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

Lee, D

Street, Sean

English

Bournemouth University Research Online

Preserving the Sounds of the SouthDavid Lee (WFSA, Hampshire Record Office)Seán Street (CBHR, Bournemouth University)SS: The Wessex Film and Sound Archive has some significant collections of local radioprogrammes, including work from the early days of commercial radio - Independent Local Radio,Radio Victory in Portsmouth,  and its successor, Ocean Sound, 210 in Reading and 2CR inBournemouth. The Centre for Broadcasting History Research in the Media School atBournemouth University recently collaborated with WFSA in a project funded by the AHRC todigitize and catalogue this material, dating from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, making itavailable to both local and regional researchers, and to the UK academic community via an onlinesite. Today David Lee and I want to talk to you about that process.The first question that might come to mind is “Why bother?” One of the major problems affectingtoday’s commercial radio is its lack of meaningful content. It’s relationship with its community isoften minimal. In order to address this, it’s useful to look at the early development of the medium.The first commercial station to go on air in the UK – that is to say, legal and land-based – wasLBC, the speech station in London, which began broadcasting on 8 October 1973. It was followeda few weeks later by Capital Radio, and then gradually Independent Local Radio as it was called,began to fan out across the UK. The 1970s was a bad time to start any kind of business, and ILRwas not helped by being very heavily regulated by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, thegrandparent of today’s Ofcom. Remember that the UK is one of the very few countries in theworld to have commercial television before commercial radio; the mistrust of commercialbroadcasting ran very deep for many years. So when ILR started, it was almost regulated out ofexistence. I started my radio career with the BBC and in 1980 joined 2CR – Two Counties Radio– in Bournemouth, at its opening in September 1980, and my job was Features Editor. These daysthere’s not enough speech on ILR to warrant such a post, but in those days, “meaningful speech”as the IBA director John Thompson called it, was a requirement, and the IBA had staff all over thecountry, monitoring content. So for example, I would be responsible for producing documentaries,placing interview guests in programmes, exploring ways in which the local community couldsupply programmes of its own, such as drama, providing educational programmes, includingmaterial for pre-school children, and establishing an extensive output of daily and weeklyreligious programmes. And that was typical – most ILR stations of the time had similar output.The stations themselves didn’t like it, because speech programming is not very cost-effective, butit was the law and they had to comply. They were hard times, and it is surprising that only onestation – Centre Radio in Leicester – went under. (An ironic fact is that in today’s de-regulatedworld more than a dozen stations have gone out of business in the last two and half years, withmore to come – and it’s not just the recession that is killing them of.)So the IBA’s regulation was bad for business but good for radio, because stations HAD to producematerial that reflected their community, and that made for some memorable audio. There was,from 1973 to 1990, a wealth of quality radio programming coming out of the commercial sector –the Independent sector. (We weren’t even allowed to call it commercial radio, its IndependentLocal Radio!) In 1990, the UK Government published a Broadcasting Act which went some wayto permitting the deregulation ILR had been craving since its birth. From this time the groundrules changed; local stations could for the first time put share holders above community; out wentmeaningful speech, consolidation was permitted, and the way was set for the move towards theworld of three or four large radio groups we have today, providing a standard mix of output thatmostly sounds the same across all its stations.All of which makes what remains - what has been preserved from the early years - of significantvalue, not simply because it is radio history, but because it is HISTORY, a part of our past. TheCentral Southern England archiving project on which my research Centre in Bournemouth hasworked with David’s team at Winchester, is part of a three-part project to digitize commercialradio from 1973 to 1990 across the UK. Part one of the project digitized what was known as the“Programme sharing” scheme, which operated over a number of years, and which enabled stationsto share material that had a significance beyond the local, with other stations. This project was theresult of collaboration with the British Library and was funded by the AHRC. The wealth andvariety of material being produced at the time that exists in