BBC Guernsey celebrates 40 years on the airwaves

It was just the day before the 1982 Guernsey General Election in which Bob Chilcott gained the most votes with 2,111 in St Peter Port and Peter Roffey’s 1,127 saw him place fourth in the Vale, which was enough to earn him a seat in the States for the first time.

Then station manager Tony Talmage said election day helped to win over some who had doubted the need for a dedicated radio broadcaster on-island.

‘For the first time ever, people could turn on their radios and find out who had been elected in each of the 10 parishes as it happened, and it was a revelation,’ he said.

Later to become BBC Guernsey, the station then had a staff of four paid full-timers, which included Peter Rouse, Kay Langlois and Mal Phillips, plus contracted contributors. Local radio stations were being set up across the country and this one, along with BBC Jersey, which was launched the day before, were the Beeb’s first venture outside the UK.

‘I don’t think they wanted Channel Islands radio but the BBC paid lip service to local politicians who were questioning why we couldn’t have our station when we still had to pay the licence fee,’ said Mr Talmage.

‘You could say it was a token station.’

Mr Talmage’s background was in newspapers, both local and national, and he ventured into radio for the first time with BBC Brighton in 1970. Prior to coming to Guernsey he was publicity officer for the BBC’s burgeoning local stations.

The BBC’s original plan was to broadcast in Guernsey for just one hour a day – but Mr Talmage had other ideas.

‘I was a bit of a maverick and I managed to get us two and half hours each day on air, spread across three sessions,’ he said.

Some had doubted the need for a local radio station, saying that there was already the Guernsey Press and Channel Television to cover the news.

Covering the 1982 General Election meant bringing in journalists from the UK to bolster the local foursome.

‘We did it that day and we did it well – and I think we gained a lot of credibility from it,’ he said.

He thought progress was also made in that vein in the 1980s when the island fell victim to a blizzard.

‘Nurses were unable to get to the hospital so we put out an appeal for people with four-wheel drive vehicles who could provide transport for them and who could help look after the vulnerable. I think that cemented in people’s minds the importance of local radio to the community.’

The BBC had wanted the chairman of its board of governors, George Howard, to open the station in Guernsey but Mr Talmage again dug his heels in.

‘I wanted to keep it local so we arranged for the then-Bailiff Sir John Loveridge to do it,’ he said.

The station felt like a calling in those early years and people often worked long hours for no extra pay. Another first in Guernsey under Mr Talmage’s tenure was when States meetings were broadcast live for the first time. That was done on the medium wave as there was no VHF – now FM – at the time.

Mr Talmage said it was his future mother-in-law, Joan Ozanne, who was the first chairwoman of the local radio advisory council in Guernsey, who helped to get that corrected.

‘We’d been fobbed off by the BBC hierarchy for years saying we could not have the frequency as France objected,’ he said.

‘Joan was a feisty fighter on behalf of the community and at a meeting in London with her opposite numbers from other stations she approached George Howard direct about it.

‘Within a few months we too had VHF broadcasts.’

He said the early equipment at the station was pretty crude. Reporters would have to carry around recording equipment in what looked like school satchels full of bricks – nowadays they can do it all on a mobile phone. Reporters out on emergency assignment would have to ask people if they could use their landlines to

call the office. By the time Mr Talmage parted company with the station in 1987 it had 13 full-time staff including freelance workers and was broadcasting for 10 hours a day.