Nottingham Calling

Bridlesmith Gate lies at the heart of Nottingham's fashionable quarter.  

Jack Wills nestles near to Diesel; Flannels close to Ted Baker; and Paul Smith's quaint original shop lives on just a stone's throw away.

Number 4 Bridlesmith Gate stands towards the St. Peters' Gate end of this now pedestrianised street, squeezed between a tea shop and the Body Shop.  The attractive stone 1876 premises were once a pub, with the original landlord's initials carved into the stone; the Dog & Bear was later to attract a rowdy reputation.  

Part of this Grade II listed building also came to house Nottingham's first ever radio station, 5NG, provided by the new British Broadcasting Company. 

Its studio stretched out about 18' x 35', equipped with a large, lonely microphone. A second microphone was reserved for outside broadcasts; and a gramophone was on-hand for the playing of records.

The B.B.C.'s hasty initial strategy comprised the assembly of a network of local stations, with Nottingham being added to the map as the sixteenth outfit on a damp Tuesday September 16th, 1924. The 5NG signal was transmitted from an aerial dangling from a chimney on Noel Street.

Nottingham Evening Post 1924

20.00 The Band.

21.20:Opening Speeches.

Mr. J. C. W. Reith (Managing Director B.B.C.).

21.30:Speeches by:

The MAYOR. 

The SHERIFF.
The PRINCIPAL of UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. „
9.50. The Bend. S.B. to ""
Folk Song Suite Stations.
. Vaughan- Williams (1) (1) March, " Seventeen
- Comp Sunday"; (2) "My
Bonny Boy" ; (3) Folk Song from Somerset.

22.00:WEATHER FORECAST and NEWS.

Simultaneous broadcast from London.
Local News.

22.15:Organ Solo.

22.20:The Band.

22.30:Close down.

The launch was an ambitious affair, heralded by a live outside broadcast from the Albert Hall with the RAF band providing an opening segue.  Accordingly, for the record, Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman' Overture was the first tune to be played on radio in Nottingham.  Such was local enthusiasm, attendance exceeded the 1600 capacity and some unfortunate souls were left out in the rain enjoying a relay from loudspeakers at the Arboretum, kindly sponsored by Pearsons of Long Row.  

As the applause subsided, the B.B.C.'s inexperienced MD, John Reith, uttered a few encouraging words; followed by the Mayor and the Sheriff doing much the same thing.  After another burst of music, the switches were flicked and the citizens of Sneinton, Sherwood and Southwell witnessed their first late news from London crackling down the line. Those network bulletins were a relatively new affair: until the year before, content had been dictated by telephone from the London station to its patient little sisters across the country.

The station had been established as the fifth in a series of low-power relays around the UK, with 5NG supporting the larger 2ZY in Manchester from which it was fed via a telephone circuit.  The relays operated at 200 W,  compared to 1.5 kW for the main stations, together claiming to reach 75% coverage of the UK population; more than the first tranche of commercial radio (ILR) in the 70s; and about the same as the proposed second national DAB multiplex from Sound Digital.

5NG transmitted variously on wavelengths of 322m, 326m or 275.2m medium wave, as the Post Office mandarins pulled out their hair trying to make sense of the growing enthusiasm for broadcast spectrum here and overseas.

There was a proportion of evening local programming too, amounting to 2,782 hours in the first year. The jaunty 'Children's Corner', was a popular element, affording a stage for a host of local 'aunties' and 'uncles'. Auntie Ruby was in charge, who, by day, was Ruby Barlow, a solicitor's wife with theatrical leanings. Laurie Bagshaw was also much-loved by the 5NG team and  listeners alike.  Known for having 'racy friends', few knew how he actually earned a living, but he appeared to have sufficient free time to help manage the whole affair.

"The cumulative effect of this work has been to identify very closely the Nottingham Station with the life of the people. Nowhere has this been more apparent than with the work carried on in the Children's Hour. Nottingham has been singularly fortunate in those whose lot it has been to bring joy and happiness into so many homes. Day after day, year in, year out, the younger generation have been able to listen to songs, tales and jokes, a form of entertainment to which many of them had been strangers hitherto."  (BBC Yearbook 1928)

Lest older brethren felt excluded, the schedule also dutifully featured 'corners' for others, including "Scouts' Corner" and "Teens' Corner".

