Hospital radio

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Typical hospital radio studio

Hospital radio is a form of audio broadcasting produced specifically for the in-patients of hospitals. It is primarily found in the United Kingdom.

1 History
2 Transmission
3 Organisation
4 Hospital radio awards
5 Famous people who started off in Hospital Radio
6 References to hospital radio in popular culture
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] History

Vinyl LPs in Walsall Hospital Radio's record library

The first hospital radio station in the UK was installed at York County Hospital, England, in 1925. Headphones were provided beside 200 beds, and 70 loudspeakers were installed, with patients being able to listen to sports commentaries and church services. Throughout the 1930s radio stations spread to a handful of other hospitals, with live music supplementing the speech-based programmes. Unsurprisingly, virtually no new stations were started during World War II, the sole exception being on Jersey where a service was set up to relay church services, musical recitals, variety shows, and programmes for children to six hospitals after wireless receivers had been banned and confiscated by the German occupying authorities.

The spread of hospital radio services picked up slowly in the late 1940s. The 1950s saw a rapid growth in their number in the UK, with similar stations opening in the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States. Many stations now played gramophone music to patients and, with the launch of the cassette tape in 1963, it became easy for presenters to record their programmes for playback at a later date.

Hospital radio stations peaked in number in the 1980s, when up to 300 stations are thought to have been broadcasting on a daily basis. However as small hospitals closed or merged to form large regional medical centres, hospital radio stations also consolidated into a smaller number of larger organisations. New studios were built, often to a very high specification, and in common with commercial radio, hospital stations began to use CDs to play music.

[edit] Transmission

In the past, hospital radio tended to be delivered to patients' bedsides by way of a dedicated cable link from the in-house studio to a unit beside every bed. In some cases, this unit would have supplied only the hospital radio station; in others, a choice of broadcast radio stations may also have been available. Today, many stations are carried at a higher quality on the bedside entertainment systems of third party companies such as Patientline. Others are broadcast from a central radio transmitter, by virtue of a low-powered AM or FM licence. Many hospital radio stations also broadcast over the Internet.

[edit] Organisation

Each hospital radio station was founded independently and they are not centrally organised or managed. Almost all are members of the Hospital Broadcasting Association (HBA), which was set up by stations for their mutual benefit and does not govern or run them. Most in the UK are registered charities, others are part of larger organisations such as hospital Leagues of Friends.

Hospital radio stations are staffed and managed by volunteers (more than 2,500 in the UK alone), and each volunteer is commonly attached to a particular weekly programme. Some broadcast, others work to keep the station's record library or computer systems up-to-date, but most also visit the hospital wards, to discuss the music that patients would like to hear, and to provide an opportunity for the latter to converse with a member of non-medical staff.

Many stations use sophisticated computerised playout systems for music and jingles. Live programming is limited to the times that stations' volunteer members can attend studios - generally evenings and weekends - but many stations offer a 24-hour service by using computerised systems to play music and prerecorded programmes at other times.

There are more than 230 hospital radio stations in the UK, and 170 in the Netherlands. Others operate in Germany, France, Australia, United States and New Zealand.

Many professional radio presenters volunteer for hospital radio in their early career, as it provides a training ground for budding broadcasters. Such broadcasters include:

Andrew Edwards, now of BBC Radio Leeds, was previously with Kingstown Radio,the Hospital Radio service in Kingston upon Hull.
Danno Fox, now of Hereward FM, was previously with Hospital Radio Ipswich.
Paul Moseley, now of BBC Radio Norfolk was previously with Hinchingbrooke Hospital Radio in Huntingdon.

[edit] Hospital radio awards

Each year, the UK-based Hospital Broadcasting Association invites its member stations to submit entries in ten categories. Entries are assessed by a panel of judges drawn from professional broadcasting. The gold award winners of the 2007 National Hospital Radio Awards were: