University Radio Essex is a campus radio station at the University of Essex serving Wivenhoe Park in Colchester. It was one of the original university radio stations in the United Kingdom and with the other pioneering campus radio stations at York, Brunel, Loughborough, Sussex, Surrey the door was opened in the UK for campus radio.
Format The radio station was funded by the Student Union at the University of Essex, and changed identity to RED - 1404 AM in Autumn 2001. URE first broadcast on the 1 March 1971, on 301 metres medium wave (originally 998 kHz, later 999 kHz AM). It later broadcast on 963 kHz AM, 1404 kHz AM, 1602 kHz AM, and 87.7 MHz FM.
Programming format is predominantly music, with some news programmes including the award-winning Tower to Tower magazine programme.
Early history Campus radio at Essex University started with the protests that ripped through the campus in 1968, followed by a long blockade of the boundary road surrounding the Wivenhoe Park campus at the University of Essex. One of the demands of the protagonists was that a student radio station may be set up. For its day, this was reported to be not an unusual demand, considering the only alternatives at the time were the BBC Home or Light programmes - or pirate radio, from boats anchored in the North Sea.
It took several years for radio to become a reality in the UK. Essex URE was beaten to air by University Radio York. Preparation and licensing had begun with members of the Students Union and the university's Amateur Radio Society, several members of whom were also members of the station's technical team. There was a close affiliation between the station, the amateur radio society and the Union Technical Organisation (UTO) who did stage lighting and provided disco services on campus.
By the time the station was ready to go on air, the central Student Union building had been built above Square 3, as had the first two towers. As a mark of the importance that the university attached to the station at the time, installation of cables for induction loops was already planned in the construction of the residential tower blocks (they were laid along a duct that runs between the towers).
The original mixer, with rotary volume controls was built by students, and assembled along with inexpensive turntables.
Meanwhile, the Student Union had great plans for their station - and dedicated three rooms in the union corridor for the new station. At the top of the stairs in the union building there was a large reception area and office (also used as the location for the transmission equipment) leading to a corridor with the main on air studio (studio A), and a talk studio (studio B - also known as the passenger studio) with a window between them. The studio B had a table for round table discussions. An article in the university magazine Wyvern in October 2001 written by one of the creators of URE notes that "Sound deadening, was originally provided by egg boxes glued to the wall. After the University fire office found out, the whole lot had to be ripped down, and heavy curtains used instead".
The idea at the time was that for occasional music programmes and news programs presenters would sit in the passenger studio B while an engineer would play the discs and otherwise operate the controls from studio A. In 1976 this layout was changed, with studio B divided so that a further studio, studio C was created, as a small self-op presenters music studio.
At some point later in the 1970s this configuration was changed with a further studio room added. As at UKC Radio this layout soon proved wildly impractical, because most presenters would sit in the self-op studio, leaving the centre and end studio unoccupied except for the daily union discussion programmes, and occasional news broadcasts.
A second studio suite was built at Wivenhoe House (original stately home of Wivenhoe Park on which the university was built, and was the home of the vice chancellor's offices and other admin) with a landline connection to the main studios. The intention was to produce documentary programs and news at Wivenhoe House. The studio was never actively used for broadcasting.
The studios were swapped in 1980 with the arrival of a Magnetic Tapes Ltd 12 channel desk (called "old faithful" by the engineers, due to its longevity), which was ordered specifically from the factory for the purpose, with quad Chilton PPM BBC style meters. This desk was later purchased by a member, and was used for BBC broadcasts. The Studio in Wivenhoe House had meanwhile bitten the dust as early as 1978.
The station first broadcast on the 1 March 1971, on 301 meters medium wave (originally 998kHzAM) with the Dean of Students welcoming the new station to the airwaves. Programming rapidly changed from a mix of spoken word and music, to mainly music Breakfast shows were a part of broadcasting from the first day, but moved several hours earlier after a few years. The late afternoon show was called "5ive 2wo" from 5pm to 7pm. Specialty shows followed often with a half hour foreign educational program from places like ORTF (France) and NHK (Japan). Other specialty programming included Folk, Rock, Blues, and a Country show.
A famous late night request show called at the time "Cancer - the show that grows on you". Reports from the 5th birthday programme indicate that it was very popular.
