Ghost in the machine

I saw a ghost yesterday.  It was a ghost from the past but I could touch it, see it and even smell it?  Way back in 1981 I joined a brand new spanking radio station in Southend called Essex Radio.  They had just spent 1.2 million pounds on a fantastic set of studios in a building they called 'Radio House' The studios were built two floors underground in what had been the printing press room of the local paper.

Well I left the station in 1984 to join LBC and have been back once since in 1988, but yesterday I returned to those old studios, now owned by Yellow Media.  I suppose its like going back to your old school, first of all everything seemed a lot smaller than I remembered. But to my astonishment and a testament to the superb engineering skills of Essex Radio's Chief Engineer - Andy Gemmell-Smith the place is pretty much how I left it.

OK the studios had been refurbed by GWR when they owned Essex, but they still had the original second generation of mixing desks in the studio and they were laid out in the same configuration as the original studios of 1981and the racks room was exactly the same with the same equipment. Even the studio speakers were the original Tannoy Super Red 10B's!

A new DAB radio station starts broadcasting from the studios in a few weeks time Chance Radio and it will be great to see live programming come once again from those fantastic studios in the heart of Southend-on-Sea.  (Picture above Chance Studio - old Essex CR2 studio with Eela Audio desks and BCX playout.) They are streaming now click here to listen.