Update 15 Oct 2024
This website is the story and public archive of student-led radio broadcasting in the Bangor area of North Wales, focussed on the 1970s and 1980s, and collated much later in 2024. It reflects a time before the online world where streaming, websites and social media were still well in the future, and broadcast radio was an even more important cultural mechanism than today. The story of these times brings together great application of technology along with infectious enthusiasm to show what was possible in a somewhat isolated broadcasting landscape.
The key incentive for creating this environment was the annual Rag Week, with students doing absurd and crazy things for a week with the stated intention of raising money for nominated charities. What could be crazier than using a radio station to publicise such events?
This story today is written by a tiny group of people who were actually students at Bangor in those decades. It was partially triggered by discovering that numerous audio recordings, consigned to analogue open reel tape and cassette some 40 to 50 years ago, were not only still playable but in good condition. Some of the technology wasn't so robust - an old semi-professional tape recorder emitted smoke and went bang when asked to play back one of the tapes. But it was repairable, with the same skills learned to build radio stations 50 years earlier, and along with other antique devices allowed those precious tapes to be transferred in digital form to modern storage media. Occasional digital audio processing was employed to reduce mains hum and other perennial problems on the old recordings, but what you hear now on this website is broadly just as it was originally recorded. Some material is direct from the original master tapes, such as much of the jingle collection and the BRBS story made at the time. Other sounds are recorded off-air, with attendent crackles, hiss and tape speed meander.
A fortuitous meeting between two old friends late in 2023 conceived the idea that in these recordings was a slice of Bangor's history that was completely unique, enormously creative at the time for those involved, highly memorable for those listening, and was a snapshot in time that was worth preserving. The university library was considered, as was the National Library of Wales and their National Screen and Sound Archive. A couple of months later the alumni section at Bangor announced a plan to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the university in September 2024, and a concept started to come together. The present day whereabouts of other old friends were discovered, requests made for old recordings and publicity material, and dusty cardboard boxes searched. A collection of old Rag Mags came to light, compendiums of doubtful jokes of which many could not be re-printed nowadays, yet the mags then were sold in their thousands to raise money for the annual Rag Week appeal for charity.
There was a need to display a selection of all the various pieces of real and scanned paper, and so the idea of a scrapbook was born as something that could physically picked up and browsed. You may be looking at it now - it contains broadcasting schedules, advertising flyers, reception reports, requests and commentary. It can be read here, or is freely downloadable from this website as a file to print. Lots of the content can be seen scattered around these web pages, and as a small selection.
Likewise there exist many hours of recordings of station output, and a selection of this can be found in the Radio Jukebox. An hour-long documentary-style radio programme "Coming to you live from Bangor" made in 1979 told the story of student-led radio in Bangor up to that point.
A very special aspect of the station prgramming was the use of jingles to give a sense of identity. Investigate the jingles collection to find out more.
If you're reading this and thinking that you have some old material - recordings, requests, publicity - that should be part of this story, then please do get in touch with the alumni section at Bangor University: alumni@bangor.ac.uk.
Many thanks go to all those literally over the decades who contributed to making student-led broadcast radio happen in Bangor. As in most situations, there are those in the front line such as all the presenters who organised their life for a week around a microphone and preparing for it. Not less are those less public voices with the engineering expertise such as Jolly Roger who put technology together that surpassed the local BBC at the time. Friends who lent records, Nick who produced the original innovative jingle set, and more friends who allowed their bedrooms to become a studio for a week are also important. Thanks also go to those who found old material with which to tell this story.
Over the 1960s to 1980s, technology advances enabled huge changes in radio broadcasting. The advent of the semiconductor transistor, itself researched at Bangor's Electronic Engineering School, allowed students to pack battery-powered portable radios in their bag to take to university. Pirate radio boats appeared in the North Sea and Irish Sea, and the nation of Luxembourg built a massive broadcasting station aimed squarely at Britain. The whole nation had serious competition to the BBC for the first time, particularly with pop music financed by advertising. The BBC fought back with a major reorganisation in September 1967 to give networks we still have today, and Independent Local Radio appeared in the early 1970s, also financed by advertising. Unlicensed low power radio appeared in many cities and gave real choice in listening to music format radio.
The generations of young people who came to Bangor would have hankered after such choice. This was a time before email, before mobile phones, before online anything, and radio was an important cultural medium. In the 1960s and early 1970s pirate boats and Luxembourg gave reasonable signals in North Wales, but only on medium wave with its limited technical quality. There was little local element, and dedications from your best friend took many days in the post before broadcast. FM local independent radio came to Liverpool in October 1974 with a fair signal in Bangor, but Liverpool was still a long way away.
The students at Bangor's Electronic Engineering School naturally had the same hankering after musical delights as everyone else. The School had a long history of an amateur radio society, and by the end of the 1960s this technical competence merged with musical influences to bring a medium wave station regularly to the air during the annual Rag Weeks. Such Rag Weeks aimed to raise money for charity by doing crazy things for a week. There was no question about a licence for such a station, as there was no legal mechanism where for a physically distributed university such as Bangor a licence would have been granted, so the events went ahead anyway.
FM radio at significant power was a little more difficult than medium wave, and stereo FM more complex still, but by 1975 the medium wave 'Gnome Service' had progressed to the FM stereo 'Bangor Rag Broadcasting System', or BRBS. It was music based, with a custom set of jingles to give a strong sense of identity. Studio to transmitter radio links, built by students, were used to overcome the hilly terrain of Bangor and also to give a bit of security against everything being lost if authorities objected to the lack of that licence for which it was impossible to apply anyway. There was a great deal of pride that student-led radio in Bangor had provided the first stereo radio signal in North Wales, and it took the BBC several years to catch up. BBC TV acknowledged this by reporting on the station in Wales Today in February 1975.
This live, responsive and implicitly local radio service broadened from Rag Week into end of term celebrations, and importantly into Freshers' Week where it gave another communication path to new students. News and musical documentary programmes were added to the simple music presentation. Keen presenters from all student disciplines and an enthusiastic response from listeners emphasised the feeling that it was Bangor's very own radio station. A major achievement was the continuing influx of new people every academic year as older people moved on from their student life, as this required not only organisation and equipment but also high technical competence. BRBS doubtless provided a new perspective on life chances for a number of students.
The last evidence of station activity comes from 1988. It's not known what precipitated this end of an era, but priorities and skills amongst groups of people do go through natural phases. But it's reasonable to suggest that first as a station with no real name, then the Gnome Service, and then for 14 years as BRBS, student-led radio for maybe 20 years significantly contributed to university life at Bangor.