Radio Starlion - 30 Years

30 Years of Serving Stockport

Stepping Hill Hospital's radio station, Radio Starlion celebrated its 30th anniversary recently (Tuesday 29 May 2007) - and revealed plans to revamp its round-the-clock programme schedule which will include a new daily breakfast show.

Radio Starlion has been broadcasting music requests, local news and football commentaries from Edgeley Park since the inaugural broadcast by well known local compere Vince Miller on May 29, 1977.

Radio Starlion station manager Alan Swallow (centre) celebrates the station's 30th Birthday with some of the station's volunteer presenters who joined forces for a marathon request programme. From left to right: Alan Ovington, (station engineer and assistant station manager), Phil Lawrence (longest-serving presenter with 30 years' service), Dave Carter and Jeanette Howlett (who co-host the weekly Wednesday Wireless show).

The station - staffed entirely by volunteers - was founded by the Stockport Lions Club (www.stockportlionsclub.org.uk) who still contribute towards the running costs.

Originally Radio Starlion broadcast just once a week with a programme of patients requests on a Sunday morning. The schedule eventually expanded with several live shows throughout the weekend and on weekday evenings.

At other times, when volunteers were unavailable, Radio Starlion would switch over to a BBC station until the next live broadcast.

Now, thanks to modern computer technology, many more programmes and short features are broadcast, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The station has also benefited from the introduction throughout the hospital of Patientline (www.patientline.co.uk), a digital TV, radio and phone service available at each bedside.

In January 2005, Radio Starlion was connected to the new system and the patients can now listen in glorious hi-fi stereo - a vast improvement to the old plastic tube headphones that were once standard issue in the nation's hospitals.

Now in a further step forward the station is launching a new programme schedule including for the first time a daily breakfast show - presented by Alan Ovington - "We will avoid the normal paper reviews and stick to upbeat music to lift the listeners' mood as they start the day," said Alan. "Anyone that knows me will know that I have a vast repertoire of jokes. Hopefully, these should go down well in the mornings, too."

Several of Radio Starlion's most popular weekly shows ranging from pop nostalgia to specialist folk and country music will now be repeated overnight.

There will also be a second weekly edition of the Freetime programme which goes out and about to local visitor attractions.

Alan is also Radio Starlion's studio engineer and the creator of the broadcast software (www.alanovington.com) which has made it possible to broadcast round-the-clock.

He has made the software available via the Internet and many other hospital radio stations in Britain are now using the packages, along with small stations in countries such as America, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Through this venture - which raises funds through online donations for Radio Starlion - Alan recently received an e-mail from David Symonds, who was one of the original Radio 1 DJs back in 1967, remembered for his catchphrase "Fantastic, put kettle on, mother!"

"David is now working in Cyprus and contacted me to use some of the software for a project he was working on," Alan explained. "He was so pleased with the results that he offered to record a special 30th birthday greeting for Radio Starlion and several other speech links which we are now featuring regularly throughout the day."

Via the station's website relatives and friends around the world regularly send in requests for patients in Stepping Hill Hospital.

Patients can hear Radio Starlion's programmes on Patientline channel 1 at their bedside - and they can phone in their requests and dedications by simply pressing *800 on their Patientline telephone.

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Peter Hartley's Story

A friend in the Stockport area recently sent me the newspaper article in the Stockport Times East dated 7th June 2007. Let me introduce myself, I'm Peter Hartley and in 1976 was a member of Stockport Lions Club (www.stockportlionsclub.org.uk). At that time I was working shift work and my profession was in electrical engineering. All the other members of the club did other work than electrical! so it was assumed that I would be able to produce a radio station- little did they or I know about the subject. After studying various technical books on the subject I drew up a specification and budget, which was accepted. Initially the desk was in part of the hospital records office, which also housed the rather crude hospital four channel radio equipment, up a narrow flight of stairs. The room itself had a glass roof and got very very hot in summer and very very cold in winter. The equipment consisted of a single channel 100v 100w amplifier, six channel mixer, two record decks, two portable cassette recorders, a desk microphone and a wandering microphone. I can see from your web site that things have come on in leaps and bounds, so much for our initial crude technology. I still have three newspaper cuttings covering the initial programme, from the Stockport Advertiser, Stockport Messenger and the Today newspaper, which are rather miscoloured after so many years in the drawer.

