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Date: 25 March 2003 RADIO WARNEFORD CELEBRATES 30 YEARS OF BROADCASTING Radio Warneford, the award-winning hospital broadcasting service based at Warwick Hospital, is beginning a year of celebrations to mark the station's thirtieth birthday. On 12 December 1973, Radio Warneford burst onto the airwaves from a four-foot square "studio" in the basement of the Warneford Hospital in Leamington Spa. With the help of the Red Cross, whose volunteers visited patients and collected requests, the station broadcast for three hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Over the next thirty years, Radio Warneford gradually expanded. Beginning with a membership of three, the station now has around fifty volunteer members who visit patients, broadcast programmes and take part in fund raising activities. An old electricity board store hut, set up in the grounds of the Warneford Hospital, replaced the broom cupboard in 1978. With two studios, a rest area and a library, "The Hut" was luxurious in comparison. The station began broadcasting to Warwick Hospital via a landline in 1988 and moved to a purpose-built studio at Warwick in 1994. On the broadcasting side, Radio Warneford's schedule has changed dramatically over the last thirty years. From just nine hours a week, the station's output has increased to almost thirty hours. The variety of shows has led to Radio Warneford winning six awards in a national hospital broadcasting competition since 1991. The Request Show, in which patients choose their own favourite song and relatives pass on a special messages, was the most important programme in Radio Warneford's 1973 schedule - it remains the basis of everything that the station does in 2003! As part of the celebrations for Radio Warneford's thirtieth birthday, St Joseph's Catholic Primary School in Whitnash are holding a competition to design the cover for a 30th anniversary calendar and later in the year, the station will be holding a special Charity Auction to raise money for new equipment. Issued by Andy Dowell, Communications Manager
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