BBC Radio Manchester - the first two hours of broadcast
BBC Radio Manchester is 40 years old on Friday 10 September - and I've been tracking down recordings of the early days to help us celebrate four decades on the air.
Everyone told me the first hours of the station no longer existed. Previous anniversaries had come and gone with fruitless enquiries to the North West Sound Archive. At some point in the last forty years those dusty reels had been skipped. Or so we thought. The NWSA is housed in part of a twelfth century castle at Clitheroe, where shelves of dusty 12" reels, VHS and Beta dubs live next to a charming 'studio' full of the largely obsolete, donated equipment required to dub it to CD.
So imagine the lucky surprise when my first enquiry into the database (DOS! - itself, a blast from the past) turned up two crystal clear spools. The first two hours had been thoughtfully returned to the archive by a former manager since the last time we'd asked for them.
Listening to them is a fascinating journey back in time. For a simple medium, radio sure has moved on in four decades. This feels in part like a BBC imposed on the city - local accents are few and far between. Political correctness has yet to make an appearance - there's an off colour Hitler gag in the first hour, the only people thought to be interested in the soon-to-be-built Arndale Centre are 'housewives' and in some recordings you can clearly hear cigarettes being inhaled and the popping of lips on pipes.
Everyone told me the first hours of the station no longer existed. Previous anniversaries had come and gone with fruitless enquiries to the North West Sound Archive. At some point in the last forty years those dusty reels had been skipped. Or so we thought. The NWSA is housed in part of a twelfth century castle at Clitheroe, where shelves of dusty 12" reels, VHS and Beta dubs live next to a charming 'studio' full of the largely obsolete, donated equipment required to dub it to CD.
So imagine the lucky surprise when my first enquiry into the database (DOS! - itself, a blast from the past) turned up two crystal clear spools. The first two hours had been thoughtfully returned to the archive by a former manager since the last time we'd asked for them.
Listening to them is a fascinating journey back in time. For a simple medium, radio sure has moved on in four decades. This feels in part like a BBC imposed on the city - local accents are few and far between. Political correctness has yet to make an appearance - there's an off colour Hitler gag in the first hour, the only people thought to be interested in the soon-to-be-built Arndale Centre are 'housewives' and in some recordings you can clearly hear cigarettes being inhaled and the popping of lips on pipes.
We were (and are) a speech led service. But then, as now, music plays a supporting role to our topical conversation. Back in 1970, so-called needletime restrictions meant a seriously low cap on the amount of commercial recordings the station could play. So our first song - an English Folk Song Medley of I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts and I Do Like to Be Beside The Seaside - may not have been what was expected, when the chart of the day included Smokey Robinson, Elvis, Marmalade and Shirley Bassey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/Newsroom1.jpg
On Friday, we'll be welcoming back some of those pioneering broadcasters to see how they get on in the 2010 version of the station they started. I'll let you know how they get on.
John Ryan is Managing Editor of Radio Manchester
- John's first post, BBC Radio Manchester is about to be 40
- press release - Radio Manchester celebrates 40 years
