It was a familiar voice, a broadcasting institution no less,
in the form of John Snagge that welcomed listeners to the latest of the first
wave of home town radio stations, BBC Radio Stoke-on-Trent, as it launched on
Wednesday 14 March 1968.
Snagge's career at the BBC had started in Stoke some
forty-odd years earlier when he'd been appointed as Assistant Director of the
relay station, known by the call sign 6ST. His opening remarks gave a nod to
history: “This is BBC Radio Stoke on Trent. We must apologise to listeners for
the break in transmission which occurred at 12 o'clock midnight, on October
30th 1928. This was due to circumstances beyond our control. Normal
transmission has now been resumed”.
The local authority in Stoke was a keen advocate of the
local radio experiments and had secured sufficient funding for the first two
years. The area had been involved in the 1961 broadcasting trials proposed by
Frank Gillard and recordings of the Stoke tests had been used in the submission
to the Pilkington Committee. Supposedly BBC Radio Stoke-on-Trent (it was
shortened to BBC Radio Stoke in the 1980s) was set to go on-air earlier but the
outbreak on foot and mouth in 1967 had prevented engineers crossing fields to
access the VHF mast at Alsagers Bank near Newcastle-under-Lyme. In the event
the station launched using a low-powered VHF transmitter at Hanchurch Water
Tower south of Stoke.
The station came on air at 5 p.m. on the 14th - complete
with its own ID theme, a nod to the Potteries heritage composed by the
Radiophonic Workshop using the sound of tinkling fine bone china - with an
announcement from manager Harold Williams and then John Snagge. Producing that
opening evening was Owen Bentley who remembers what came next:
"There followed an eclectic mix of programming:
interviews with the Lord Mayor and John Snagge, the local news or as we called
it the Home News, the pop show Take One and the evening news magazine Potteries Roundabout which I studio
produced.
I then did a couple of continuity announcements introducing
a local choir and the business programme, Enterprise
68 before my first ever 30 minute feature 6 ST Calling (over which I had sweated blood) was broadcast.
I then chaired a gentle discussion with John Snagge
reminiscing about the station with old friends and colleagues."
Owen Bentley had come to BBC local radio from the World
Service and though initially appointed to work in Stoke he'd spent a few months
at BBC Radio Sheffield due to the delay in launching . He moved to Radio Oxford
when that launched in 1970, had a short stint in Botswana and then was back at
Sheffield in 1974/75 as their Programme Organiser and then manager at Radio
Leicester (1975-82) where he was instrumental in getting the Asian Network off
the ground. In the 80s he was the head of Local Radio and Network Radio for the
Midlands.
Raising their glasses are programme organiser John Cordeaux, news editor Tony Inchley, station engineer Simon Penfold with Sheila Penfold |
Stoke's studios were in Conway House, Cheapside in Hanley
(the current studios are now further down Cheapside). Among the small team
assembled by Harold Williams was his second in command, Programme Organiser
John Cordeaux. John had joined the BBC in 1945 and by the mid-50s was working
as the Overseas Instructor in the BBC's Staff Training Department. After three years in Stoke he left to manage
Radio Humberside. Williams himself would leave to become Assistant Head of
Local Radio Development.
There short themes were composed for the station by David Cain of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
There short themes were composed for the station by David Cain of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
This is how the schedule looked just a month after going
live with the Radio Times listings
for the week commencing 13 April 1968. The weekday programmes, just four or
five hours a day, are clustered around breakfast, lunch and teatimes; for the
rest of the day they dipped into the network offerings from Radios 1, 2 and 4.
On the Sunday, Easter Sunday in this case, you'll spot the
church service In Thy Name. Uniquely
across local radio the station was the only one that has broadcast a weekly
service from the start and continues to do so, now known as In Praise of God.
Some other names you'll have heard on air that year were
David Gredington (whose first radio experience was with North Staffs Hospital Radio and who would later become the first Programme Organiser at Radio Humberside), Ann
Skellern, Tony Waters, Gerry Northam and John Abberley.
