BBC Tees: Forty years of BBC local radio!

BBC Radio Teesside took to the air to see in New Year's Day 1971

BBC Tees was born, as BBC Radio Teesside at 6pm on Thursday 31 December 1970.

Since then, it's changed a fair bit, as has the industry, our base, and the radio audience too.

We're celebrating 40 years of being on the air, and how better to do it than looking back at the road that brought us to where we are now?

BBC Tees' Mike Hill takes us back in time to our humble beginnings, to show us what makes a local radio station.

In the beginning...

By the early 1980s, after ten years on air, the station had begun to take on an appearance a little more akin to what would be familiar today. BBC Tees' Mike Hill

The world in the 1970s was a very different place.

It was a world of high inflation and industrial strife - power cuts and the three day week being two not so fond memories in that latter respect.

It was a world without mobile phones or the internet, Facebook or Twitter, and where many people had no phone at all, let alone central heating, fitted carpets, double glazing or many of the other things we now take for granted.

There were only three TV channels and few programmes before 4pm during the week.

In radio the BBC had a virtual monopoly of the airwaves. However, until that New Year's Eve, with limited exception, it was a London based monopoly.

BBC Radio Teesside therefore represented a genuine revolution in what it offered listeners in our area.

For the first time a locally produced and presented radio station representing an area that had previously relied on the whims of Newcastle, Manchester or London for whatever coverage and attention it received.

So how does the BBC Radio Teesside of 1970 compare with what we know today and how has its programming developed over the past 40 years to what is now heard on BBC Tees?

Well, first we need to remember that radio in 1970 was also very different.

A world of turntables and reel-to-reel tape, razor blades, Sellotape and limited resources - none of the computer screens and keyboards, hard drives and digital editing equipment broadcasters take for granted today.

But it was also new, different and, in local terms, the only player in town. As a result it was exciting and offered something you simply couldn't get anywhere else in broadcasting terms - genuine local news, entertainment and personalities.

It's all in the presentation

The early schedules were very different from what we are used to now.

There was a Breakfast Show (On the Move, presented originally by Derek Hobson, subsequently to find fame presenting New Faces on ITV - the 1970s X-Factor) but most of the programmes were self contained, specialist in nature and under an hour in length.

The names and presenters of many of those programmes probably ring a bell with many BBC Tees listeners even today - Focus on Folk (Stewart MacFarlane), Country Time (Stan Laundon), Everybody Sing (with Neil Harris at the organ), Polished Brass (Graeme Aldous), Diana at Large (Diana Lamb) and so on.

Sport, as now, was a key part of output. The first Sports Editor was George Lambelle, another familiar voice who worked at the station for many years.

There was Teesside Requests and Teesside Notice Board, news on the hour and extended news programmes at 1 (Teesside at One with News Editor Ian Hindmarsh) and 5.30 (Teesside Tonight), Off Shift at 3.00 provided "a selection of items from On the Move for shift workers".

Programmes started at 6.15 on weekdays, 7.00 on Saturdays and 9.00 on Sundays and finished around 6.30 to 7.30 each evening. There were frequent gaps between programmes when it was back to Radio 2, which also filled the night time hours.

Other names from that first year of BBC Radio Teesside - Jim Brady, Jim Latham, Noreen Moss, Peter Cook (who assumed the responsibility for Sport), Vanessa Gittings, Brian Smart, Mike Hollingworth, Dave Williams, Parkin Raine, Peter Hedley and Jim Smith.

Programmes included Looking Back (senior citizens), Town Hall Review, Top Team (schools quiz), Get Away (travel), All Change (swap shop), Getting Across (topical events and social problems) and Talking Fishing.

Change is good!

BBC Radio Teesside was renamed BBC Radio Cleveland

On 1 April 1974 BBC Radio Teesside became BBC Radio Cleveland as the new county of the same name came into existence.

By then Paddy MacDee was presenting Saturday Scene "the best of the pop music beat, with the latest releases assessed by the pop opinion panel" each Saturday morning.

Access, a programme for blind listeners had also started, and Glory Time at 11 each Sunday morning saw Bob Hamlett "playing favourite hymns and music with a religious theme" Carols for Christmas was an established annual event, Dad's Music provided music of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s for a mere 30 minutes each week and Mix Up had arrived as a mid morning miscellany.

Alan Wright appeared in 1974 as a contributor on kids show Helter Skelter along with another familiar voice, Jack Goodfellow.

Keith Harrison, John Taylor (Sport), Ian Charlton and Tony Baynes were other regular voices.

Ten long years later

By the early 1980s, after ten years on air, the station had begun to take on an appearance a little more akin to what would be familiar today.

The station was on air from 8am to 5pm on weekends and 6.30am to 6pm on weekdays. The weekday line up as we approached the end of 1981 was:-

6.30 AM 194 (Stan Laundon)

9.05 On the Line (Colin Bunyan and Stewart MacFarlane)

12.05 - 1.30 Housecall (Mike Hollingworth)

3.02 - 6.00 After Three (Richard Jones)

The Sports Editor was now John Allard, Alan Wright was presenting Roundabout on Sunday mornings and Glory Time, Dad's Music Country Time and Focus on Folk remained Sunday stalwarts as did Sunday Requests (Keith Proud).

Move forward a further decade and by 1991 there was a new look but with some familiar names and programmes still present.

Sunday Requests, Dad's Music and Country Time were still there on Sundays but weekdays now were in the hands of Ken Snowdon, Alan Wright, Alison Lister and Colin Bunyan - where are Ken and Colin twenty years on I wonder?

Tim Ellingford, Pauline Armstrong, Keith Proud and Graham Robb were other regulars. Programming shared with other BBC Local Radio stations was now a regular part of the evening output - Night Network in the North every evening between 6pm and 12am.

In the year 2000

By 2000, Neil Green was the fresh-faced new boy at BBC Radio Cleveland

And so into the new millennium and the 30th anniversary.

Ken Snowdon did the birthday honours on New Year's Eve 2000 from 10pm as well as being the regular teatime presenter.

Chris Baxter and Caroline Davis were the Breakfast Show presenters, Alan Wright was in charge of mid morning and Mr Showbiz (aka Matthew Davies) shone in the afternoon.

Neil Green was the fresh faced presenter at Saturday Breakfast.

Red Balls on Fire introduced a certain Mr Bob Fischer to an unsuspecting public and Vintage Vinyl was now an established Sunday afternoon favourite in the hands of Colin Bunyan.

Where are Messrs Snowdon, Green, Fischer and Bunyan ten years on I wonder?

Stewart MacFarlane, Mark Turnbull and Sue Sweeney were other familiar names and voices of this period.

Bang up to date

Forty years on, John Foster is the voice of the BBC Tees' breakfast show

In the last ten years BBC Radio Cleveland has become BBC Tees (2007), flirted with broadcasting round the clock for a while (I enjoyed a couple of weeks doing the 1am to 4am shift myself) and seen more names, voices and programmes come and go - remember Gobstopper, Saturday at the Pleasuredome, Will Banks' Soul Prescription, Pure, Anna Lee, Adrian Allen, James Watt, Bruce Edwards, Brendan Kearney, Katherine Hannah, Julie Donaldson, David Nove and Chris Johnson!

So the voices and names may change, the programmes come and go but the essence of BBC Tees at 40 remains the same as that of BBC Radio Teesside on that first December night in 1970 - to inform, educate and, primarily, entertain the people of Teesside, County Durham and North Yorkshire.

Who can tell what the BBC Tees of ten years time let alone forty years time will look or sound like.

I just hope we're all still around to find out!