This item taken from my Sound Archive is another feature about radio taken from 1990’s Radio Four programme ‘Medium Wave’.
This item looks at the British Forces Broadcasting Service, otherwise known as BFBS. As well as looking at the history of forces radio, it looks at the first UK barracks to open it’s own radio station. This being Catterick in North Yorkshire, the manager of the station “former Radio 1 DJ Mark Page”.
The piece states that the service broadcasts to the barracks and the surrounding areas. What is interesting is that the date I’ve got on this recording is 1996. Now this could be an error in my file naming when I dubbed this from cassette a few years ago, but given the collection of tapes it is from, it must date from the mid to late 90’s.
This is particularly fascinating as try as I can searching around on-line, I can’t work out the ‘hows and whys’ of this transmission. It certainly pre-dates Garrisson Radio’s Low Power AM service, which launched in 2001 (also with Mark Page at the helm.) It was only in 1999 that ‘AM Long Term Restricted Service Licences’ were first available. So I am particularly fascinated to figure out just how this BFBS service was broadcast. Any feedback on this would be greatly received.
Photo Credits: “BFBS Radio’s outside broadcast” by Peter Murray-Russell
