzzle how loyal listeners appear to be to a frequency, even if if its brand, presenters and music policy change.  Time will tell whether Moyles will carry off the feat and climb, in time, to his Radio 1 heights. I reckon X will boast a very respectable performance.

2. Number Two brings another familiar moment. Alice Arnold, accomplished Radio 4  announcer bids farewell. Her listeners grew to know her simply through the sheer presentation quality.  Her valedictory appearance shows a rare moment of emotion as she utters her last careful vowels with typical beauty. There's just a glimpse of pure, raw, honest radio peeking through the professionalism, rendered all the more powerful owing to its rarity.  Listeners and radio anoraks alike loved it.

1. At Number 1, a fitting new entry from an old friend. 2015 saw the death of the the much-loved Peter Donaldson. 'The Voice of Radio 4'.  The final words of this chief announcer were aired on 1st January 2013.  Upon his death, the national press reached out and embedded this clip, taking it soaring to Number One by some margin. His many fans on-air and his many adoring colleagues across the BBC will smile fondly to see Peter here as, deservedly, the most played radio clip across the UK in 2015.

Many thanks to all Radiomoments Twitter followers, and listeners to the weekly RadioToday podcast in which the weekly review is included (also found on my Boom channel).  

Thanks too to the many people who treasure and share audio: from the every helpful and impressive Andy Walmsley to http://aircheckdownloads.com/; from the Campaign for Independent Broadcasting; to lovely Stephanie Hirst, and the expert on chart audio Richard White. Also to the many folk who simply email me random MP3s, post off bundles of cassettes or upload audio to my channel.  All such souvenirs are hugely welcome. If you have some 'tapes upstairs in a box', do let me know. I promise to take them off your hands and save your other half moaning at you.

As stations change ownership, premises and staff, alas too much material is lost. Without your efforts, some of the history of the greatest medium of all might too easily be forgotten. Happy New Year.



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Funding Auntie

The British Broadcasting Company began life with a princely £100,000 in capital, about the same sum as half an Alan Yentob.

Six wireless firms chipped in £60k and took up their place round a battered board table at the GEC building at Magnet House. Other manufacturers threw in in the remainder for their smaller shares in this brave venture. 

This was peculiar form of capitalism, with return on capital capped at 7.5%. It was decided not to follow the American example of ‘using the microphone for ads’. Oh no, none of that over here, thank you very much.  That dogged principle was to change the course of British broadcasting as it left port - and consign commercial radio to a fifty year wilderness, from which it has never truly recovered.

Let’s remember too that it was those lofty ideals which meant that the listener would be asked to fund their programmes directly, if ‘interested parties’ were not to be control of the new airwaves. Maybe one of the BBC's PR folk should now invest some time reminding us why we were asked to pay in the first place. It's a decent argument.

Voluntary listener subscriptions were ruled out at the outset, so Alvar Lidell was not instructed to rattle a collecting tin in Savoy Hill reception.  Early revenues flowed in, however, from indirect taxation, thanks to cunning surcharges on the parts sold to the many enthusiasts who built their own sets. Will we see the day when iPhone chargers carry a special Auntie tax?

By the Autumn of 1924, revenues were wholly derived from the licence fee. Not that the Beeb got the whole lot – the Company’s share, however, did rise from 50% to 75%. The grinning Government gleefully took the rest.

By this time, the radio transmissions barely covered half of the country, rising to an impressive 80% in just three years

One licence went a long way

As Big Ben chimed the end of 1926, The British Broadcasting Company was wound up, letterheads were reprinted, and the new DG clutched the Corporation’s first ten year licence in his sweaty mitt. Its duty was to ‘Carry on a broadcasting service’.  Thankfully, John Reith rather than Sid James was in charge.

The Crawford Committee suggested: “The licence fee shall be 10 shillings, which we do not consider excessive. It will be the duty of the Postmaster General to pay to the Commissioners (Governors) from the licence fee an income thoroughly adequate to enable them to ensure the full and efficient maintenance and development of the service…it is expedient that the surplus should be retained by the state".  It’s a way of working I suspect the Minister would rather like to revive.  

Eventually, it was agreed that 12.5% of licence income would be deducted for ‘revenue collection’ and the Corporation would receive 90% of the  first million licence fees - and a declining sliding scale to 60% as sets started to fly off the shelves.  This calculation on the Government’s trig tables meant that after four million licences were stamped at the Post Office, the Government could be taking almost half the income.  Indeed, by 1929, cheery Chancellor Churchill was banking just under a million pounds.

The anti-commercial rhetoric continued apace. In an article called ‘the Art of listening’ in the BBC 1928 year book, Auntie congratulated herself again on avoiding dirty commercialism:

“There was a time when the wild men of newspaper industry had their way the consequences to broadcasting might have been damaging.  The broadcaster must never be tempted to take advantage of his foothold on the listener’s hearthrug”.

As War began, the Corporation stepped up its efforts and found a damn good excuse not to trouble itself with the complications and expense of telly. By 1940, it was broadcasting on radio in 34 languages and creating 787 news bulletins.

10pm news  bulletin audiences from Dec 1939- Sept 1940

In the House of Commons on 20^th August 1940, it was proudly announced that 9,132,000 folk had duly forked out for their 10/- for their licence.  

This wobbly graph of audiences for the earnest 10 pm news bulletin through the months of 1940 shows there was a real hunger for what radio could provide in the dark days of War.

