James Cridland

Pennine Radio's reunion

Pennine Radio's former studios

Built in 1864, 39-45 Well Street in Bradford - above - was used as wool warehouses, built for the yarn merchants Heymann & Alexander. Lewis Heymann came from Hamburg in Germany, as did many of the people who owned businesses in the area, hence why this area of Bradford is called Little Germany. It was one of fifty wool warehouses there. The building became Grade II listed in 1983, and it’s now - not that you’d know it - an exclusive set of apartments, even if the picture of it, taken over the weekend, makes it look almost abandoned from the outside.

It was also the home of Pennine Radio - latterly, The Pulse - from 1975 to 2010. The door in the centre of the picture was the way in - with a large illuminated sign above it. To the left of the door was a little kiosk, selling newspapers, cigarettes and confectionery. To the right, those windows in the basement looked down into the programming department. Above was the sales office; the window blocked off with wood was the creative production department.

The studios were to the back of the building: underground, entirely without any natural light, and built to the exacting IBA specifications of the mid 1970s. There was one large on-air studio, and two others surrounding a “MCR”, a main control room with racks of equipment.

And it was where I got my first job, at the age of 18.

Fifty years after the launch of the station, we had a reunion last night in a nearby hotel. Many people were there - nobody representing current owners Bauer, of course, but four staff from the launch day were there (including on-air talents Dorothy Box, who left in 1989, and Peter Levy, now best known for his BBC television appearances).

The thing about a first job is that you don’t yet know enough about anything. I believed that Ian James, the commercial production engineer, was just how a commercial production engineer was: not appreciating that he was uniquely talented and someone special. I didn’t really know why the station director, Steve Martin, was an astute and clever programmer (turning the station into #1 in the market). I didn’t know why my initial boss, the creative writer Paul Renhard, was a bright and inspiring person. I just assumed that everyone in radio was that way - and that there was no space for the mediocre and the disinterested.

It was excellent to see so many faces I knew. Some faces were much older; some surprisingly appeared no different than I remembered. At least two looked younger than I remembered them! I wasn’t the only person to travel across oceans to be there.

This morning, I walked round Saltaire and looked at an exhibition of photographs by Ian Beesley. The photographs on display show large black and white pictures of people working in industries that are now long gone. Large, clanking machines, and physical, generational, know-how, replaced by efficiency from overseas.

Pennine Radio is long gone, too. After 2010, the station moved to a modern office block close by; in 2021, now owned by a German-owned media group, the station moved to Leeds, in 2024 it was renamed “Hits”, and in June of this year, all local programming ceased. While the transmitters still operate, they hum to the sound of a Manchester or London-based station; and to automated output run entirely by computers. No juggling of carts, reels of tape, fax machines or vinyl records: and no experiences of being the only person in the building, running a radio station by yourself.

The warm and fuzzy feeling of seeing so many friends again was tempered by the knowledge that I was seeing many, sadly, for the last time: and that, just as the Beesley photographs show so eloquently, the industry has changed for ever.

RCS

Classifieds

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  • Beer-drinking opportunity: I’m now in London, and will be at The Yorkshire Grey in 46 Langham Street on Tuesday, between 5pm-7pm.

  • I was interviewed by Dave Charles for Radioinfo with some good questions about radio. The headline: “The issue isn’t radio ‘finding talent’, the issue is radio stations convincing creators to work in radio”. Expect more inconvenient truths in the article.

  • I know little about this, other than copy/pasting the press release, but Zeno Plus looks interesting. A system that takes a radio stream, removes ads, adds transcripts and chapter markers, automates intros/outros, and even adds AI-generated information like weather or news, as well as apps. I think I’d suggest that we should be increasingly making content that works for on-demand first, and also using it for on-air, but anything that makes content re-use better is a good plan.

  • The BBC quietly added “listen again” buttons a while ago for some of its output on the BBC Audio programme schedule for BBC Radio 4 (on desktop) - one of three different URLs to find the schedule of that radio station on the BBC website 😬. They’re nicely done, linking through to (ad-supported) podcasts where they exist, and to a catchup service where they don’t: and it means that the Today Programme or PM are available in their entirety once more for non-UK listeners. Those buttons are still not there on the app, though; which (data tells us) is where the majority of on-demand listening happens. I did think that the BBC app was just a web wrapper, but it seems not.

    • Also: a new BBC World Service podcast which launched this Monday, More Than The Score, was added to BBC Sounds for launch but wasn’t initially available on Apple Podcasts and to Spotify (it’s now in both). A week after launch, this podcast is still not available on BBC Audio. I’m not sure they’re taking it very seriously, are they?

  • Listening to LBC on TuneIn (in London), I was treated to a promo for the new Apple Music radio stations as a preroll ad. It sounded as if it was voiced by Apple talent, too.

    • Also of note - I listened to LBC, online, live from Heathrow Airport all the way to Liverpool Street on the Elizabeth line, uninterrupted - and walked to the Hammersmith & City line while still listening, uninterrupted. It was only when I got to the H&C platform that the signal finally gave out. This is most impressive, if you ask me, for a journey mostly done underground - mobile coverage has certainly improved. Also most impressive, at least for me - the station still sounds as consistently good as it did eleven years ago: with (almost) the same imaging.

Where I am speaking next

Supporters

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