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Bernie
Quayle
Wonderful World of
the Wireless
A Career in Radio
Page 2
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If you've listened to the
audio clip on the previous page, you
will have heard
Peter Kneale reading the news "as
supplied by the Examiner News desk."
Yes, the local
papers supplied our news copy in those days and it was
Terry
Cringle's job to pop
the news copy in our letter box ready for broadcast
next
morning. Pictured left, I'm interviewing Terry for our "Factory Requests"
programme, our equivalent
of the BBC
programme, "Down Your Way"
Charles Webster
is recording
and Curwen Clague, managing editor of the
Examiner
watches. Sadly, none of these programmes were ever archived,
we
couldn't afford to keep replacing the tapes !
Nowadays, every minute of our
broadcast day is recorded in broadcast quality and
then compressed for
storage on DVD. There is one disc for each 24 hour
period.
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August 20th 2007 update Following the broadcast
of my 40th anniversary programme, I was presented with
a cassette of a Factory
Requests programme form 1968. Ronnie Cowin was
company secretary for Heron & Brearley and he
kindly let me have a copy of
tape, if you click on the link, you'll hear my 2 min'
interview with Ronnie from December 1968.
Ronnie
Cowin also gave me the picture on the
right, .
It is the Manx Radio cricket team
circa 1966.
Back row left to right:
Boy, Jack Cretney, Ronnie Corrin,
Peter Kneale, David Callister
Front row:
Sidney Magee, Garth Quayle, Stuart
Lord, John Grierson, ??
Bill Cain. |
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With the pirate radio stations being closed down by
the Marine Offences bill, the Manx Government
saw an opportunity to expand
our service to become
Britain's first national commercial station.
Negotiations with the
UK Government were well underway and the
on-air staff
were beginning to worry that all the former pirates,
who were now household names across the British Isles,
would be
knocking on our door looking for jobs.
We all
felt very amateur by comparison. It was Daffy
Don Allen, who'd joined us from
Radio Caroline, that suggested that I take myself off to his home town in Canada to
gain "real commercial radio" experience in order
to secure
my future with Manx Radio. Don (pictured
belowt)
was a very big influence in my early
career.
Emigrating
to Canada seemed too much at the time and as
my
sister Pauline had recently moved to
Knoxville, Tennessee, I thought a few weeks
there would be enough to give me some good
background at least. In September 1968, Pauline very kindly
made a number of appointments for me to meet
the programme directors at all the major
stations in the area, there were 10 in total.
WKGN was first on her list, a top 40
station, loved by the students of the
University and rated number one in the youth
market
The next station, WATE was more
like the format on Manx Radio, aimed at a more mature
listener.. In both cases,
I was offered a
job! |
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Each
station I visited kept telling me how
great it would be to have a British
sounding DJ on air
in America at the height of
the British
pop invasion, it would have been quite a coup for
them.
But it was WNOX that made me an
offer I couldn't refuse.
See the "Sir
Bernard" page.
On the left, dressed in my Carnaby
Street gear, ready to take on the USA. |
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