this archive is impressive to say theleast. Another part of the project has been to digitize and catalogue the giant LBC/IRN(Independent Radio News) archive. This, funded by JISC, is just coming to its conclusion, andprovides unique witness to a turbulent period of history, through the reports and documentariesmade by the first radio news organisation in the UK outside the BBC. And the third part of theproject is the Central Southern England Archive David and his team have collaborated on withBournemouth. All three archives are online (currently in a test version) on the British UniversitiesFilm and Video Council’s website, providing many thousands of hours of searchable radio for theUK academic community.SLIDE: Screengrab, BUFVC Radio Home pageSo that is the overarching rationale behind this partnership. For the Centre for BroadcastingHistory Research in Bournemouth, to match a national profile of ILR with a local version wasclearly attractive. 2CR, Bournemouth, 210 Reading, Ocean Sound and before it Radio Victory inPortsmouth give us a rough triangle geographically and a chance to reflect on how events affectedthis part of the UK – and to remember for instance, how much that history touched the lives ofthose living here – I’m thinking for example of the Falklands War here.So what did the programmes we’ve preserved sound like? Well, there’s some surprising things todiscover in the archive:, a documentary about Broadmoor Top Security Mental Hospital fromReading’s 210, from Ocean Sound, a historical feature telling the story of the giant Fawley OilRefinery on Southampton Water. For 2CR I produced a range of literary features, among them aseries with Lord David Cecil, recorded at his Cranborne home, on writers such as Jane Austen andCharles Lamb. I also made a feature on Tolkien, who lived for a time in Bournemouth, called“Maker of Middle Earth”.  Here’s a good example from 2CR about Thomas Hardy:-Dr Desmond Hawkins, former Network Controller in the BBC’s West Region here in Bristol, andauthority on Thomas Hardy, in a programme made for 2CR in 1983, called “Hardy’s Wessex” inwhich he, appropriately,  defines the geography of the region in which we are today, as identifiedby the writings of the great man himself:AUDIO: Desmond Hawkins, from Hardy’s Wessex.This shows I hope something of the range of material in the archive, accessible via the BUFVCwebsite.Slide: Screengrab – BUFVC Site -  Central Southern England ArchiveAnd here’s an example of the result of a search based on World War 11 – an interview with thelast surviving crew member of HMS Hood.Slide: Screengrab: Ted BriggsNews and current affairs of course is an important part of the archive, as with all of the CBHR’scollections, witnesses to history and the debates and controversies of the times. Let’s now explore something of the process. I’ll hand over to David in a moment to discusssomething of the technical challenges we encountered, but I hope this slide will show in areasonable way how the partnership between us worked in terms of workflow.Slide: Workflow chartWe had two technicians, on contract in Bournemouth copying material and placing it on ourserver, as well as a librarian who provided brief descriptions for the web site. One of the centralpeople at the Winchester end was John Moxley, who I can’t praise highly enough for his role.Which is a good point to hand over to David.DL: As you can see from the workflow diagram, we at Wessex Film andSound Archive work primarily in CD AUDIO format.  This is becauseOur users listen to sound recordings on CD players and because, rightlyor wrongly, I believe it is easier for us to stay away from computers at themoment, except to help restore sound quality on some recordings.  I fullyrealise that this will have to change, and hope that a Digital Mass StorageSystem will be available to us during the next 5 to 10 years.   For  the  moment,  however,  we  aredigitising on to gold layer CDs, and making silver CD duplicates for access purposes.Bournemouth University, on the other hand, are much better resourced and advanced than we  are,so they converted our CD AUDIO copies to Broadcast  Wave  Files,  for  long  term  storage  on  acomputer server and data tapes, making MP3 copies for listening  purposes  online.   At  the  sametime, CD  AUDIO  listening  copies  were  made  for  us  on  silver  discs,  and  couriered  back  toWinchester.The sharp-eyed among you will already have  noticed  that  tape  packaging  was  scanned  for  theinformation  it  contained.   This  entailed  photocopying  the  box  lids  that   held   contents   lists,recording and transmission dates, producer and technical details.  Separate  pieces  of  paper  werealso photocopied, especially those containing scripts for the  presenter  to  introduce  an  item,  butthese were quite rare.The photocopies were sent to Bournemouth with the gold CD copies, and scanned  as  .JPEG  filesfor inclusion with the Metadata.  