Royal Free Radio – 50+ years supporting the NHS
Royal Free Radio broadcasts to hospital patients across North London and is operated entirely by volunteers in their spare time. It was previously known as Radio Enfield, and has been broadcasting from studios in Chase Farm Hospital since 24 May 1970.
It expanded in 1972 to Highlands and South Lodge Hospitals in Winchmore Hill and in 1973 to North Middlesex Hospital. Patients at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead can also now listen in to the re-branded Royal Free Radio following the Royal Free’s acquisition of Chase Farm and Barnet hospitals in 2014.
We keep the patients entertained with our service of record requests, competitions and quizzes, interviews with other local charities and individuals, information and advice on hospital and health issues and a wide variety of music. The Sky News Centre produce an up-to-date bulletin every hour on the hour.
We particularly try to appeal to patients who do not have visitors, and of course the pandemic has restricted patient visiting generally.
Initially we broadcast just 2 hours a week to Chase Farm Hospital on Sunday nights replacing Radio 2 on the patients’ headsets – there were few TVs in the wards then, so our only competitor was Radio 4.
Naturally things have changed in the studios a lot over the 50+ years we have been on the air. In the early days we were still using turntables and tape decks, playing the occasional 78rpm shellac records which soon gave way entirely to vinyl 45s and LPs. Minidiscs never really took off but the vinyl records in our collection were gradually replaced by CDs which in turn have been replaced by a computerised playout system.
We have occupied six different studio sites at Chase Farm since 1970, have broadcast to North Mid for over 15 of those years and were delighted to extend our coverage to the Royal Free in 2017.
We are pleased that we have been able to continue broadcasting uninterrupted throughout the pandemic despite the restrictions imposed on hospital access. This is thanks to our presenters being able to broadcast from their home courtesy of our volunteer electronic wizards in setting up the facility.
Over the next few issues we’ll be telling you something about our programmes and some highlights from the past 52 years.
BOX OUT
There is no charge to patients for listening to us: we are on TV channel 800 at Chase Farm (the default channel when you switch the bedside TVs on), TV channel 0 at North Mid and on radio channel 1 at the Royal Free. Our programmes can also be heard on-line at royalfreeradio.co.uk and on various listening devices and platforms.
