A World in Your Ear - Digitising Commercial Radio Archives

Sean Street has led three major projects to digitise early commercial radio archives during his time as Director of the Centre For Broadcasting History Research in the Media School at Bournemouth University. This article explores the importance of such material as an educational resource

Barbara Kelly

Barbara Kelly and Bernard Braden were two of UK brodacasting's brightest stars from the second world war to the 1970s. This commissioned entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP) provides the facts of their lives and career

Film on Radio - The Case of Procession to the Private Sector

Sean Street's adaptation for Radio of David Gascoyne's Surrealist Film Scenario, "Procession to the Private Sector" was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in September 1998. This paper reflects on the process of adaptation, and sets the project within the context of Surrealism in electronic media

Pre-War Commercial Radio and the BBC

Traditional histories of pre-war UK broadcasting have usually celebrated the role of the BBC to the exclusion of other competitors. This paper, drawing on the author's extensive research in this field, demonstrates the importance of the commercial imperative in British radio during the 1930

Then-now A guide to the radio programme

This guide to the ‘radio-poem’ – ‘Then-Now’ includes the complete text of Seán Street’s poetic narrative used in the programme and a short commentary on the thinking behind the production of this experimental feature. You certainly don’t need to follow this guide to enjoy the ‘radio-poem’ it merely attempts to explain some of the ideas behind the production of the programme and how the recorded minutes were used. And, of course, it might help all the people who recorded a minute of their day at 6pm on November 9th last year to find their own recording within the layers of sound. Without all those wonderful volunteers this programme would not have been possible – many, many thanks to you all. When all the ‘minutes’ started to arrive at the Soundscape Productions office by email, post and by hand I began to hear a highly eclectic mix of recordings, both in terms of content and audio quality, but I was determined to use every recording submitted - a total of 120 minutes. With such a diverse range of material there were hundreds of ways in which I could have combining the sounds – I could have made many different programmes out of the same material. [Having heard the programme on transmission tonight there are many things I could/would change!] Initially I divided the material into various themes – based on what people were doing at that time of day – working, commuting, cooking, playing and socialising/meetings. I like to think that making a radio feature is rather like composing a piece of music – you introduce ideas, develop them add new opinions develop these and see how all the various views interact with one another. I decided that the ‘radio-poem’ should have a musical structure – a ‘symphony of sound’ in seven movements with an ‘overture’ and a ‘coda’. Seán’s poem was written at the same time as I was listening and editing and we became increasingly excited about the project through a series of long-distance phone conversations – bouncing ideas off one another. We gave ourselves a self-imposed deadline of 9th December to complete the process of editing and record the linking poetic narrative. This meant that the programme was recorded on the 9th, compiled on the 9th and transmitted on the 9th of three consecutive months. And that’s the only reason we chose the 9th November as the recording date. We did think about the idea of recording on a significant date – Bonfire night, Halloween etc. but, as Seán said, that would have made the recordings like posed photographs and not snap-shots of life – which was what we wanted. The poem and the whole of Seán’s introduction to the programme [the script of which can also be downloaded] was recorded and mixed at Gemini Audio Productions in London by Lance England and most of the editing and final mastering was completed by Warwick Pilmer at Clipstore in Leeds. So thanks are also due to them for their patience and understanding. Again thanks to everyone in involved in the project from BBC Radio 4 to all our contributors who gave a minute of their day to be part of this radio-experiment – ‘Then-Now

Preserving the Sounds of the South

Joint paper delivered by Sean Street and David Lee, Director of the Wessex Film and sound Archive about the joint project, funded by the AHRC, to digitize and put online the Central Southern England Commercial Radio Archiv

Spreading the Word, Protecting the Rights.

Bournemouth University and the Centre for Broadcasting History Research [CBHR] Archive collections have a unique flavour, at least in how projects linked to radio collections have come about. We should mention that there have been other projects linked to television as well, the TVTimes project also a partnership with the British Library, The This Week Project and BBC Panorama with the BBC. None of these projects, however, have actually involved digitising moving image. We have also recently acquired the giant IBA paper archive from Ofcom, dating back to the start of ITV. This paper, however, will focus on our sound radio archives, and in particular the creation of an online resource hosted by the BUFVC website, and funded by JISC, to preserve and provide access for students and academics in the UK, material from the LBC/Independent Radio News Archive

Preserving The Sounds of the South

The Centre for Broadcasting History Research in the Media School at Bournemouth University, and the Wesse3x Film and Sound Archive at the Hampshire Record Office undertook a joint project to digitise audio from early commercial radio, held in the WFSA stock. This paper explores the project, which operated between 2006 and 2009

Sounding the past: three silent films

The project was an experiment in linking music and poetry to archive films, not only to provide an enhancing accompaniment but, in some cases, with the aim of making something new which would quite profoundly change the way that these films were perceived by audiences