OUTSIDE BROADCASTS

Hospital Radio Perth produce top quality outside broadcasts many times each year. We bring live programmes from all over town. The Sound Of Music from Perth Theatre, fun events from a wide variety of locations - Perth Show, the St John's Centre, the Farmer's Market, McDonalds, the Leisure Pool or What Everyone Wants!

But we also cover the important events like the VE Day anniversary. We transmit numerous church services from all over town and all manner of special events - including over a dozen seperate broadcasts during the Perth Festival Of The Arts fortnight each spring.

Some years ago we invested in top of the range equipment that allows us to relay sound live via the FM wavelength. the result is that a CD played at an event on the South Inch sounds as good as if we had been playing it in the studio. It means that our outside broadcasts can be relayed live from just about anywhere within a five mile radius of Perth Royal Infirmary.

Where ever you go, you are likely to meet us wandering around with our microphones!

When Perth City Hall was rewired a few years ago, Perth and Kinross Council included wiring for our outside broadcast kit and this allows us to relay dozens of concerts and shows from the City Hall. For some years now we have broadcast every single Perth Choral society and Perth Symphony Orchestra concert plus a wide variety of other shows including an Abba tribute group, the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra and Dougie MacLean. Top quality entertainment producing the very best of programming for our listeners.

Each Christmas we broadcast the Perth Council of Churches Carol Service and the Perth Choral Society Carol Concert. It was at the 2001 concert that we met 79 year old Iby Kovacs from Targu Mures in Transylvannia, Romania. It was Iby's first visit to Britain, her first carol concert and the first time she had seen Santa Claus. Iby thoroughly enjoyed the concert and the chance to meet Santa.

Our photo shows (standing l to r) Dalene Radin (Perth Choral Society and Hospital Radio Perth), Graeme Scott (Choral Society president), Iby Kovacs, John Watson (concert compere and Hospital Radio Perth chairman), Iby's friends Michael Manchen and Ruth Farrer and seated, Steven Robb (Hospital Radio Perth outside broadcast co-ordinator and station manager).

From time to time we broadcast live from around the hospital, whether that be the Murray Royal Fete, Christmas Eve in hospital reception or even within particular wards. This has proved very popular with both the patients and the radio staff. The whole programme is broadcast from the remote location and we all have a great deal of fun.

Hospital Radio Perth have won several national awards for our outside broadcasts and we are justifiably proud of the range of events which we cover. In 2004, when we upgraded the studio equipment we also updated the OB gear. A new Soundcraft mixing desk has improved the sound greatly while the arrival of half a dozen new microphones has meant that we no longer have to rob the studios to carry out a large outside broadcast.

The latest development involves Perth's magnificent new Concert Hall. The building is due for completion soon and we and the developers have put a great deal of thought into how Hospital Radio Perth can relay sound from the venue. The decision has been taken to stream the sound to our studios via the internet. As a result we are currently putting together the appropriate equipment. It's a very exciting project and we must thank Perth and Kinross Council for their foresight and assistance.

As ever, our belief is that we should do our best to bring the patient programmes from the very events they might have attended had they not been in hospital. Often we even arrange to distribute the programmes for the event in the ward. It's as near as we can make it to actually being there!

Charts based on record sales have been with us for over half a century! Ever since Al Martino came top of the very first chart on 14 November 2002, singers and musicians have coveted that Number One spot.

In 1992, Hospital Radio Perth celebrated the 40th anniversary of charts by playing every single number one ever. It took us over 55 hours and we raised around £1,800.To mark the 50th anniversary we decided to do it all again - and it took just under 80 hours!

But just playing the records wasn't enough - we decided we had to let the public see what we get up to. On the afternoon of Thursday 14 November 2002 Alistair Smith and John Watson kicked off a 3 day continuous broadcast, live from the foyer of Tescos 24-hour Superstore in Crieff Road, Perth.

Over the next few days virtually every member took some part in the procedings which were beamed back live to the listeners. In fact, as you can see we had to install an aerial some 100 feet high to get our signal back to the studio!

We sang, we danced, we broadcast the news from years gone past and we reviewed the current papers live from the news-stand all to a background of some of the most well known songs ever recorded.

The Tesco staff and the shoppers sang and danced too - day and night. The staff brought us coffee and kept us going in the wee small hours; police officers buying their lunch bought us Mars Bars; St Johnstone players came to visit and the BBC News even followed our story on the radio and television.

There were all sorts of fun and games and the opportunity to win some excellent prizes. We played all 942 hits ending with Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" which had been number one for less than an hour!

Again we raised over £1,800 and had a great time.

Our thanks go to all the staff at Tesco who threw themselves into the event and the customers who took part and helped us raise funds.