Gerry left Stoke in the early 70s to work on BBC TV
educational programmes and network radio before joining File on 4 in 1979 first as producer then editor and then for many
years as the programme's main investigative reporter. Most recently he's been
the picker on Pick of the Week.
A page from the 1978 booklet Serving Neighbourhood and Nation |
John Abberley was well-versed in the Potteries area having
worked on the Evening Sentinel since
1949. He joined the station at launch as one of the production assistants where
he would specialise in sports coverage, he presented the Saturday teatime
round-up On the Ball, and news
reporting, working with the station's first news editor Tony Inchley (later the manager at BBC WM) - though
in common with most of the new local stations they initially used a news
agency, in Stoke's case the local branch of Raymonds News Agency. After just
over 20 years at the station Abbo rejoined the Sentinel. He died in 2010 aged
78.
Moving on three years this is the Stoke schedule for week
commencing 28 August 1971. By this time the station manager was David Harding
and Geoff Lawrence, a very experienced Light Programme and Radio 2 producer,
had come in as the programme organiser; he would go on to be the station manager
in the mid-80s, replacing Sandra Chalmers.
Popping up on Saturday morning and Friday's Lucky Numbers is Gordon Astley, with
possibly his first radio gig. This was well before his Cheggers Plays Pop and TISWAS
days and radio work at Mercia Sound, BBC Southern Counties, BBC WM, BBC Radio Northampton and Century
106.
Presenting Enterprise
is renowned journalist Arfon Roberts. He was one of the station's first news
producers who'd come to Stoke from BBC Wales were he'd been the first
journalist on the scene when the Aberfan Disaster occurred.
Other names here include long-time presenter and producer
Bill Humphreys who worked with the 'Legendary Lonnie' and Andy Ridler who I've
a vague recollection also did a stint at Humberside. But just who is
'Josephine' who presents Lazy Sunday?
All this is a few years before one of radio's best known
names started his career at the station. Local lad Bruno Brookes had appeared
on the station on the Topics for
Teenagers programme and eventually joined the staff hosting an afternoon
show Bruno at Three between 1982 and
1984 before receiving a call from Doreen Davies to join Radio 1.
BBC Radio Stoke is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week with a
series of six specials, Who We Are,
presented by Nick Hancock.
1 comment:
Colin Pierpoint here, Communications Supervisor at Pebble Mill, but in 1968 I was a Technical Operator in Birmingham Control Room at Broad Street, from where a small group of us were invited to see Radio Stoke-on-Trent (as it was correctly then) which had just opened. We were well looked after, and as well as the Ops Room we were taken out to see an Outside Broadcast. I can't now remember where it was but it can't have been far because the signal was sent back on a reel of 1 pair 10! (You need to be an engineer to understand that - probably best if nobody understands!).
Many years later when I was in Birmingham Comms at Pebble Mill, I was sent out to do a lines test for Radio Stoke(SIC). Again I can't remember the location but it involved a reverse music line as well as the standard Music and Control lines. The reverse music had to be equalised at the receiving end, so the equaliser was manned by me! I sat in my BBC vehicle with the equipment on the passenger seat, for the full duration of the programme.
There are many names mentioned in this report, John Snagge was working as announcer (actually also Head of Presentation) when I started in London BH in 1961. Many others I became familiar with at Pebble Mill.
One name in particular I knew well, that was Arfon Roberts. He was news sub-editor in Cardiff while I was the Continuity Operator for the Welsh Home Service. He had a habit of walking straight into the Continuity Studio (you should ask the Con Op's permission because only he knows if an announcement is due to start soon). So I entered it in the log. I know he was reprimanded because he made a remark about "You and your blinking pencil". We did later on get a more respectful understanding of each others jobs. I wonder if he still did the same at Stoke!
While I was a Lecturer at the BBC Engineering Training Department, I became involved in Local Radio Engineers' refresher courses. With my experience of equalising stereo lines from BM Comms I was able to give guidance on how local radio could build their own stereo equalisers. Also came up the problem of using digital circuits to the transmitters (NICAM3). The processing gave a delay, and it was not possible for the studio announcer to talk and listen to the transmitter on headphones.
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