Local press engaged fully, with no hint of paranoia about the fledgling medium. In a regular '5NG attractions' column, one sub-heading read 'Some Good Programmes Next Week', beneath which the Nottingham Evening Post trumpeted a special local concert on-air featuring 'entertainer Stainless Steven'.
Outside broadcasts included the first ever radio coverage of the opening of Goose Fair on 1st October 1925; and the King opening the new University buildings on July 10th 1928, after which the City's Mayor became a Lord Mayor for the first time. Much excitement ensued when annual gatherings of 5NG's 'Radio Circle' were beamed from the old Exchange Hall.

A Mapperley lad made his debut on 5NG at the age of 12: Cyril Stapleton, who became a well-known violinist and bandleader, eventually playing with Henry Hall, the LSO and even on some Frank Sinatra tracks. As a schoolboy on 5NG, he broadcast in scholars' concerts "Master Cyril Stapleton (solo violin)".

Home made crystal sets were painstakingly assembled with long makeshift aerials to receive the signals from near and afar. The Nottingham Evening Post kept listeners abreast; and a radio column called "Wireless Whispers" was duly introduced. 5NG reception reports came in not just from Nottingham but also Loughborough, Lincoln, Leicester and Derby. Listeners were even tempted to invest in an expensive valve set, costing as much as 7 pounds.

  

The B.B.C. 1928 yearbook  proudly reports:

"It is three years since the Nottingham Relay Station was first opened, and from that date began a revolution in the artistic life of the city. So much a part of the life of the community has Broadcasting 'now become that it is difficult to imagine its absence.  In these three years more than 40,000 licences have been taken out in the Nottingham area, which has as many and perhaps more listeners per thousand of the population than any other centre of the B.B.C. activities. How has this been achieved?" 

Mr C Wheeler at the 5NG control desk in 1928

"Nottingham is not renowned as a musical town, and yet musical artists of all kinds have offered their services for Broadcasting. The encouragement given to promising artists has been no small factor in building up the popularity of the Station. In addition to routine concert work, a number of popular community singing concerts have also been given from which local charities have benefited. Outside Broadcasts of events of civic importance have been a regular feature of the programmes." 

"Broadcasting has come to stay. The B.B.C. has set up a standard in Nottingham which must never be lowered in any way. Radio is quite as much a part of the daily life of the people as the newspapers, a position which must be kept and consolidated".

Life was not to be so simple. As technology advanced, 5XX on Long Wave, eventually from Daventry, took over; and 5GB supplied a Medium Wave service to the Midlands. National and regional radio had begun. 5NG was no longer needed.  The function of a relay station had become defunct; and its serendipitous emergence as a commmunity service was disregarded.

In the words of the understandably grumpy new Lord Mayor (Alderman Huntsman): "With all due respect to the authorities in this matter, I think they have overlooked the regional importance of a great centre like Nottingham. The connection between Nottingham and Birmingham is very weak.There is little association or mutual interest between the two great cities". (Nottingham Evening Post)

The pleas went unheeded. It was decreed that networked programmes should replace local ones.  Nottingham listeners were placated by assurances that their local talent would enjoy a bigger audience from  the regional transmitters; and that programme quality would be higher.  

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

Uncle Laurie and Auntie Ruby promptly defected to Birmingham; and 5NG turned off its valves on 31st October 1928 – after just four years. It was to be four decades before local broadcasting returned to Nottingham.


More radio nostalgia - and a very personal take - in my book Radio Moments - Fifty years of radio, life on the inside 

Radio Secrets - An insider's guide to presenting and producing powerful content for broadcast and podcast

Pictures from the Past

Disc jockeys are meant to be heard not seen.  But these pictures from the Getty archives really do sum up a time and a place.

Enjoy here, one of the launch pics from the opening of Radio 1 in 1967. Sir Tony staring into the camera lens, griping onto a pair of those funny BBC headphones. And what a fine bit of woodwork there from the BBC joiner.

View image | gettyimages.com

Rosko was the rebel in those days, with his lunchtime show. Look, he's barely clothed here.  John Dunn famously introduced  his news bulletin in Rosko's show with: 'now the news. In English..."

View image | gettyimages.com

And on the station's first birthday, the presenters famously gather feet away from Broadcasting House, to return to the steps of All Souls Church.  For many of the characters, it is the closest they'll get to singing hymns. The assembly was a little diminished from the parallel shot a year before, not least because the fledgling Radio 1 policy was to hire everyone on four week contracts and see who worked out best.  Canny approach.

View image | gettyimages.com

Down the road at Capital, in a rare 1973 shot in his office at Euston Tower, Chairman Richard Attenborough is likely none too pleased as he peruses the company's early accounts. 