It also helped the cataloguer with her work.Slide: John MoxleyAnother valuable source of information was John Moxley, who carried out the  digitisation  of  theanalogue tapes using a brand new OTARI machine (which had  to  be  obtained  from  Japan),  ourTECHNICS and REVOX machines (for some  of  the  more  fragile  tapes),  and  a  FOSTEX  CDrecorder.  Anyway, John was absolutely  meticulous  in  note-taking  during  the  process,  loggingevery item by its reference number.  By listening carefully to a whole  recording,  he  was  able  todiscover anomalies in details written on the tape boxes – there were many –  and  identify  for  thefirst time what was actually contained on the  tapes.   In  fact,  many  had  been  over-recorded  foreconomy – this is local radio, after all – but the previous recording had not been fully erased, so  itrequired great concentration to determine what the main item was.  You would not have got that ifthe tape had just been left to run, and it enabled John to edit out the unwanted material.He also listened for clues to dates and subjects where no  written  details  existed,  using  a  specialcalendar to tie down the year, where possible (EXPLAIN).Technical problems were also noted  in  detail,  including  when  tape  splices  came  apart  duringplayback.  Even now, I can hear the howls of anguish that used to emanate from John’s  corner  onthose occasions!  So he had to do many repairs.  ‘Sticky’ tapes were baked on the premises in  ourlow-temperature oven until dry and brown, in order to make them more playable, but even this didnot work on occasion.  We had to abandon those,  I’m  afraid.   Tape  heads  and  transport  guidesneeded regular cleaning, because of the oxide shedding from some tapes, especially AMPEX onesfrom  that  period.   Some  spools  even  contained  different  tape  brands  spliced  together,  oftenleading to poor transfers and retakes,  due  mainly  to  the  sticky  sections  slowing  up  a  player’stransport  system,  resulting  in  variations  of  pitch,  for   example.    These   difficult   challengesinevitably slowed up the digitisation process.There were other technical issues,  but  the  most  interesting  one  for  us  was  that  posed  by  thelogging tapes we held.  These carried recordings of a whole day’s output of  Radio  Victory  in  itsfinal period, as heard by its listeners;  such  material  is  rare  in  sound  archives.   In  fact,  this  ispotentially exciting for students of radio, because it allows them to experience  what  the  listenersheard at the time – warts and all – and  gives  a  much  better  sense  of  the  style  and  delivery  ofbroadcasts then; it also puts individual items in context.  In order to get a whole day’s output on toa 10½ inch tape spool, a recorder has to run at 15/16th inches per second – a very low speed –  andis left by the radio engineer to capture the studio output channel unattended.  This is done for legalreasons.Where does one obtain such machines today,  I  hear  you  ask?   Well,  we  were  lucky:  I  did  aninternet search and found TAPE RECORDER of Ipswich in Suffolk, whocollects old Revox equipment, restores it and sells it on.  We bought one of his 15/16th  inches  persecond machines for £250  and John set about producing  digital  copies  of  selected  tapes.   Eachtape averaged 7 CDs, and signal processing equipment had to be used to improve  the  poor  soundquality generated by such a low speed recording.  As you can imagine, it was a slow process!I, too, would like to sing John’s praises for his work on this project.  It required  a  lot  of  patienceand attention to detail, which fed back into our meetings with Bournemouth in the  form  of  somevery useful suggestions, including what should be digitised.So how has Wessex Film and Sound Archive benefited from this project?  First and foremost, Iwould like to state that we would not have got preservation and listening copies made withoutsuch a project as this; we simply do not have the staff or resources. It was very important that thefragile audio tapes in our ILR collections were digitised, as was shown by the numerous occasionswhen ‘sticky tapes’ had to be baked in order to obtain a signal from them. The summarydescriptions of tape content would also not have been possible, and yet they make a crucialdifference to how such material is perceived and how it is used. The ‘minimal’ title descriptionswe had before the project did not help reveal the true contents of our ILR collections. Now thatthis information is in our own catalogue, it has become available online to the whole world, sowho knows what will be the response? One can only guess, but  experience already gleaned fromthe partial summary description cataloguing of our BBC Radio Solent collection leads me tobelieve that this could well involve family history, use in talking magazines for the blind andpartially sighted, in presentations to groups of all kinds, in education, and in community projects,as well as re-use by broadcasters, of course.  