Our history
|
HWD Hospital Radio is the broadcasting
name of The Heavy Woollen District Hospital Broadcasts Association.
The Association is a registered charity (no. 227515).
Half a century on air
HWD Hospital Radio celebrated an amazing 50 years on the air
in September 2002. Our first broadcast was a live commentary
on a rugby match at Batley’s Mount Pleasant stadium in
1952. It received so many compliments, commentaries were then
broadcast on a more regular basis.
The service soon began to
grow and so started a regular record request programme
in the late 1950s. HWD Hospital Radio moved to
Batley General Hospital in the early 1960s taking
up residence in the attic! From here the station
could be heard in all three local hospitals (Batley,
Dewsbury General and Staincliffe) as well as five
residential care homes around the Heavy Woollen
District.
It continued more or less in this vain until the late
1980s when NHS restructuring amalgamated the existing
hospitals into a new site at Staincliffe - and Dewsbury
& District Hospital was born.
|
|
The building of the new hospital meant a rapid fund
raising effort was required on the part of the Association
- we felt we needed to raise £15,000 to
build a state-of-the-art studio facility.
The studio complex and the hospital itself were opened
by Margaret Thatcher in 1989, beginning a new chapter
in the history of HWD Hospital Radio.
Further developments continued during the 1990s
- a new studio was added in 1997 and we opened
a refurbished Studio One in time for the millennium.
This studio has since been given a further refurbishment
to allow digital equipment to be installed along
with software which allows us to broadcast 24
hours a day.
Further restructuring has taken place in the last
few years to form the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust means
that in the future we may be able to extend our
programming to the other hospitals in the Trust
- Pinderfields and Clayton in Wakefield along
with Pontefract - an exciting prospect!
Contacting us
You can call us on 0870 746 8507, text us on 0774 229 8801 or
email us via the contact us page.
|
|
|