View image | gettyimages.com

And the early team at London's LBC were no strangers to challenging accounting. In this shot, a tech op watches as Janet Street-Porter and Paul Callan present 'two in the morning' (get it?) on that launch day in October 1973.  I'd prefer to have been the tech-op, as he got to hammer the buttons on the ITC triple stacks.

View image | gettyimages.com

Commercial radio, in a fashion, had been heard in the UK much earlier, thanks to the wobbly signal from Radio Luxembourg, after it returned following the War.  Its influence was sufficiently powerful to make stars of people like Pete Murray, later on Radio 2 and LBC. Even the Teddy Boys looked up to him. And Pete's suit looks a lot better than a sweat shirt with your name on which his descendants puzzlingly chose to wear.

View image | gettyimages.com

Back at Capital, surely 1974 mid morning host Michael Aspel does not surely need quite so many EQ channels on his mixer.

View image | gettyimages.com

And colleague, Kenny Everett, is evidently aghast at the contents of the Capital Radio manifesto.

View image | gettyimages.com

As Capital's Graham Dene celebrated 5 years with the station, a cake arrived. With Michael Aspel in it. Thank goodness those rumours of radio being rife with back stabbers are false.  Technics turntables were poised  - alongside the classic Neve desk which was a stranger to PFL.

View image | gettyimages.com

Kid Jensen arrived in the UK from Radio Luxembourg in 1975, lodging at Nottingham's Radio Trent for a year before graduating to Radio 1. Here he is, in a novel pose.  It is certainly better than clutching headphones, or pointing to an alarm clock or cheque. 

View image | gettyimages.com

By 1976, the cult of Wogan had begun; and this talented Irishman began to relax and enjoy it. Just keep your feet away from those Gates turntables, Terry. They were truly the best.

View image | gettyimages.com

Surprisingly little audio exists of Chris Tarrant, despite his long rule at the Capital London helm.  Maybe he was more of a listener's presenter than an anorak's - and there's little wrong with that. Thank goodness we have pictures though. Note how many more screens there are in this 2004 shot, compared with the 1960s BBC shots. 

View image | gettyimages.com#

Frank Phillips is the name of a BBC newsreader better known than many before him. Not least as it was Frank who became the first newsreader to announce his name.  All part of making British broadcasts immediately recognisable as such in times of War.  The habit stuck, and now every contributor of travel, weather, whatever commences their broadcast with a smile and a proud namecheck.  Even though the War's over.

View image | gettyimages.com

You don't see many of those discussion booths now: minimalist acoustic rooms equipped with just a bouncy table, a mic and a talkback box, thanks to the show engineering happening 'through the glass'.  Pete Murray enjoyed himself here in October 1970, with a pair of those dinky little BBC cans clipped to his 'earoles. 

View image | gettyimages.com

The old BBC desks were industrial in style. Like cars before power steering, you had to pull these faders down with force when your needed the next jingle from the ITC cart machine.  It was no problem for good old JY, even with the future PM looking on and crashing the vocal in February 1975.

View image | gettyimages.com

You can always tell a jingle anorak when they  concentrate more on the cart labels in a pic rather than the person pictured. Try this Radio 1 shot from the early eighties. Ignore Adrian Juste at your peril, though.

View image | gettyimages.com

Thanks to all the photographers through the ages who have patiently witnessed our medium. We are grateful.  

One final shot.  How delicious is this. As the BBC moved premises in 1932 from Savoy Hill to the newly built Broadcasting House, a photographer paused to film the removal men at work. But why has than man got a crate on his head. And who is in the coffin?

View image | gettyimages.com

Grab my book 'How to Make Great Radio' from Biteback. Proceeds to the Radio Academy

A Coronation in colour

Twelve million listeners to a single broadcast is quite an achievement.  Despite the Coronation's TV appeal, these many millions chose not to view the occasion sat cross-legged on the lino in a neighbour's front room, watching in black and white on a flickery small screen fired by an H-shaped aerial,  but to relish instead the radio commentary.  With many years of experience under their belts, the BBC radio commentary was always to be in colour.

The Palace had agreed for the cameras to be present, against  opposition from a reluctant Cabinet, who worried that TV would be an "intrusion on a sacred event".  Nevertheless, it was the radio executives who played the key role in  the year of preparation for the overall broadcast coverage, for radio was still seen as the 'lead medium' for this, the largest single-day event ever organised by the BBC.  There were those, however, who suggested this was the last moment when that would be so: the Observer told of someone who'd commented snidely that "sound radio will die next Tuesday at 10.15 in the morning on the dot". 

