September 1971

Hospital Broadcasting Services

Hospital Broadcasting was a product of the immediate post-war Soccer boom and many organisations operating today had their beginnings in 1947. It was in 1952 that a group of Soccer fans, aided and abetted by the Hull City A.F.C., the Hull Corporation Telephone Dept., and by Rediffusion (Yorkshire) Ltd., brought the beginnings of Hospital Broadcasting to Hull. Their joint efforts set up a network of telephone landlines connecting a number of Hospitals in the area to the Civic Telephone Exchange and at each of the Hospitals the line was fed into the existing Rediffusion relay system. At Boothferry park a microphone fed into another telephone line enabled commentaries on Hull City's matches to be relayed direct to patients in these Hospitals. With Hull City (The Tigers) at one end of this circuit and Rediffusion at the other, it soon became known as the 'Tigerfusion Network'. This was later extended to 'The Boulevard' and to 'Craven Park'.

In some areas such systems, sometimes supported by other organisations such as the YMCA., the Toc H., Rotary Clubs, etc., extended their service to include other types of programmes and to run through the summer months. In Hull this did not happen until 1961 when the Hull and District Tape Recording Club (formed only in 1960) established a Hospital Broadcasting Service to provide a Record Request Programme.

The Hospital Message Service, the Hospital Broadcasting Service and Services for the Blind (known collectively as the 'Humanitarian Services') were written into the Constitution of the Tape Recording Club on its formation in April 1960. The Message Service was made available to all Hospitals in September of that year and in January 1961 negotiations were started for the Broadcasting Service. These involved arrangements with the Hull Corporation, The Telephone Dept., Hospitals, management Committees, League of Friends, Rediffusion, the G.P.O., Record companies, the Copyright authorities and many, many others. Six months after starting these negotiations, the final authorisation was obtained and the first programme was able to be transmitted.

Concurrently with the negotiations, members of the Club had been fully occupied with hammers, nails, screwdrivers, saws, glasscutters, soldering irons, paintbrushes-almost anything except tape recorders. They were compelled, having only their own subscriptions as income, to make do and mend, thus the one permanent tape recorder was a very ancient second hand model, the two record turntables were 'salvaged' from vintage radiograms, most of the amplifiers-switches-mixers and other electronic wonders were home-made with oxo tins as chassis, and sound-proofing was composed of papier-mâché egg-trays and even the partitions forming the 'Studio' and 'Control room' were made from timber and doors obtained from slum-clearance sites. Perhaps the best example of their 'Make-do' was the 3 ft. x 2 ft. plate glass window between the Studio and Control room. This was originally a rather battered old mirror-desilvered by dint or a great deal of elbow grease-and a strong solution of Harpic!

From this studio (appreciably augmented by the personal equipment of members of the tape Recording Club) the first Record Request programme was transmitted to the Hospitals from 4.0 pm to 5.0 pm on Sunday, 16th July 1961. The programme was entitled 'Flat Spin' (which was probably more appropriate than anyone outside the club realised) it was preceded by a message from then Lord Mayor (councillor Turner) and contained 16 records for 28 Patients. In those days requests were collected from patients by ward staff, but later this job was taken on by ladies of the WRVS. The number of requests collected each week has grown steadily from about 40 to over 250 and is still growing. For the first three months 'Flat Spin' was transmitted on alternate Sundays and then became weekly as it has been ever since. It was originally introduced by a piece of Swedish music entitled 'Trollebo Scottische' (but which quickly became known with the Club as 'Trolleybuses') and ended with a piece called 'Bedtime for Drums' (although after being accidentally mispronounced by one of the members as 'Bedpans for Bums' was rarely known to members as anything but 'Bedpans').

After eighteen months tenure of their original premises, the Club had to look for other accommodation when they were given one month's notice. Other premises were found but not until two weeks AFTER their notice had expired so that, after being dismantled, their studio and Control room had to go into storage for a while. In spite of this tremendous handicap programmes did not stop - founder members of the organisation are very proud of the fact that in spite of three moves over the years, they never missed a single programme. In the new premises, of course, work had to start again from scratch on the building of another Studio and Control room. Their new premises were very extensive, so much so that they used only one third of the space available and eventually one of their members took over one of the large rooms available and converted it into a semi-professional Recording Studio. After about a year this venture proved to be untenable and the Club took over this room as their studio with infinitely better facilities than had been possible earlier- although a great deal of modification had to be done.

The Club's 'Humanitarian Services' had always been operated on an entirely voluntary basis. No charges were made to anyone. No one in the Club received any payment. And yet the Services obviously cost money to operate and these costs were continually rising. Rent, rates, electricity, records, tapes, equipment, maintenance, etc., etc. In addition to their various services members had to spend a great deal of time and effort raising money. Several appeals for financial help proved very disappointing and so, in December 1968 after seven and a half years of Hospital Broadcasting a major decision had to be taken - to wind up the Services or to reorganise for a bigger and better Service, It was felt that the title of Hull and District Tape Recording Club was a big disadvantage - Clubs being, usually, rather selfish organisations for the benefit of their members. Maybe donors were being discouraged by wondering how much of any donation they made would go to the 'Club'. It was decided, therefore, to divorce the Humanitarian Services entirely from the Club and to form a new organisation devoted to them entirely. Accordingly a new constitution was drawn up and by it's adoption on the 4th February 1969, Hospital Broadcasting Services (Hull and East Riding) was formed. This Constitution was then submitted to the Commissioner of Charities and 'H.B.S.' became a Registered Charity. A number of influential local people accepted honorary positions as President, Trustees, Auditor and Patrons, official letterheads were printed and a new appeal for funds was launched.