News was also a significant part of URE for the first few years, as at most campus radio stations, and was a part of the license mandate. Copyright was a major issue, and so URE, along with several other stations at Sussex, York, Loughborough, Brunel, Surrey, and Swansea formed the National Association of Student Broadcasting. NASB as it became known negotiated with the copyright agencies for reduced copyright fees for stations by central administration, and negotiated to try to obtain news feeds for stations, since most relied on getting articles from newspapers and transcriptions of radio news. Unfortunately at that time the cost of providing feeds by telex was prohibitively expensive. As a result, Reuters worked with NASB and URE to find a way to provide news info.
The union were very supportive of the station in the first few decades, and paid for outside broadcast lines to the Union Bar, Square 4 Coffee Shop, and Ball Room or Dance Hall (in the basement of the union building), plus the newly built Lecture Theatre Block (LTBs). Here the university again put in considerable resources to the station, and built 4 dedicated studios for URE in LTB6, on the balcony overlooking the largest lecture theatre block. The idea was that URE would provide commentary for important speakers, and the union hustings from here. These were intensively used at the time, and two decades later still provided good service two or three times a year, including when Desmond Tutu visited the university in 1991. They are last believed to have hosted a URE broadcast for the union hustings in 1996, but are still in existence, and when tested in 2007 these dusty and unused studios were found to be still serviceable and connected to the main studio complex (now consisting of just one room).
Early transmission systems Before the official opening, some programmes were broadcast on a "test oscillator" to show the practicality of the service. These broadcasts, which were of very low power, were not strictly legal.
In order to obtain a British Post Office license for the official opening, strict regulations had to be met. Because no budget was available, all of the work had to be done with minimum expenditure. An Amateur Radio KW "Vanguard" transmitter was modified by John Rabson to operate at 998 kHz, using a crystal-controlled exciter made by Robin Gape to replace the original Geloso VFO. Since the transmitter frequency was fixed, the large tuning dial was removed. An active filter was built into the Vanguard's modulator by Rick Jenkins, to avoid exceeding the allotted bandwidth.
Because of a stringent Post Office requirement to limit field strength at the campus boundary to 100 microvolts per metre, and the presence of a strong signal on an adjacent channel, the transmitter could not be simply coupled to a single, central antenna. A scheme was devised to use individual "infinitesimal" passive loop antennae in each residential tower, fed by coaxial cable and carefully phased in pairs to cancel the external field. The coaxial cable had to be carefully laid out to produce the required accuracy of phasing, and splitting transformers were used to reduce power loss. The antennae were in protected ducts inside the residential buildings, and their frames were lightly built of hardboard and spruce. Since the splitting transformers were in underground ducts, they were housed in robust die-cast boxes. Despite the crudity of its construction, this system produced a strong signal of about 10mV/metre inside the residential towers, while still meeting the requirement for a negligible signal at the campus boundary. Test equipment to confirm its correct operation, including portable field-strength meters and their calibration gear, was improvised. Subsequent Post Office testing with professional equipment confirmed that the system met its goals.
This original system was on its last legs by 1982. The Students' Union accordingly paid for a full new installation of a new "active" induction loop system, with power for loop amplifiers supplied down the coax along which came the RF supply. This was built over the summer of 1982 as the first installation by Wireless Workshop - a company formed by students from University Radio Falmer who at the time only built transmitters for university radio in the UK. At the time the chance was taken to switch to 999 kHz AM, the new UK standard. There was a separate coax supply to each tower, with a loop every three floors. There were active amplifiers under the North Towers causeway. This new system worked very well until 1990, when a blown fuse in a power amp under the causeway resulted in Tawney and William Morris being off air for 9 months. Considerable ingenuity by engineers in reaching the fuse - in the sub-basement and abandoned boiler rooms under Tawney - eventually resulted in a fix. The opportunity was taken in 1990 to add induction loops to the Wolfson Court hall of residence, which had previously only received some radiation from Keynes.
This new system allowed a "fudge", considering both studios were now constructed for self-op operation: the campus now had two transmission networks. Accordingly, the new transmitters were set up so that Studio A could serve 999 kHz with a music service (called the URE301 service, complete with sung jingles), as this used the new transmitter with much better audio processing and modulation, and speech on 1602 kHz (with a formal Home Service style) using the old 1971 transmitter, but again this 1602 service bit the dust a few years later, following the mid-80s station collapse, although it took until 1991 for the then programme controller to notify the authorities that this frequency was no longer required. By then the few remains of the 1602 transmitter were in a filing cabinet in the corridor linking the studios.