The Hospital Radio Service first started its broadcasting on 1st September 1975. It was originally called Radio St. Bernards because it only broadcast to the patients and staff in St Bernards Hospital. The 15 members of the original station were drawn from various walks of life and some of them had worked for other hospital radio stations before. The one thing they all had in common, however, was that they were all volunteers and to this day, all our members give their services free. The output from the station has also changed a little over the years, with a wide variety of music played to suit all tastes and ages, plus uptothe minute news from our own local area, and from around the world, to keep people in touch and hopefully singing along. We have always tried to keep our programmes sounding as professional as possible, after all, as a nation, we are used to seeing and hearing some of the best TV and radio in the world. So just because people are in hospital, why should they expect to listen to anything less than perfect? To this end we set up our own training course, leaning heavily on our more experienced members to share their knowledge with others to produce competent radio people. It must have been successful because, to date, we have had no fewer than 16 of our presenters move to professional radio or TV. St Bernards hospital did offer us one advantage over other hospital set ups: our listeners heard our broadcasts over loud speakers as opposed to headphones, enabling staff to listen while still going about their work. With so many of our patients being longstay, we became their link with the outside world, just like your own local radio. We started our Ward Radio Roadshows to take our presenters into the wards to to meet our audience facetoface and to be available to do discos outside the hospital to raise funds to keep the station solvent. Like many organisations, we need money and lots of it to keep going. It costs ?800 per year in records and CDs alone, thats not including funds to maintain the equipment. In the summer months our caravan provides Public Address facilities for some of the local Carnivals and Charity Fetes, again as a fund raiser primarily, but also for publicising our work in the local community, who at any minute might have the misfortune to be in hospital and benefit from our service. In 1978, the hospital authorities decided to extend our service to include the new Ealing Hospital and Perivale Maternity Hospital. It was obvious that the name Radio St Bernards would have to be changed as we were not broadcasting purely to St Bernards anymore. After much debate, we picked the name Ward Radio which really did sum up our work. We were lucky to discover an American radio station called Ward Radio and they allowed us to use their jingles. So that has been the development of Ward Radio over the past 30 years. The faces may have changed, but the high standards we hope have continued to bring a little joy and pleasure to our listeners. As part of our 18th birthday celebrations, we undertook a restrictive service licence. This enabled us to broadcast our programmes via a medium wave transmitter to the whole Borough of Ealing. In fact, our programmes were picked up some 50 miles away, so it was a bit beyond our expected area. We were well received as a community radio for two weeks, broadcasting fourteen hours a day a mixture of music and speechbased programmes. With outside broadcasts from local shops and publications such as this we hope to spread the word of our organisation to the local population whom we hope will never need our services but were here if you do

Address: c/o St Bernards Hospital Uxbridge Road Southall Middlesex UB1 3EU
Telephone: 020 8571 4181 or 020 8354 8181
Website: http://www.wardradio.org.uk/