About the BBC - John Ryan

BBC Radio Manchester is 40 years old today

John Ryan John Ryan — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:27:49 +0000

From a converted corridor, above a hat shop in the original, modern city, Alan Sykes pressed a button. From a transmitter high on the Pennines, a five note melody beamed out across the North - and a radio station was born.

Sandra Chalmers read the first news bulletin - Hijacked planes in Jordan, a £284k pools winner, a bomb scare in Stockport and ominously future plans for local radio. Sandy came back 40 years to the day to read the 10am bulletin - Koran Burning, M6 closure, Spending Cuts in Cheshire and the premiere of Manchester City film Blue Moon Rising.

She reflected on those early years from Piccadilly Gardens, and how real people were invited onto the airwaves for the first time. Later in the day, some of those oldest serving listeners took centre-stage in the Andy Crane phone-in.

"We were ... opening that microphone so much wider than it had ever been opened before. When we started those early phone-ins, we didn't realise that what we were actually doing was recording a unique taste of social history. Thirteen of the happiest years of my life."

Pioneers of 1970 Radio Manchester Diana Stenson, Martin Henfield and Sandra Chalmers join some of the Class of 2010

Diana Stenson as she appeared in press coverage of the launch

Hear from the former broadcasters

Or read about our first day (and listen to the first hour)

Threaded through the day and across the weekend is a unique project from the BBC Introducing in Manchester team. They've commissioned 40 of Manchester's current bands and artists to cover a Manchester-connected song from each year of Radio Manchester. The resulting '40 by 40' will be featured in a special edition of BBC Introducing in Manchester on Sunday night.

We've been blown away by the creativity and passion shown by the bands that have taken part. Who would have predicted a vaudeville cabaret version of Take That's Relight My Fire (Louis Barabbus and the Bedlam Six), or a bluegrass Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now? (Richard Barry and Becca Williams). My personal favourite has to be the iconic Manchester song Love Will Tear Us Apart, lovingly adapted from the Joy Division original by rising stars MAY68.

The whole 40th project has been a labour of love from so many people inside and outside the station, past and present. I hope you enjoy it on the air.

The Northern Dance Orchestra vocalist in 1970 wasn't far off our mission in 2010. Even if styles have changed a little since then.

"We have interesting programmes, designed for every age. There'll be music from the hit parade, the cinema and stage. Lots of news and opinions, topical and witty, all from Piccadilly Gardens in the heart of the city."

We may have moved to Oxford Road in 1975 (a charming building which the Pevsner Architectural Guide damns with faint praise - 'unremarkable') but that description stays remarkably accurate as we prepare to join our colleagues at Media City in Salford next year.

Frank Gillard wanted BBC Local Radio to be The People's Radio. So let's leave the last words to one of the listeners who phoned us this morning. June is in Radcliffe. "Thank you very much - Radio Manchester has helped me to live my life through everything. You've touched the lives of so many people - through it all you've all been brilliant"

So have you June. Here's to the next 40.

John Ryan is Managing Editor of Radio Manchester

John's first post - BBC Radio Manchester is about to be 40

John's second post - BBC Radio Manchester the first two hours of broadcast

press release - Radio Manchester celebrates 40 years

BBC Radio Manchester - the first two hours of broadcast

John Ryan John Ryan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:10:03 +0000

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.

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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.

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

BBC Radio Manchester is about to be 40

John Ryan John Ryan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:49:06 +0000

BBC Radio Manchester is about to celebrate four decades on the air. I was two when it began. Little did I know that forty years later, I'd be organising a birthday party for what was then the biggest local radio station in the country.

It's a project that's taken me to Clitheroe and a TARDIS-like bungalow on the outskirts of Reading where the BBC keeps its written archives.

As Managing Editor of BBC Radio Manchester (for the most recent eighth of its history at least), my first thought was to do the post-modern thing and ignore our fortieth altogether. What difference does it make to today's listener when we started? Radio is the ultimate fashion medium - it's at its best in the moment, the now. Nothing dates like radio.

But then I found out more about the pioneering team who were there at the start, making it up as they went along from cramped studios in Piccadilly Gardens. I heard the jingles, some from the Northern Dance Orchestra, others from those kooky types at the Radiophonic Workshop. In those dusty Caversham archives, the faded leaves of leather bound Radio Times spoke of shows like the pub quiz Down Your Pint, the daily children's show Mini Manchester - and the mysterious Baron who hosted a late night show 'for the city's groovers.'

How could we not share those moments with a new generation of Mancunians? As we get ready to join the rest of BBC North at Media City in Salford, it feels like the right time to celebrate our long history in Manchester.

Which led me back to Clitheroe Castle, the unlikely home of the labour-of-love depository known as the North West Sound Archive - and the search for the very first two hours of BBC Radio Manchester, first broadcast at 6am on 10 September 1970.

To be continued.

John Ryan is Managing Editor of Radio Manchester

Press release - Radio Manchester celebrates 40 years