Tradio….. Just found this on one of many DAT tapes I’m archiving. From 99 0r maybe 2000 when I was filling in on Morning Call. Both the name “Tradio” and “Morning Call” were pinched from Radio Tees who in turn pinched from elsewhere. One of the main reasons for such a programme was actually to save needle time as in the early days of UK commercial radio we had a strict copyright limit of how many ‘gramophone recordings’ we were allowed to play each day.

Moray Firth Radio operated in an area in which there was in its first few years almost NO competition on the rest of the dial and for many years we were the ONLY station playing pop music on FM. Almost everyone who wanted to work for it were mobile disco DJs or hospital radio DJs who had very little experience of chatting to ordinary people about ordinary day to day LIFE. The GREAT thing about Tradio was that it forced presenters to interact and have a blether with people who would not normally go to discos or listen to hospital radio and in that sense was a terrific way of teaching presenters to interact with and understand people who were NOT their mates and who they would most likely never meet in person. It FORCED the programme to LEAVE THE STUDIO!!!

It was this simple everyday interaction which I believe played a great part in making the station such a success although much of what we did in the early days would have been laughed off the air in a large city!

This programme was broadcast just a few years before commercial radio in the UK was ‘assimilated” by mega media groups who cut most of the soul and almost all of the localness out of stations. It was also the time when ‘semi commercials’ and mentions of advertisers were allowed…… very different from when the station started in 1982

I don’t know who the information desk guy was but he coped well :-)  Some of the 1980’s Tradios with Gary Maclean were really fantastic and I wish I had some recordings. In a future post I will tell of a memorable morning in which Gary Maclean and his AUDIENCE taught me more about local radio in ten minutes that I had learned in the previous ten YEARS!! In the meantime……. Heres a listen to how things used to be……

Something else from around 2000…… Something you would NEVER hear on commercial radio in Scotland nowadays and rarely in the past - apart from on Moray Firth Radio.

Would you go to bed with me? The Bagpipes. A Black Isle Taxi Driver. Santana and an interview with a Bolivian Folk Group.

Just a random lunchtime show I was filling in on for a few days. I will write more about the weird relationship between Scottish people and traditional Scottish music which is literally HATED by many and NEVER played on daytime commercial radio. I actually played a fair amount in daytime programming on Moray Firth Radio but that is another story…..

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