BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

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BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

Broadcast area	Cambridgeshire
Frequency	95.7 MHz (Peterborough) 96.0 MHz (Cambridge) DAB
First air date	1 May 1982
Format	Mainly local news and talk
Audience share	9.3% (September 2007, [1])
Owner	BBC

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire is the BBC Local Radio service for the English county of Cambridgeshire. It broadcasts from studios on Hills Road (A1307) close to the train station in Cambridge and a studio on Priestgate in Peterborough. It broadcasts on 96 (Madingley, close to the A428-A1303 junction five miles west of Cambridge) and 95.7 (Morborne, south-west of Peterborough, two miles west of the A1 near Norman Cross) FM, 1026MW (Chesterton Fen, close to the A14 and Fen Ditton north-east of Cambridge), DAB, and via its web page using Real Player. It started broadcasting on 1 May 1982.

Chris Morris started his radio career here, testing the management's level of humour.

1 Original schedule
2 Peterborough
3 Outside broadcasts
4 Remote studios
5 Symbol
6 Transmitters
7 Current schedule
8 Naked Scientists
9 External links
- 9.1 Audio clips

Under the first manager, Hal Bethell, the station broadcast only in the mornings. It then broadcast first Radio 4 and then Radio 2.

The opening day was broadcast mainly from Cambridge but also from the district office in Broadway Court, Peterborough, where the BBC first planned to base the station - Peterborough being the county's largest city - until the move from city to county-based stations led it to choose the county town. The first programme was presented by Gina Madgett (formerly Radio Nottingham) and the first disc played was Ebony and Ivory by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder

The original weekday broadcasters were:

Julian Dunn (New Day, an all-speech news service that ran at the same hours as Today on Radio 4, on which it was based); Anne Bristow and Jane Solomons, alternately (The Light Programme, a mixture of music and light interviews); Gina Madgett (The Home Service, a largely speech programme with interviews intended to interest listeners at home).

When Hal Bethell left the station because of his health, he was replaced by the deputy manager of Radio Lincolnshire, Dave Wilkinson. He extended broadcasting into the afternoon by bringing one of Radio Lincolnshire's broadcasters, John Richards. Wilkinson returned to Radio Lincolnshire as manager and was replaced by Ian Masters, previously presenter of the Look East programme on local television from Norwich.

The Peterborough studio opened in single office in Broadway Court, rented from Peterborough Development Corporation, the body responsible for the city's expansion as a New Town. The broadcasting equipment was two Studer tape recorders, a four-channel mixer and two microphones, which were placed on a table surrounded by mobile sound baffles. Ian Cameron, the first broadcaster from there the day Radio Cambridgeshire opened, realised at the last moment that the wall behind the temporary studio abutted the office block's lavatories and asked the staff in Cambridge to listen while he flushed the cistern. Nothing could be heard and the broadcast went ahead without fear of others in the office block inadvertently disturbing it.

In 1983, Peterborough was equipped with its own studio, using a 12-channel mixing desk made in the county and two Studer B67 tape machines, with a third machine for editing in a neighbouring office. That office later become a studio as well, although it could go on the air only from the main studio alongside. The first complete programme from Peterborough was broadcast by Julia Booth (formerly Radio London) while the studio's opening party was going on on the floor below.

In 1987, the studio gained the ability to broadcast independently of Cambridge. At first the opt-out as used only for traffic information in the morning news programme and, later in the day, for five-minute spots of purely local information. The first entire programme to be broadcast from Peterborough without also being transmitted in the Cambridge region was presented by Les Woodland in the afternoon while John Richards broadcast from Cambridge. The next programme to opt out was Sounds Eastern, two hours of music and commentary aimed at Peterborough's Indian, Pakistani, Sikh and Bengali population and presented by Ansar Ali.

The station's first outside broadcasts were of results from local elections held soon after the station went on the air. The station's radio car was used from the back doors of the town hall in Peterborough. The reporter was Ian Cameron. The first complete programme broadcast away from the studio was the same year, from the East of England Show in Peterborough, when the presenter was Anne Bristow.

Radio Cambridgeshire, when it opened, had satellite studios in Huntingdon, Ely and Wisbech, using offices in council buildings. The studios were equipped with a microphone and a small mixing desk and were used to save contributors a journey to Cambridge or to Peterborough.

The first station badge or symbol was a design suggesting Cambridgeshire's three main rivers, the Nene, the Ouse and the Cam. Before the station came on the air, the manager, Hal Bethell, arranged with the Pye radio company, which had long been associated with Cambridge, to use a design based on the sun-through-clouds design which Pye previously cut into the loudspeaker screens of its original radios.

The sun-and-clouds symbol remained until a BBC ruling that all its stations should have a joint logo to underline the national nature of the local service.

The 95.7FM signal is by far the stronger. On 30 October 2004, a fire broke out (thought to be arson) 80ft up the main Peterborough mast, one mile west of Morborne, and the heat caused the whole mast to collapse. A shorter BT Group plc tower with microwave transmission dishes next to it was undamaged. The 95.7FM signal was put out of action for a few weeks. Peterborough has FM BBC national radio, BBC DAB National and Digital One. The Madingley transmitter also carries national FM BBC radio, five television, Digital One, BBC DAB National, Q103 Cambridge and Kiss 105-108 East on 105.6FM as well as the NOW Cambridge DAB multiplex. Chesterton Fen also has Virgin Radio on 1197MW. The DAB signals come from two multiplexes in Cambridgeshire - a rarity for BBC local radio stations, as some do not yet broadcast on digital. Since 30 November 2002, the NOW Digital Peterborough 12D multiplex has come from Peterborough (main signal), Hitchingbrooke Hospital (Huntingdon) and Stamford (in south Lincolnshire). It covers Peterborough, Huntingdon, Stamford and Spalding. Since 30th September 2004, the NOW Digital Cambridge 11C multiplex has come from Madingley.

From 7-10am, there are two breakfast shows - Jeremy Sallis from Cambridge and Andy Burrows from Peterborough. Other programmes include Sue Dougan from 1-4pm each weekday, who used to be the mainstay on the Evening Show on BBC local radio in the south. Antonia Brickell has the Drive programme from 4-7pm. In the evening on weekdays, BBC local radio stations in the Look East area join up with Sue Marchant from 7pm and Nick Risby from 10pm. Squadron Leader ex-Radio 1 Keith Skues has Pirate Radio Skues on Sunday nights.

BBC Cambridgeshire is the home of the Naked Scientists, a group of Cambridge University doctors and researchers with a passion for making science fun. They strip down science and lay the facts bare every Sunday evening, inviting listeners to call in and talk science. They are joined in the studio by a succession of guest scientists who talk about their work and take questions live from the audience. The present series of The Naked Scientists launched in October 2005.

The Naked Scientists is supported by a website, The Naked Scientists Online which contains archived editions of their previous programmes in streamed and podcast formats, and they are in the iTunes music store top 100 podcasts internationally, making the Naked Scientists currently one of the most downloaded science shows in the world.

The Naked Scientists is broadcast across the BBC East region comprising eight local BBC radio stations in the east of England. The name of the programme is a nod to Clavering's Jamie Oliver, a cook whose television programme is called the Naked Chef. Clavering is a village close to Cambridge.