Knowledge is power to do all of these things andmore.The project also enabled us to discover further material and help underline its importance to thesocial history of the region, such as the news reports and special events; it was particularlyinteresting to compare reports of the Clapham rail disaster and its aftermath from different ILRstations. There were also many examples of recordings which had much wider interest, such asdocumentaries about the raising of the Tudor warship ‘Mary Rose’, the Falklands Conflict and theanniversary of D-Day 1944, as well as some revealing interviews with celebrities.  Students ofradio will be particularly interested in the ability to listen to broadcasts as they happened.It was also very worthwhile for us to work in partnership with Bournemouth University – muchwas learnt on both sides, and it was a positive experience for us. We will certainly be looking formore such collaborations in future.SS: An issue with all three of the archives has been that of intellectual property rights. In this, wehave been helped immeasurably by having direct links with the radio industry. At the time theseprogrammes were being made, the Independent Local Radio stations were represented by a bodycalled the Association of Independent Radio Contractors (AIRC). This organization later becamethe Commercial Radio Companies Association, and is now subsumed into The Radio Centre,based on Shaftesbury Avenue.  The continuity between the three organisations has meant thattheir executive has been able to liase between the CBHR and the current company owners. Due tothe changes in ILR ownership rules, this has been complex. Individual companies (such as 210and 2CR) became part of large groups in many cases after 1990, and often those conglomerateshave gone through multiple ownership over the years. Some companies, like Radio Victory, nolonger exist. Together with the Radio Centre, we have been able to draw up an agreement whichhas satisfied all sides, based on the educational password protected nature of the archive.This has been a project fuelled by good will; there has never been a commercial radio archive inthe UK – the survival of a lot of the material has been sometimes almost   miraculous, and weknow that a lot has been lost over the years. So the projects have had two elements – preservation– in some cases almost akin to rescue archaeology, and dissemination. There has been a fruitfulpartnership, not just between WFSA and Bournemouth University, but with the radio industryitself, in the locating of material, and this goes on. These days some of the most interesting workremains in personal archives, in the lofts and sheds of the people who made it, and who haveenough pride in it to have retained their work. With the three projects gaining some publicity now,I anticipate that this will continue.There is still much to be done; the metadata in the Central Southern Archive needs to be furtherdeveloped, BUFVC and the CBHR are planning to create a tool to search across all three archives,and I am in the process of bidding for funds to create an oral history, linked to the programmematerial. An example of the possibilities of this can be found in the LBC/IRN Archive, where wehave a recording of a young Jon Snow  commentating on the end of the Balcombe Street siege of12 December, 1975, the first known use of a Radio Telephone in news reportage, which enabledIRN to break the news first. Ultimately I hope to compile a series of interviews with reporters andbroadcasters, reflecting back on their work in the 1970s and ‘80s, linked to the programmesthemselves. How useful it would be to listen to the Balcombe Street siege recording (for instance)And then be able to hear Snow’s reflection on the event today?As to back-ups, in addition to the working online version, one resides at Bournemouth University,one at AHDS, now taken over by Kings College, and one is with the British Library.It is – and will remain – possible to monitor the project as it develops through the use of theIndependent Local Radio Blog, set up by the CBHR. This continues to grow, and is I think, auseful tool to use alongside the archives themselves. You can find this athttp://independentradio.wordpress.comSlide: ILR Blog1 Address2 ScreengrabAt the CBHR, we believe that the Central Southern England Archive at the WFSA is a key audiowitness to society and history during an important part of our recent history, and we have greatlyvalued our partnership with David and the team in developing our mutual vision in developingthis.  The tripartite ILR audio archive overall, which we’ve been talking about, also demonstratesthat audio documents are as valid as any other archival artefact. Their preservation and availabilityto education will demonstrate increasingly that importance in the years to come.Slide: Thank youEnds

Preserving the Sounds of the South

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Bournemouth University Research Online