By June 46, a combined TV & radio licence appeared, although a sound-only version remained available.  Just 60 years ago, 4.6m of the dual versions were sold, but 9.4m Britons - the vast majority - still found radio alone sufficient for their needs. It was not until 1958 that the dual licence take-up overtook its radio-only bargain brother. 

In 1955, the House of Commons had been stirred to debate the concern that if you sold your Sunbeam Rapier complete with its radio, you could not also transfer its licence to the car's new owner.  The radio licence died in 1971; although the Corporation did float the idea of a £10 car radio licence in 1984.

What of costs? Even by 1960, the £6.5m spent on radio programmes remained perilously close to the 8.2m on TV shows, although the chunky TV engineering costs were certainly higher than radio’s.

The Corporation's original ten shilling licence would cost just under thirty quid nowadays (£27.28), had it simply risen with inflation. It actually costs five times more than that, although even the most miserable of folk would concede we easily get five times more for it.

It’s a timely reminder that funding broadcasting has not always been as simple as relying purely on a licence fee - and that new usages of the medium will call for more inventive ways of charging for it. And that quiet Government /Corporation wrangling on funding is not a new art.

But maybe too a note to commercial radio brethren, pumping out 15 minutes of ads an hour, that the broadcaster must never be tempted "to take advantage of his foothold on the listener’s hearthrug”.

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BBC Local Radio - Lessons from history

I

Don’t you just love the smell of old books. That whiff of history.

‘Local Radio in the Public Interest’ was a delicious aquamarine pamphlet, published proudly by the BBC in February 1966 as it laid claim to local radio. If there were to be a local radio network once more, the BBC should bloody well provide it, argues this vintage stapled document.

In just 15 musty pages, Auntie sets out her stall for the next phase of broadcasting in the white heat of the Harold Wilson era. Amidst the BBC Trust's 2015 local radio review it makes interesting reflective reading.

BBC Local stations would "devote themselves to local issues and interests, to provide a service which would effectively enlarge the range of broadcasting in Britain". Fearing the sceptical reader’s harrumph, the following paragraph explains: "it would be a mistake to assume that all this would make dull broadcasting. People like to have their radios talking to them, especially when the talking is done by friendly and familiar people about matters which touch them directly".

There’s an insistence on truly local stations, not made-up regions. "Long experience of regional and area broadcasting has convinced the Corporation that a station addressing a plurality of local groupings is continually at a disadvantage – as its listeners can never be sure that what it is saying is really meant for them, rather than for the people in another town".

Frank Gillard

The Corporation did concede that ad-hoc station groupings could be arranged tactically where there was merit in the content.

Such stations cost £30-35k to set up, including transmitters, studios and ‘office appliances’. I'm unsure just how many office appliances existed back then. A guillotine maybe? An overhead projector? Or the station manager’s legendary Friday afternoon cocktail cabinet. 

Premises would be 'inexpensively rented'.

At the outset, VHF (FM) alone was thought to be sufficient for transmission. FM set penetration was, at that time, approaching the same level as DAB is now.

"15 men and women" would be poised to operate the station, with running costs overall at about £1,000 a week.  “The station must be on air right through the day. Unless there is consistency, listeners will never remember when it is available and when it is not.” At the end of local broadcasts, station managers were trusted to "switch over" to whichever BBC network they liked for however long they liked.

The prospect of non-BBC local radio was derided. Auntie conceded, however, that commercial ‘jukebox’ stations could be on-air quicker, not least because ‘their staff would mainly be disc jockeys, and they could be imported readily enough from overseas”. Gosh.

Whilst a network of 80 stations was outlined, not least if 5 shillings could be added to the licence fee, the Beeb did suggest it could manage a modest nine at no extra cost. The latter plan came to pass.

Far from the ‘monolithic’ BBC image, it argued that responsibility for local radio would be delegated: “The aim would be that listeners would come to regard their local station as our station not as the BBC station in our town.  The BBC would not try to impose a central pattern or any form of detailed overall control on its local stations”.  They would "do much to make listeners proud of their community and willing to take part in its affairs".

Station managers would be "of the best possible quality…expected to participate in local affairs". They would be "close to their listeners" and decent means of keeping in touch with their views would be established.

The pamphlet then lists a managers’ charter, under which I suspect most gifted Man Eds would like to work today.

For those seeking a 21^st Century blueprint for BBC local radio, these fifteen pages make a decent start.  Back to basics: genuinely local; sensible staffing; listener-driven; managers allowed to manage; staff steeped in their areas; operated at a bargain basement budget; inexpensive premises; transmitted only on the right platforms; no 'made-up regions'; ‘friendly and familiar people on-air’. 

The fact that the entire local radio philosophy could be outlined in 1966 at a length equivalent to a modern-day compliance memo speaks volumes.

If ever the BBC invite me to present formally my detailed blueprint for local radio away from its crazy BBC News landlord – and I hope they will one day – I shall hand out this fusty 15 page pamphlet over coffee first; before I outline how we would take advantage of the most modern technology, radio thinking and contemporary audience insight to deliver on the 1966 principles - at a price sustainable for the next generation.

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It's a very personal, nostalgic view of radio since the start of Radio 1, 2 and BBC local, through the hectic years of early commercial radio, as seen through the eyes of this little lad who grew up just wanting to be on the radio. 

The happiness and heartaches, successes and failures, launches and consolidations. Read about the characters of an era which will never be repeated.

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