Location Location Location

Yes, good point, they added four relays, though of course the 'base' coverage from Holme Moss 92.4 already
covered a large area. Didn't they briefly (attempt to ?) change their name to 'BBC West Yorkshire FM' but the branding police in W1 put a stop to that ? A colleague who used to work at Woodhouse Lane during that era, used to turn up on dress down Fridays with a lime green sweatshirt sporting that name and logo !

Originally they had a TX that just covered the Leeds area, I think it was in the Meanwood area. The move to Holme Moss came with the editorial area being expanded, and the funding changing from councils to the licence fee.

I think you're right on West Yorkshire FM, the jingles had been made but never on air I believe. The branding police allowed Thames Valley FM some years later.

Ah, yes, that happened early 70s I think, they were on 94.6 at comparative flea power. Which
in 1981 was allocated to ILR Radio Aire, (they've yet to manage the same expansion trick ! )



They did, but that was the result of the ill fated merger between Radios Oxford and Berkshire.
I rushed out to my car on the first morning, to see whether the RDS name might be the whacky
choice of 'BBC TV', but sadly not, they opted for BBCT.Val

Was BBC Radio York originally just the York area, before expanding to cover much of North Yorkshire?

I don't think a name change was ever considered, but one of their logos in the 80s read somthing like ' BBC RADIO NORTH YORK SHIRE'

There was an odd period in the early 2000s where they branded themselves "BBC North Yorkshire - Radio York", well that's how the website listed it, I'm not sure how it sounded on air.

Radio Leeds' decision not to change to BBC West Yorkshire FM was actually due to a change of management at the station which occurred within weeks of the point that they were about to rebrand – nothing to do with the branding police on this occasion. As Steve says, Radio Leeds had got as far as producing the West Yorkshire FM jingles, and had been running dual-branding along the lines of 'This is BBC Radio Leeds – Stereo West Yorkshire FM' for a while. There was also a dual-branded logo.

The management who took over weren't convinced about the idea and didn't think they could make a success of a rebrand without spending a lot of money on a huge advertising campaign, which they couldn't justify or afford.

In the case of Radio York, they did use the BBC North Yorkshire name for a while around the time they split frequencies with a separate breakfast show for Harrogate and the Dales on 104.3. In this instance, so the story goes, the decision to do this was made locally, and senior figures in the BBC weren't told about it. The rumour is that the head of BBC regions was driving in Yorkshire one day and wasn't too thrilled to tune in and discover the station had rebranded without his knowledge, so he told them to change it back.

York was one of the last stations to launch, in the early 80s. They covered the whole country from the start (well, apart from Skipton where the signal is atrocious)

There were quite a few after York. By that time they were all launched as countywide rather than city-focused stations, and mostly named accordingly, such as Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Hereford & Worcester, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Berkshire, etc.

Incidentally I've often wondered what Cheshire and County Durham have done to offend the BBC when it comes to local radio provision.

Isn't Cheshire officially covered by Radio Stoke, which is why it's not called Radio Staffordshire, as well as not covering much of south and east Staffs e.g. Tamworth is covered officially by WM and Burton by Radio Derby.

County Durham of course did have its own station for a few years.

There's also Dorset, which is the only station for which plans were cancelled not once, but twice, in 1990 and again in 2007. The area does at least now get a breakfast opt-out from Radio Solent. Plans for a Radio Cheshire were also cancelled in 2007, while Radio Durham did exist from 1968-73. It closed because the government of the time restricted the BBC to twenty local stations, and the BBC decided they'd rather open a station in Carlisle, feeling that the North East already had good local radio provision with Radio Newcastle and Radio Teesside (later Radio Cleveland, now BBC Tees).


Radio Bedfordshire, despite the name, always covered some parts of Bucks and Herts as well and in 1993 changed to BBC Three Counties Radio to better reflect the coverage area - a name I've never liked because it gives no indication of where it actually covers, and also because it presumably inspired the equally awful Southern Counties Radio name a year later, a name which was thankfully laid to rest in 2009.

Durham was actually one of the initial 9 experimental BBC local stations in the 60's. It launched in 1968 and covered the whole county. However, when the Government only allowed the BBC to launch a total of 20 stations, it was decided to close Durham and move the equipment to Carlisle in 1972.