A PCRL studio somewhere in Newtown

 Over my years at PCRL I took many photographs of the the presenters in our temporary studio's and also at play aka the birthday events,  this being in 1992, 1995 and again in 2000. I always wanted to get some nice shots of the views that we had in the many high-rise flats that the kind people of Birmingham let us hire from them. Sadly though I ended up only taking one scenic view and this was it. We didn't stay in the flat long because at that time most of the blocks in Newtown was either being refurbished or demolished.

The view shows a panorama of Birmingham city center, looking from about a mile away (looking south) and I would guess that the view is about a mile wide. You can see the Post Office tower, to the right of the center of the picture. The reason we broadcasted from tower blocks most of the time was simple, the aerial would be so high up that the transmitter power output would only need to be small, about 15-20 watts if I remember right. The signal from the studio would only be a few hundred milliwatts of strength and was sent to, perhaps that block in the distance and re-broadcast a the higher power from it's roof. This was done to make it a little safer for the DJ's, although I can remember on many occasions when the door would bang and I would run & grab the link transmitter, take it to the open window, ready to throw it out! On one occasion it was the fire brigade, as the owner had gone out after leaving chicken cooking in the kitchen, so many memories.

PCRL studio desk

I expect someone looking at this view will recognize it and perhaps remind me what the block's name was? If you click the photograph it will become lager for you. You can leave a comment at the base of this page, if you wish.


When we did get a studio raid, and it wasn't too often thankfully, the DTI gentlemen would confiscate all broadcasting equipment and break-up any useful broadcasting furniture, ie., tables and chairs before they left. So one of my jobs was to build new tables cheaply, but using glue/screws an thick plywood, so the DTI might struggle to smash-it-up and would be too large/heavy to carry away, so thankfully they'd leave it behind and save us money. In fact some of my later designs would fold down to aid quick instillations, and then was glued and screwed in situ.

Tony Roots using the desk

I started making my own DJ consoles in the mid-60's, mainly because they wasn't on the market then, and a mobile DJ needed them. After lot's practice I would always build them so all the equipment the DJ needed to do a polished show was at his/hers arm's reach.  It was a must when playing 1960's records, they was all over in 2 minutes. In this creation, (above photo) we used two Tandy tape players (for jingles & adverts at this time) they would occupy the center shelf, two turntables was either side of you with two CD players above each. This also helped with the control faders being labeled either 'L' or 'R'.

The advert tapes went in the box in font of the mixer edge-on, after played live/re-wound  it was then moved to the left, when all adds played, all moved back to the right, simple! The two red lights in the post; one lit-up when the mike was on and the other flashed when someone came to the front door. Nothing worse than someone banging the front door when you had your headphones on! The radio jingles tapes were housed in box's either side of the mixer by the 1980's brick Motorola/Panasonic studio telephones. When I did my shows I brought in two portable mini-disc players, (shown here) as we did our hand-overs with Tony Roots one late evening. We also used old TV's with Tele-Text to help with the weather forcasts/travel news and urgent news flashes. Also installed was a Dragon 32 PC, (an early PC that was made in Wales), for black history and other daily chores.

A PCRL Studio, early 1990's