Even for radio though, TV had its uses.  Monitors were installed so that radio commentators might enrich the scope of their narrative.  

Coverage was to be given in 41 languages.  Microphones had to be discreet; and permission

was just given for two British and one French commentator to be located within the heart of  the Abbey.  A further nine stood poised  along the five and a half mile return  route.  It was clearly a demanding day for the engineers too, an additional 1300 circuits being secured from a state-owned GPO (BT); and presumably lots of Gaffa tape to ensure no courtiers slipped over a stray cable.  Plans were sensibly made too for the recording of all outputs, with additional bulky magnetic recording machines hired for the day. The battery ones were seen as unsuitable: who wants to miss a key moment owing to a flat PP9.

It was to be a day of simulcast for the BBC Home and Light programmes (Radio 4 and 2), with only the Third Programme doing its own thing.   The radio day began at  530, with  'Music Whilst You Wait'  replacing 'Music While You Work'.  Likely a clear case of a working programme title making it to air. The programme proper began at 1015.

The radio commentary team featured the impressive John Snagge, Wynford Vaughan Thomas (later a founder of Harlech TV), Howard Marshall (cricket commentator) and Talbot Duckmanton (Australia).  Captain WES Briggs (Canada) chipped in, as did Willy Richardson (West Indies), Audrey Russell (first female news reporter, then war correspondent), Frank Gillard (War Correspondent and later the godfather of BBC Local Radio), Henry Riddell and Tom Fleming (an actor who later played Reith). Charles Gardner  was joined by the wonderful Jean Metcalfe from the Light Programme, adding some further richness from her vantage point overlooking the quadrangle at the Palace.  John Arlott of cricketing fame was to be at Piccadilly Circus with  Raymond Baxter (later 'Tomorrow's World'), Alun Williams, David Lloyd James and Rex Alston on Victoria Embankment.  

This was the premier commentary league, brought up in a Reithian regime when words were all we had.  Whilst so many of today's radio broadcasters are thrown into commentary only in extremis, these characters were accustomed to conveying every sight, sound smell and mood; peppered effortlessly with relevant facts from a bottomless fund of knowledge.  To this day, the skill lives on in radio sports commentators; and it is interesting that so many of those chosen to commentate on the Coronation had that very background.

The words of the young Queen were aired at 9.00 "Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust"; alongside those of Churchill, who'd valiantly opposed TV's 'intrusion'.  By the evening, in a bid to rally a celebratory spirit around the World, the programming adopted an international flavour, with a 'Coronation Day across the World' programme.  Geraldo and his Orchestra played late night dance music from Lille; and contributions were mixed in by the Bakelite controls variously from a cafe and from a party in the British Embassy.

Coverage was relayed around the World; albeit some broadcasts were not handled with the reverence of the suited British commentary.   In a commentary gap, one American commentator, maybe playing the role of an LBC caller, asked if the whole event was "just put on by the British for a psychological boost to their shaky Empire".

Despite TV ruling the roost back home, the Times reported the following day that, globally, radio enjoyed "immeasurably greater numbers", with 'excellent reception" being enjoyed.  The newspaper generously dubbed this 'picture in sound' as "broadcasting at its best".  It observed that commentators "concentrated on conveying the atmosphere by giving their own wholehearted vent to their own reactions to it".  Howard Marshall was praised for his  'blend of historic reminiscence and description" which "exactly suited the occasion".  John Snagge "performed the most difficult of its tasks with incomparable skill and taste".  The Times concluded the sound broadcast was "technically perfect".  Just maybe this was the last ever radio broadcast scrutinised in the press to this degree until the launch of Radio 1.

The Radio Times back then was printed on that cheap paper you used to crayon on at school. Not the shiny TV Times paper.  The Coronation edition cost just the usual threepence; and sold nine million copies. That probably explains why your grandma has a yellowing copy in her loft.

So. 11.7 million listeners in the UK, according to special BBC research, although I suspect its methodology may not pass muster with Rajar.  It concluded, nevertheless,  that 92% of listeners felt they were "satisfied".  The remaining 8% did not trouble to grab their Basildon Bond to complain: 3,000 letters of commendation were received. Rightly so.

Whilst the Observer leader in 1953 had opened by quoting those who'd suggested that this was the moment radio would end, the column wisely concluded: "For sound radio, no flowers yet. Addressing itself, through the ear only, to the imagination, it will reach the inward eye".

