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Close to Home - the Story of Local Radio

Staff at work in an old radio station studio
  • Posted at 4:50pm
  • 14 November 2007
  • by SarahDempster-RT

I love local radio. I love its community spirit and its homespun pluck. I love its hearthside warmth, its wildly inaccurate weather forecasts and the fact that its cheery parochialism ensures a national news story will always play second banana to a local news story, even if said local news story is actually about a banana, and how it provoked a relatively minor pavement incident outside Threshers on Tuesday when a popular local magistrate slipped on it and bruised his clavicle.

Most of all, I love the wiggle in its walk and the giggle in its talk, even though – especially though - these are almost certainly down to nerves, rather than any sort of inherent wiggle/giggle-based sass or, heaven help us, “attitude”. Close to Home – the Story of Local Radio took us through the history of this most marvellous and sincere of all public services. And what a history it is.

Launched 40 years ago, it was the brainchild of one Frank Gillard, then managing director of BBC Radio. A forthright chap, Gillard was concerned that metropolitan elitism was stifling “the voice of the regions”. ”I wanted something warmer,” he explained, poshly, yonks ago. “I wanted friendly radio.”

And this is exactly what he got when, in November 1967, nine new stations were launched across England, all of which immediately started broadcasting phone-ins about the state of the local public conveniences.

Of course, prior to the 1960s, there was no such thing as “the regions”. Everybody lived in London, or in vast country estates in the Home Counties, and spent their days boasting about the size of their moustache over cognac and bezique. Nobody knew what “the regions” were. Some suspected they were merely a rumour concocted by someone who wrote for Punch, though most were convinced they had something to do with the Welsh.

Yet, remarkably, regional radio had already appeared on our airwaves, decades before; albeit relatively briefly and in a much reduced and basically fairly rubbish capacity. In fact, the first regional stations were launched in 1922, a time when the very idea of not coming from Kensington was considered akin to treason.

So we got medium wave stations like Birmingham’s 5IT, which broadcast croquet results (”Colonel DW Beamish beat Mrs P Meredith, plus 21…”) and unnerving children’s shows (“Do you remember the time we tried to put Uncle Bob in the piano….?”). Until, that is, the BBC decided that this “prole radio” malarkey was a waste of money and jolly well pulled the plug, what?

And yet, as Close to Home’s brilliant archive recordings attested, local radio’s comeback was nothing short of revolutionary. In a ground-breaking 1967 Radio Sheffield telephone linkup, we heard Mrs Revell being put through to her son, Derek, who was stationed in Cyprus.

Mrs Revell: “Ooh, ’ello Derek!” Derek (barely audible above the crackle of static, though still palpably mortified): “’Ello mum.” Mrs Revell: “Is it nice in Cyprus?” Derek (dying inside): “Yeah, smashin’”. Mrs Revell: “Um….”

But that’s as far as they got, because before Mrs Revell could ask Derek what he’d eaten for breakfast, the presenter had broken in with a jubilant whoop. “What a tremendous broadcast!” he tally-hoed, virtually sobbing with pride.

His enthusiasm was understandable. This was progress in motion, social equality in action, and the guinea piggy techniques pioneered by these fledgeling, nervous stations – vox pops, phone-ins, and allowing normal people in front of the microphone rather than solely retired field marshals and the prime minister – would form the basis of modern radio.

Today, of course, local radio is everywhere. There are 40 regional stations in England alone, each held together with string, glue, local pride and Whitney Houston records, each united in conveying a single message: Your Voice Counts.

Three cheers for their wonky democratic brilliance.

Close to Home – the Story of Local Radio (Saturday 10 November, 8:00pm, BBC Radio 4).

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