The first programme was put together by Victor Hardbattle and myself, however we were both teriffied at the thought of presenting the programme that we enlisted the help of the compare of the Stockport Poco Poco club, one Vince Miller, the Lions had just held a charity evening at the club to select a Stockport Lions Queen, she is in one of the press cuttings, and so Vince was only too happy to help out. We got the requests after a lot of hard work on the Thursday night and worked frantically to get copies of all the requests, bar one, someone wanted The Old Rugged Cross! would you believe, however vic Hardbattles wife was a singer and he played the classical guitar, so we did a recording! Each record was timed to the second and fifteen to twenty seconds was allowed for the Chat.

We used the radio two channel and started the programme after childrens favorites and handed back the channel in time for family favorites, so we were on air for two hours each Sunday morning. We had four teams of about four Lions members and it was each teams respopnsibilty to get the requests and set up the programme for the Sunday.

In 1979 my job took me to the Wirral and I had over a period of a few months to hand over what technical knowledge I had aquired along with the diagrams etc.

After a few months being very careful we got more into the swing of timings etc and would not spend so much time in the preperation. We used to get the nurses in the childrens ward, which at that time was not far from the studio, to bring up a couple of fit children and have a live chat with them, what a laugh we had with some of the more extrovert kids.

I think it was Christmas 1978 that we arranged to broadcast the christmas carol service from the chapel via a short range wireless link.

Best wishes for the next 30 years.

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Alan Ovington's Story

Alan Ovington

I joined the station in January 1989 and have also seen a number of changes. With a degree in Electronic Engineering and an interest in radio, I joined Radio Starlion as the station's engineer. As well as repairing CD players, cassette decks and headphones, I designed a few circuits for use at the studio. The first was a device to switch on red warning lights when microphones were live.

In addition to this, and collecting requests at the weekend, I was asked if I was interested in presenting a sports show on a Saturday afternoon to wrap around the commentary feed available from Edgeley Park for Stockport County's Home matches. I jumped at the chance, and have been working with our commentators Ray Whiteoak and Ralph Connell ever since.

Until about five years ago, we only used to broadcast when we were actually at the hospital doing live request shows. At other times we used to relay Radio 2. It was when I was visiting my sister-in-law at Macclesfield hospital after the birth of my nephew, that I had a great idea. The hospital radio station on her bedside radio was silent when I was there; obviously they weren't broadcasting at the time. I thought about my computer at home, and how I could play music from MP3 files. Macclesfield Hospital could be doing something like that. In fact, we at Radio Starlion could be doing something like that. Most radio automation software is expensive, but as my proper job now included writing more and more software, I found myself keen to write some code that we could run on a PC at the studio so that we have a "24 hour presence" in the hospital. I called that software MARPOS (MP3 Automated Radio Play Out System), and before the end of 2003, Radio Starlion was playing a mixture of music and pre-recorded links throughout the day and night, with our usual request programmes at weekends and weekday evenings. A second piece of software I developed can play pre-recorded shows at given times.

I made these pieces of software available on my web site, www.alanovington.com, and many other hospital radio stations in Britain are now using them, in addition to small stations in countries America, New Zealand, and South Africa. Some readers may remember David Symonds, who was on Radio 1 in the early days, and is now working in Cyprus. He contacted me to use some of the software for a project he is working on and has recorded a series of speech links for Radio Starlion.

Patientline (www.patientline.co.uk), a digital TV, radio and phone service was introduced to Stepping Hill Hospital in 2004. On 25th January 2005, Radio Starlion was connected, and the patients can now hear us in hi-fi stereo, rather than listening over the old "plastic tube" system.

Radio Starlion's presenters have now built up several series of specialist music programmes including Country, Folk and Rock which are broadcast throughout the week, along with shows recorded out and about at some local visitor attractions. This summer we began repeating these programmes throughout the night. In addition, I started a new breakfast show. We avoid the normal paper reviews and stick to upbeat music to lift the listeners' mood as they start the day. Anyone that knows me will know that I have a vast repetoire of jokes. By all accounts, these are going down well in the mornings.

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