Suite 444
Baltic Chambers
50 Wellington Street
Glasgow
G2 6HJ
Tel No: 0141 221 4043
Email:studio@hbs.org.uk
History
The Origins
The Hospital Broadcasting Service has provided a high quality radio service to hospitals in the Glasgow and Paisley area for almost 40 years. The station was originally established by a small and dedicated group of volunteers who piloted programmes for 12 months in 1969. Then, from Christmas Day 1970, began daily broadcasts to 8 hospitals within the Glasgow area from their premises in Argyle Street.
During the 70's and 80's the service’s facilities were developed and soon four studios were providing programmes to the hospitals. However in the late 80's, due to lack of maintenance by the building’s landlord, three of the studios had to be withdrawn leaving only one major on-air facility to deliver programmes. This meant that the station’s outside broadcast facilities were used for back-up and training. It was decided that a move to new premises must be made or The Hospital Broadcasting Service would be forced to close down.
The Move to Baltic Chambers
In August 1993 the service moved to more modern and compact offices in Baltic Chambers in Wellington Street where volunteers could once again begin to develop the facilities and by Christmas of that year a new on-air studio was constructed. This was the mainstay of programmes for four years until a second studio was launched on 20th December 1997, the culmination of three years hard work to raise £20,000 for the equipment.
A networked computer system was gradually established and a radio link transmitter installed in 1997, initially from the roof of Baltic Chambers, but then transferred to the roof of the Hilton Hotel giving a much improved signal path to the hospitals. Also, in 1999 a grant from the National Lottery Charities Board enabled the service to purchase a completely new set of Outside Broadcast Equipment.
Some of the original hospitals are no longer on the network due to either closures or local equipment failures. However The Hospital Broadcasting Service, with its developing facilities and growing team of volunteers continues to provide quality programming for hospitals bringing music and requests to the listeners. In recent years additional sites have been connected, The Royal Alexandra Hospital in 1994, Blawarthill in February 1999, Drumchapel in April 2000 and The Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital in January 2006 making a total of 6 hospitals currently served.
In early 2007 we extended programming to cover the brand new West of Scotland Cancer Centre, which is know more commonly as 'The Beatson Hospital'. This 180+ bed facility is now fully equipped with new ‘patient entertainment systems’ that provide high quality stereo sound. This has been a challenge to our engineering team to provide stereo broadcasts for the first time in our history, which is made more complicated by our location in Glasgow city centre.
Building upon History - Plans for the 21st Century
The Hospital Broadcasting Service has strived throughout its history to provide the highest possible quality of therapeutic radio service to patients, and in doing so has made a substantial contribution to the development of Scottish Broadcasting. In March 2001, Radio Clyde presented a commemorative plaque to the service in recognition of this achievement.
The service now intends to build upon these achievements. Over the past few years both broadcast studios have been upgraded with computer based play-out systems which has given the station a larger choice of music to play on programmes and also the listener has a greater opportunity to choose an available track. This system has also given our presenters the chance to work with professional standard equipment which is important for their development.
Further work is taking place with our Outside Broadcast equipment, which is to be upgraded to enable us to have more flexibility on events we can cover both on hospital sites and other community events.
Read about the History of Hospital Radio in the United Kingdom