I’ve been interested in radio for a long time. As a young lad I listened to Radio 1 but as a teenager I found Radio Caroline (Mi Amigo era) and listened to that obsessively. They played the rock music records I was into – but they were playing them on a ship in the North Sea – how cool was that? I loved the way the guys on the station seemed to just make it up as they went along and play the kind of music they liked.
But for all those years I was a listener – I certainly didn’t have a plan to go into Radio or be a “dj” or “presenter”. Fate had other ideas and somehow in 1987 – unemployed after Uni – I got a job interview for a “job” on a Government Community Programme – and when turned up I discovered that the “Community Media Liaison Officer” post I was applying for was based in a radio station. I got hooked by the place and, after social action broadcasting, eventually became a full time presenter. That radio station – Mercia Sound later Mercia Fm and finally Mercia – became a big part of my life for 22 years!
So why the nostalgia fest? Well my memory banks got fired up reading “Team – It’s only radio” by John Myers. It’s a great entertaining read. I can’t tell if the book would be entertaining to anyone else – but if you’ve ever worked in radio you have to read it.
John Myers started out as a jock and worked his way into management (though he stayed on the air at the same time). His time in radio covers almost exactly the same as mine and his book details the changes in that industry over the last 20-25 years. He was involved with different radio groups to the ones I worked in – and he was a major protagonist while I was just a lowly jock – but the consolidations and upheavals he describes are very familiar to me.
However my favourite part of the book is his description of getting into radio in the days when vinyl records were played out on-air from grams in the studio, commercials were on carts and all recording was done on reel to reel tape machines. Looking back it sounds a bit Life on Mars – as I remember everyone smoked and went to the pub at lunchtime…
Myers description of interviews going wrong after a malfunction of the heavy “portable” Uher tape machines then used in radio struck a chord – I remember turning up for my first radio interview only to discover that although I’d got a reel of tape to record on, the tape machine itself had no take up spool to wind on to. There was nothing that I could do. Shamefaced I had to go back another day to do it.
Myers has a great anecdote about a big local sporting event – a Sports journo on the radio station thought he’d got an exclusive interview on tape – all day the radio station bigged up a special exclusive news feature. (Back then the big daily news programme on local radio was at 6pm). Myers had the job of editing the tape – it turned out to be blank. Red faces all round.
He also describes reclaiming tape – an arduous job involving using a razor blade to cut out all the cue tape to leave reusable recording tape – a favourite job to give to those who wanted to work in radio and said they’d be prepared to “do anything”.
He describes clunky old on-air desks and bulk erase machines, and editing with razor blades, little blocks of aluminium and chinagraph pencils. He was on a station in the North but he took me right back – his station did the same features and competitions that Mercia did – I was right back there!
I’d forgotten about things like having to do a signal test for OB’s with the radio car. You’d have to go to where ever the OB was due to come from and set up the transmission mast – an enormous telescopic contraption erected via some kind of compressed air system that pumped it up. And then test the link back to the studio. Myers has a great story about doing this with a girlfriend along to ‘help out”.
At Mercia our radio car for a while was a Fiesta that had had this massive metal telescopic contraption mounted inside it projecting up through the middle of the car roof. I remember it was claimed that someone had been out to do the signal test in Coventry – and forgot to lower the mast (which was probably 50-60 feet high). He soon realised his error after he drove under his first bridge on the ring road and the base of the mast rose up next to him as the whole thing was ripped out of the car!
People from that time in radio tend to say that radio was fun then – this book brought back to me how much fun it was. Though I wonder if it was a much fun for the listeners to listen to as it was to be involved in making it.
John Myers brilliantly evokes a whole world of radio that’s gone – he also details (coz he was part of it) how Radio has got to where it is now with big radio groups and “local” radio stations full of networked and automated programming.
Recently a neighbour asked me if I’d recommend a career in radio to his 18 year old daughter – she’s obsessed with it. I had to say I couldn’t recommend it – there’s no certainty – contracts often aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. Most presenters on commercial radio are self employed with no sick benefits, holiday pay or pension. Did she take my advice? Of course not! Last I heard she’s working on a radio station in Birmingham. That’s the trouble with radio – if you’re hooked you can never leave it alone.
John Myers describes this bizarre obsession brilliantly – and even better he’s not making a penny as all the profits are going to charity (or is that “charriddy, mate”) and a local hospital radio.
John Myers – Team It’s only Radio is widely available in book stores and on-line