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DLT resignation speech - full thing available?
chemical2009b
Posts: 5,250 Forum Member
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It seems that only a ten second Medium Wave excerpt recording of DLT announcing his shock resignation from Radio 1 is doing the rounds, does anyone know somewhere that could hear the speech in full?
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It does have something on his page but only these ten seconds I mention.
Also, strange that only a MW recording exists for a show in 1993, when R1 had well and truly adopted VHF (FM).
It is said that DLT alerted an engineer to do some recording just a few minutes before he started doing that speech as the BBC apparently still didn't routinely record their radio programmes back then.
I used to listen to his programme every Sunday and that particular week was no exception but as the last record was playing, and just before DLT would normally come back and link into the news I switched the radio off to go and make something to eat. I couldn't believe it when I heard later that I'd missed him resigning live on air.
As I wasn't listening when he made his resignation speech and as I only heard the speech after the event (when the news on Radio 1 was next broadcast an hour or two later) I don't know exactly what happened as soon as he stopped speaking but I'm guessing Radio 1 cut straight to the news.
Edit: just in case I'm wrong about exactly when during his programme he actually made his resignation speech: I do remember listening to his programme that day and can definitely remember switching off the radio as he introduced the last record and then later that day, when I found out he'd resigned live on air, I can remember being disappointed I hadn't listened to the very end of the programme to have caught his speech as he was making it. If he made his speech earlier in the programme then I must have missed it for another reason (eg being out of the room) but then I can't recall noticing anything different about his demeanour during what would have been the rest of his show that day.
Yes, the cull with Matthew Banister and Dann Dann the hatchet man!
I think it was all covered on that Blood on the Carpet: Walking with Disc Jockeys episode.
I think i'm right in saying that Bannister hadn't started yet an Dan certainly wasn't around. I'm sure Bannisters account in nations favourite states that he'd been apointed but hadn't started yet.
I'd imagine dlt knew that he was on borrowed time.
But! While DLT's Saturday show did indeed run 10-1, on Sundays it was 9.30-12.30. In The Nation's Favourite Travis himself points out that he was out of the door before Matthew Bannister got anywhere near the station, but also that, although he announced his resignation, it wasn't with immediate effect and he was actually intending to stay on until his contract ran out a few weeks later, but Radio 1 said that they wanted him to go now.
http://www.frequencyfinder.org.uk/r1_sched_88_93.html#a93
I read somewhere that Liz Forgan would have let him stay, but because he went running to the papers, she told Beerling to pay him off
This was a huge spool of tape which recorded all the BBC Radio output for 24 hours back in those days.
It ran at 1 7/8ips (I think) and on the half inch tape recorded 12 tracks.
(The 5 am outputs, 4 fm outputs in mono, and a few others - possibly the news distribution network to other BBC stations, maybe BBC 1 and 2 mono audio - it's all a long time ago.)
The quality is suitable for listening to speech but not music.
It's sub medium wave quality, and closest to telephone line quality.
It was one of the overnight London Control Room jobs to change the tape at 2am.
There was a huge wall of them to carry three months worth of recordings, which you cycled through, meaning that they had all been used many times.
Anything required from these tapes was dubbed onto cassette.
No wonder the quality of the DLT speech is so poor.
Yeah that's what it says in the Nations Favourite book. Claire Sturgess and Nicky Campbell looked after the shows until Danny Baker took over...for a while.
So if the BBC did record it then surely they would still have the whole speech in their archives, I doubt they would have wanted to wipe an important moment in Radio 1's history.
It was kept on the logging tapes for 3 months, and the tape was then re-used.
That's longer than the legal requirement which I think was, and still is, 42 days.
The cassette that was dubbed probably went to News, who used the segment that is still available today. I suspect the rest was binned.
There was no easy way of archiving the many hours a day of humdrum output then, and no reason to do so. It was hardly likely to be repeated.
To be fair, the resignation of a DJ is hardly up there with other national matters of importance, and the short relevant bit is the one that everyone has heard.
So it was, but they did change it around very frequently. By the middle of 1994 Danny Baker was back running 9.30-12 so they could fit in Simon Mayo's Classic Years, very much Son Of Pick Of The Pops.
I remember on The Big Breakfast the day after he resigned, Chris Evans saying "Nicky Campbell will be doing Sunday's show but they haven't announced who's going to be on Saturdays yet", and then winked at the camera, which I took to mean he was going to do it. But, er, he didn't. Of course, in the first Bannister revamp Campbell was angling to do that slot full-time but wasn't offered it, they offered him weekend breakfast which he didn't want to do (not least because he was doing Central Weekend until after midnight on Friday) so left, albiet temporarily.
A station I worked for logged output on an alternating pair of Revox B77s running at 1 7/8 ips quarter track. Using ultra thin tape, we would fit a full day on each 'side' of the tape - mono off-air on one track and a timecode on the other.
The audio quality was very poor, but adequate for logging purposes. As I remember, trying to find a short section of audio took forever due to the sheer amount of stuff on one NAB reel.
Good shout - I think one of the tracks either carried the audio "seedless TIM" (the speaking clock without the pips) or a timecode type signal to aid finding something on there.
As you say it wasn't much fun spooling through it all, and then only to find it wasn't the correct reel!
I would have thought that a lot of the stations would have needed to record both the VHF and medium wave output - certainly when they started splitting frequencies.
What if you were recording off air VHF, and the tx failed, but something was broadcast on the MW which required a recording, you could be in trouble?
As a spotty teenage radio anorak, I got a tour of the Radio Forth studios in Edinburgh in 1977.
There was a central control area where the main control desk was located. The desk faced the main on air studio through the glass and there was a big pair of KEF's on the wall.
I remember being shown a pair of the aforementioned B77's for logging, and they were fed by an FM tuner. It was explained that the default monitor audio used in both the control room (this was in the days where an engineer actually did sit in the studio and monitor the output) and in the on-air studio was the off-air FM signal, not the direct output of the desks so if the FM tx failed,the presenter and or engineer would be aware of it.
The AM signal was also available at both desks (although rarely listened to) and there was a circuit that monitored the presence of a signal, as well as a VU meter on each desk, as this was the transmission that most listeners were tuned in to.
The circuit would give a warning (a red flashing light I think) if the AM signal failed.
I can't remember if it was explained how the logging B77 would switch from the FM to the AM in the event of an FM failure, but I'm guessing it may have been done manually.
I can also remember in the same rack were a pair of Technics open reel decks mounted one on top of the other. There decks were unusual in that the record and erase heads were mounted on opposite sides of a vertical unit - google Technics RS 1700 and you'll see what I mean.
When phone in's were happening, the studio output was recorded on the top deck, then the tape travelled down and round the capstans of the lower deck, then back up to the playback head on the top deck which then went to the main desk. I'm guessing the tape speed was 3.75ips, as this was how the 7 second delay was achieved.
At the start of a phone in section of a show, the engineer in master control would kill the output of the on air studio, play a 7 second jingle, then bring up the output of the Technics deck which had already been set up to record the on-air studio output.
Tell todays kids about things like that and they don't believe you !!
Logging machines were normally four track machines. The IBA Code of Practice stipulated the following track layout:
Track 1: VHF Stereo A Signal
Track 2: MF Signal
Track 3: VHF Stereo B Signal
Track 4: Timing Signal (e.g. Speaking Clock)
That explains it then. Thanks for that.