Category: Radio

The Archers circa 1950

This photo of a recording of The Archers dates from the 1950s. It is of the Hood family. The photo is part of the BBC’s Reminiscence Archive, which you’ll find on this link: https://remarc.bbcrewind.co.uk/ . The archive is designed to connect with people suffering from dementia, who may well remember programmes from their younger days.

TA Training Book 1980 – from Stuart Gandy

This Pebble Mill blue training book was issued to TA (technical assistant) Stuart Gandy in 1980. It was full of tasks for a new trainee to do. It also contained floor plans of PM as well as system drawings for TV, radio and comms, and some organisational charts which are what is shown in these photos.

Carpenter Road

Photo by Roger Davis, no reproduction without permission

This photograph by cameraman Roger Davis is of the BBC’s Carpenter Road premises in Edgbaston, Birmingham circa 1960s. Carpenter Road housed the administration and production staff who were involved in programmes other than news, before Pebble Mill opened in the early 1970s. The outside broadcast staff were also based here. There was also an early television studio here, before the studio at Gosta Green opened. The building was demolished later on, and there is now a block of flats on the site.

WCR Inside Tracks – Tom Coyle

The archive ‘Inside Tracks’ featuring Tom Coyne is being broadcast on Wolverhampton Community Radio (WCR) Sunday evening (9th Oct 2022) at 5pm.
The archive ‘Inside Tracks’ at 5pm remembers the legendary broadcaster Tom Coyne, who died in 2015. Pete Whitehouse met Tom and recorded his ‘Inside Tracks’ programme in 2010 at a time when he was living in retirement in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton.
Tom was originally from the North East of England, having been born in South Shields and was the first new reader on Tyne Tees television in Newcastle. In the programme, Tom talked through his life, and we play music from some of the people he’d met during his long career in radio and television.
Tom was on the first edition of ‘Nationwide’ and also presented many other shows including: ‘Songs of Praise’, ‘Dance Dates’, ‘Come Dancing’ and ‘Top Gear’ plus hundreds of programmes as the Geordie gamekeeper Gordon Armstrong in ‘The Archers’ on radio.
For more about Tom and a video of him in his heyday at ‘Midlands Today’ follow this link: https://www.pebblemill.org/blog/tom-coyne-rip/“

Paul Brighton 1959-2021

We had a mini BBC Radio WM 80s/90s reunion today (10 Jan 2022).

Sadly we were together for the funeral of our friend and colleague Paul Brighton at Tettenhall, but it was lovely to see Carole, Kasel, Louise and Claire after so many years.

I never knew that Paul had once reached the Semi-Finals of Mastermind.

Lots of laughs and good memories, just as it should be. RIP Paul.

Tim Beech