 

Hope for BBC Local Radio

So, the walls did not come crumbling down  at BBC Local Radio.  

After much heat and noise, this much-loved web of stations has survived, largely unscathed.  

We do now have an evening show beamed across our fair Isles, but apart from that, the listener has been largely unaffected.  And, on the whole, so has the modus operandi of most stations.

Good news for the listener?

No. The day of reckoning has just been postponed.

These stations remain over-expensive to run.  Many are still inefficient; sometimes not in terms of those who work wholly on content, but more frequently in terms of management and operations.  The points I made in a blog almost two years ago, which appeared to receive thousands of reads and many quiet nods from my friends at the Corporation, remain largely relevant, even following the delicate slice of cuts.  As do the points I made in the report I was invited to assemble for RadioCentre, commercial radio's trade body, for inclusion within its representations to the BBC Trust review of BBC Local Radio.

Some BBC local stations still feel the need for Managing Editors, Assistant Editors, a clutch of Senior Broadcast Journalists; and other individuals in puzzling posts.  And a large number of regional managers (HRLPs) remain in their leathern chairs.  There was a flurry of management departures in BBC Local Radio, although many of those individuals appear to have been replaced by other individuals in the same post.  

BBC Local Radio has saved itself, for now, but has it acted in the long-term interest of its listeners?  There is still fat; and indeed areas where listener-facing resource could wisely be boosted, were sensible economies identified elsewhere.  Ask any sensible person at the BBC, and they'll still readily recite a catalogue of stories about inefficiency with a resigned shake of the head. Those recitals have now become a BBC sport.

The network evening show still puzzles me, just as it puzzles some BBC staff.  Let me say I have no issue with Mark Forrest.  He's a very good broadcaster, capable of delivering material in an engaging way.  I also have no problem with Matthew Bannister's production company 'Wire Free'; indeed, I would gladly protest naked waving a placard if anyone dared to touch Matthew's excellent 'Outlook' (BBC World) or the ever-fascinating 'Last Word' (Radio 4). But, if the goal was cost saving, it's a jolly funny way to go about it.  With Mark's own remuneration, topped up with the cost of the BBC liaison post, and iced with the c. £150k fee (later increased, in an addendum) to the production company, I suggest there is not much change from the cost of the evening shows which it replaced.  Not least because some of these were already shared across several stations.  

It is suggested that no cost is incurred by the post-Sachsgate compliance measures.  That cannot be the case.  If employees are charged with listening in; vetting texts and the such-like, there is a cost.  Those people are not doing something else.  I was amused to hear Ken Bruce on the Radio Academy podcast talk about his helper in the studio, charged with, inter alia, vetting texts for compliance reasons.  I rather wonder whether the great Ken might smile sweetly over a glass of wine and suggest that he's probably capable of working out which texts to read out and which not to, just as he'd managed to work out which words to utter live from his mouth during his impressive 35 year career.

I'm pleased AM transmission costs have been reviewed, as I suggested in 2008.  I hope there's now  a medium- term plan in place to rationalise the property portfolio; and install stations in efficient accommodation.  I hope staff absence levels have now fallen.  I hope that a fresh case is made for every single vacancy whenever it arises naturally; and that fair, necessary, legal redundancy is accepted by all parties when it is needed.   As it sadly sometimes is.

I hope that managers are brave enough to assemble a colourful Excel spreadsheet on which their own role is absent.  I hope that recruitment is being done more sensibly.  I hope the BBC manages to wend a way safely between establishing what is bullying and what is much-needed, sensible. fair, performance management.  In the current BBC climate, frankly I  have genuine sympathy for those managers trying to sustain the right line just there now.  It's become tougher than ever for them to put the cork back in the BBC bottle.

This rich network of valued stations is too valuable to lie vulnerable to the next round of cuts because senior management fail to seize the initiative to run them economically.  Commercial radio is finding it increasingly tough to make a living out of local format stations in smaller markets; BBC local radio has both an opportunity and a duty.  Some BBC local stations are once again now just finding a confident  place in their markets; and one can hear that on-air.   These are the only radio stations in the country charged with serving over 55s; and, given population shifts, that duty is an important one.

I write this not because I wish BBC local radio to suffer.  I write in because it must not.  

Circumstances will, in time, dictate that further cuts be made.  Let's not save them up and make a song and dance about them next time, so they become impossible to introduce.  Senior management must act now, day by day, in all they do and the decisions they take, to preserve the stations and not self-serve.  That's doing what licence-payers pay them to do: to manage this operation efficiently.