Watford Hospital Radio

History of Watford Hospital Radio

Watford Hospital Radio began in 1955 from a broom cupboard in the Peace Memorial Hospital. The earliest programmes were recorded football commentaries from Watford’s Vicarage Road ground which were played back over the hospital radio system later that evening. This proved so popular with the patients in the hospital that a land line was soon installed so live coverage of the games could be relayed to the hospital.

In the early days church services were also broadcast to the hospital via the land lines from St Mary's Parish Church and the Watford Congregational Church. This led, in May 1967 to pre-recorded music programmes and in December of that year all four Hospitals in the Watford area were joined up by land lines so the patients could hear special Hospital Radio programmes.

The recorded broadcasts were so successful that the various groups of people who were producing programmes decided to form the Watford Hospital Broadcasting Service and registered it as a charity. They set up a special studio, located in the former kitchen manager's office where live programmes could be produced. Due to the limited space available, this also doubled as a record library and equipment store. Since then the Station has been broadcasting, mainly in the evenings and at weekends, with a membership of willing volunteers.

With the building of the new Watford General Hospital, WHR acquired their own complex on Level 7 with a self contained studio, together with a large interview/rest room which also contained the record library. The new studio was officially opened by Noel Edmonds on 26th January 1985.

In January 1992 the Hospital agreed to hand over another room to WHR which enabled us to build a dedicated recreation room, a record library and eventually a second studio. The redevelopment of the complex commenced the following month with the refurbishment of the storage area above the studio.

Later in the year, our premises continued to expand when the Hospital kindly agreed to allow us to use part of a ground floor storeroom as an Outside Broadcast Store. Ironically this was the very same room that had housed our original studio, so WHR had come home! The room was cleared out and put into operation making the preparation for OBs so much easier.

After a few years of hard work, the current WHR studio was officially opened in October 1996 by Watford FC Manager Graham Taylor, during a special weekday edition of the popular request show ‘Down Your Ward’.

More recently, the studio has been re-equipped and refurbished. WHR now broadcasts 24 hours a day, with the help of automated programming, and we are continuing to expand our coverage within the public areas of the Hospital.

The Patients can now hear us on their personal Hospicom terminals where they can also phone the Station at the touch of a button.