The results exceeded our wildest hopes and in the first 12 months over £1,100 was raised. This was not by any means too much for in leaving the Tape Recording Club we found ourselves with no premises, no equipment and originally, not one penny to our name. With this wonderful response, however, we were able to plan to fulfil our main Aims and Objectives - to extend and improve the Services. We have already gone a good way towards achieving this.

We have obtained new premises - not as has been our hope from the very beginning, in a Hospital - but in what was a three-roomed flat overlooking the Pier on the 3rd floor of No. 17, Wellington Street. The front room has been transformed into a lounge / meeting room where we can not only receive guests with proper hospitality, but where we can hold our General Meetings, do our programme planning and necessary administrative work in comfort, but where we hope in due course, to be able to make 'live recordings' or hold functions for 'live' transmission. The back room is, for the time being our 'Junk Room' and 'workshop' (although it will soon be transformed into a second Control / Production Room and Canteen). The centre room is, however, our pride and joy - it now contains an almost completely sound proofed announcer's booth, our rapidly growing record library, and a very sophisticated Control Console which is becoming more sophisticated almost daily. Our single second-hand tape recorder has been replaced by two very up-to-date stereo recorders at over £200 each, the salvaged turntables have given way to a matched pair of modern transcription decks at almost £60 each. The Oxo tins have been combined into one polished aluminium fascia containing three 'ganged' meters and (to the uninitiated) a bewildering array of recording and transmission facilities. The job originally done by papier mache egg trays is now done much more aesthetically by genuine 'Audio Tiles' but the money has been spent with the single object of improving the service and money has been conserved wherever possible - for instance the 5' x 4' sheet of plate glass which double glazes the outer window and the two sheets of 3' x 3' plate glass which form the console once graced the main Hessle Road; not, this time as mirrors (so we didn't need the Harpic) but as shop windows - salvaged (when the demolition men were not looking) at considerable risk to life and limb of H.B.S. members.

The Service has already been 'extended' in one direction. Instead of our original one hour per week we now 'broadcast' 22 hours per week - 'Flat Spin' now runs for 90 minutes every Sunday starting at 4.30 pm and a new 'magazine' type programme under the title of 'Anything Goes' has now been running for almost two years. This is 'broadcast' between 1.30 and 2.30 pm every Thursday. Negotiations are still in hand for further extensions of 'Air Time' and, with the co-operation of Hull City A.F.C. and the Hull Corporation Telephone Dept. we hope to make regular increases until we are transmitting at least one hour every day of the week and probably much more than that. There is certainly no dearth of programme ideas including patient participation programmes such as telephone requests. 'Down Your Ward' in which members of HBS will visit Hospital Wards and transmit directly from the bedsides and inter-Hospital quizzes, Outside Broadcasts from places of interest, interviews with local and visiting celebrities, concerts by local artists, discussion programmes from our own 'Lounge' and visits to the studio by patient's relatives and ex-patients. We also hope to 'extend' the Service by bringing other local hospitals onto the Network (The Maternity Hospital for instance is not on it at the moment) and possibly to bring some or all of the local Old Peoples homes onto the Network. The latter alone will open out a whole new range of programme ideas.

'Flat Spin' was ten years old on the 18th July 1971 and later this year we hope to celebrate this with a full day of transmission beginning at 8am and going through to 8.0 or 9.0 pm. The Flat Spin broadcast on August 8th was No. 1000 and during this time we had handled almost 76,000 requests and played approximately 13,000 discs.

In April 1970, HBS (H & ER) were hosts to representatives of Hospital Broadcasting Organisations from all over Britain from as far apart as Glasgow and Dover, Edinburgh and Southampton and from as near as York, Huddersfield and Scarborough. They met, at the instigation of the Hull organisation, with the object of forming the National Association of Hospital Broadcasting Organisations (NAHBO). The meeting was addressed by Aad van der Struijs of the RANO organisation in Rotterdam on the subject of 'ZON' the National Association of Hospital Broadcasting Organisations in the Netherlands. Mr. van der Struijs came to Hull specifically for this purpose arriving on the North Sea Ferry at 8.0 am that day and leaving on the same vessel at 5.0 pm that day. NAHBO was formed, now has a comprehensive Constitution which has been approved by the Commissioner of Charities (making NAHBO a Registered Charity) and already has over 40 member organisations. There are thought to be more than 150 organisations in this country and it is hoped that a substantial number of these will soon register as members. NAHBO has many aims and objectives including encouraging and assisting in the formation of new organisations in areas not already so served. (Three such are currently in hand) liaison, and co-operation between organisations, centralized information and registration service, negotiating at Regional and national levels, promoting the highest technical and artistic standards and publicity. Not least to afford a meeting place and platform for the free interchange of ideas and information. To this end two general meetings are held each year - so far in Hull, Durham and Swindon with a fourth being held in September in Southampton and a fifth next April in Paisley.