History of Radio Stoke

Do you know of 'milestone moments' about Radio Stoke over the last decades that you think we should include here? If you do, please drop us an email, to: stoke@bbc.co.uk

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The Colcloughs was Radio Stoke's one and only soap opera. Funded by the North Staffordshire Health Authority and the Stoke on Trent City Council, who felt they needed a way to encourage the area's population into greater good-health habits, it was launched in April 1991.
Professional actors, including Ray Johnson and the impressionist Kerry Wilson, played the family which had particular health issues.

Programme-makers at Stoke were among the first to introduce ‘phone-in’ programmes and consumer advice programmes

Radio Stoke has always had its base in Hanley town centre. Even when the need for computerisation and a more sustainable office area forced a move from the old Conway House building, the station only moved 100 yards - to its present base at the BBC Centre at the other end of Cheapside.
The present BBC Centre used to be the home of the Hanley Economic Building Society.

RASCAL (the Radio Stoke Charity Appeal) was the station’s way of raising money for a number of different local charities every year. For example, in 1993, the Appeal contributed £60,000 to the Midlands Air Ambulance project. 
The station still helps to raise funds for local charities, but now concentrates on helping specific organisations with specific appeals - as it did in 2007, with the 'Happy Appeal'.

The Radio Stoke newsroom was the first in the country to broadcast an inquest from a Coroner’s Court (which, ironically, would not be allowed today).

Though Radio Stoke has come close to winning a Sony (radio's equivalent of the Oscars) on a few occasions, it has only won gold twice.
In 1985, it gained the top award for Best Local Radio programme, its coverage of
‘Kinnock & Scargill In Stoke’.
In 1991, there was another Gold for Outstanding Service to the Community with its series ‘On The Street’. In these reports one of the station’s reporters, Dominic Green, lived as one of the homeless on the streets of the city. Dominic went on to become a successful music entrepreneur.

The very popular presenter Sam Plank was also nominated for a Sony – in 1989 - but had to bear the disappointment of coming second.
The category was ‘Best Local Radio Personality'.

The first 'outside broadcast' was from the station's radio car, on the very first day of broadcast in 1968. Reporter David Gredington interviewed people in Penkhull, who were all slightly disbelieving of the whole thing, thinking it might have been a spoof!

The biggest ‘OB’ ever mounted was probably the coverage of Sir Stanley Matthew’s funeral, when 100,000 people turned out in Stoke to pay their respects to the passing cortege. Radio Stoke even had reporters stationed in the roof area of St Peter’s Church.

Uniquely across local radio, BBC Radio Stoke is the only station which has broadcast a weekly church service ever since it started. First called 'In Thy Name', it is now known as ‘In Praise of God’.
We're still trying (our maths is not so good) to figure out how many programmes that is over the years, but it must be around 2,000 - we think.
One service even came from the Middle East during the first Gulf War when the Staffords were serving out there.

Radio Stoke OB Van at Garden Festival

Radio Stoke has three satellite studios - in Leek, Stafford and Crewe. Yet it also had others. For a long time there was one at Congleton, and during the months that the National Garden Festival was based at Etruria in 1986, the station had one there too.

When the world's eyes turn to Staffordshire, it is often, sadly, because of disasters. The journalists here have had to report on the social tragedies of the shrinking and collapse of certain industries, including pottery, mining, textiles steel-making, and tyre-manufacture.
And there were the truly infamous moments that Radio Stoke had to report to the world. Journalists had to cover the Babes In The Woods murder on Cannock Chase within days of going on air. The Boarded Barn murders, the kidnapping and death of Lesley Whittle at the hands of the Black Panther, and the murder of paper-boy Carl Bridgewater are other incidents that tested the resolve of reporters in the newsroom.

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Do you know of 'milestone moments' about Radio Stoke over the last decades that you think we should include here? If you do, please drop us an email, to: stoke@bbc.co.uk