There’s Some SERIOUS Radio INSIDE Liverpool’s Radio City Tower!
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If case someone has not pointed this out yet, you are a genius and a true treasure to have on TH-cam.
Thank you for all your efforts!
Wow, thank you!
Ditto
Ditto
@@RingwayManchesteritll always be the radio City tower to me
I agree with you about hits radio eating up local stations. They did the same in Staffordshire. I no longer listen to them.
They also did that in Bournemouth a few years ago
@@chesterwilliams69420 In Australia one of the biggest stations is triple J. Created as A platform for more Australian music. plays mainly Aussie artists. Owned and created by the government but edited independently. Its considered an Indie station. its nice to tune out to the mainstream.
They did it to spirit FM in Chichester too
Bauer Radio (or Devour Radio as I prefer to call them) along with Global (Snowball) have ruined the radio industry in the UK. However it was already on a slippery slope when people started listening to streaming platforms instead of their local stations
Greatest Hits Radio has done the same thing in the area near me. In Leicestershire, Gem 106's FM frequency became Greatest Hits and their DAB allocation became Hits Radio.
More saddening to me was the conversion of KISS FM UK to Greatest Hits Radio in the East Anglia region.
FYI the microwave antenna fitted by NTL receive the DAB mux from Billinge and relay it on to Hope Mountain.
When Radio City first moved in, the only RF kit was a business radio network (linked via microwave link to Blackpool Tower with the microwave antenna sited directly above the roof access hatch!), Granada TV vision link and the UHF radio links for Radio City/Magic 1548. One was the backup UHF link to the Bromborough MW TX and the other was a receiver for the Wood & Douglas OB kit plus VHF talkback.
Besides the studio and office levels, there is also another level containing plant/power below the studios.
The steel structure is for advertising billboards (the original idea was to have large TV screens but the added weight was of concern (and not calculated in the original stress tests).
The signage was originally neon tubes but because of the way they were connected, it only took on tube to fail and the whole letter/number would fail. These were later changed to fluorescent tubes. PW
I love the mid century modern architecture of this tower!
Thank you Lewis!
Lisa
yet another great video. very informative. i agree about local radio. what puts me off more than anything is the amount of adverts, that in my opinion ruins the listening experience.
St John Ambulance have a VHF/UHF repeater on the tower for event radio coverage around the city. Was very useful when covering the Rock and Roll Marathon as a rolling cover vehicle...
I remember when it was a spinning cafe it had a public viewing rooftop that the public could take in the views of the city and the outer districts across the Mersey and even further out towards the Welsh mountains on a clear day
Love “dazzle camouflage“ as a descriptor. Jolly good!
FYI, Snowdrop’s colour scheme is the work of Sir Peter Blake.
Brilliant video Lewis and I for one agree with your comments re local radio loosing its identity. Not sure there is any way back other than the resurgence of the pirates.
Views from the gallery are OK but somewhat impaired by the thick, grubby windows. Anyone seeking the best views of Liverpool and surrounding area should go to the top of the tower of the Anglican cathedral. That’s slightly more elevated and there’s nothing to block your view. I’ve no idea about radio antennas on it though. Maybe you could do a follow-up video Lewis?
Quite a few aerials up there, well worth a look.
Working on it ;)
@@RingwayManchester I look after one-off the transmitters on top of the cathedral.
There’s loads blocking your view on the cathedral actually
Top of the liver building is good for views too!
Evening! Nice to see you over this way.
Went up there when I was a kid.. it used to be a revolving restaurant I went in there in the 80’s..
Totally agree Lewis local radio is dead where i live in north Essex the only station i can pick up is Radio Caroline
Never knew about the Allerton transmitter, I live less than a mile away! Great video, thanks.
Another superb video Lewis, your standards never drop!
I know MuxCo DAB ensembles tend to extend outside of their coverage area in order to make the ensembles more financially viable. For example, Lincolnshire also extends to East Yorkshire, Doncaster and Nottinghamshire. The NE Wales and West Cheshire one's overspill effectively makes it an unofficial Liverpool 2 ensemble.
And Suffolk MuxCo doesn't even cover the county nor Lowestoft. Even having ITU clearance.
@@jgcracknell And although not MuxCo, the Leicestershire multiplex has the antennae so low down on its main transmitter site, that it barely covers the county and needs a repeater antenna just to cover Leicester itself.
I was picking up Northamptonshire better than I was Leicestershire well into Leicestershire itself...
Fantastic views, as soon as I saw the docks, I remembered the excellent series 'boys from the blackstuff' seeing that view of them - a brilliant series. I really enjoy how you are mixing up all these radio video's with fantastic tourist things as well, never thought of stopping in Liverpool, but for sure I will see when I can squeeze it in either en-route or returning from Bangor.
My beautiful city I 💕💕 my city
i remember as a young child going up there to the cafe in the 70's for a cup of tea and to eat a sandwich. Back then it still revolved. It was ace.
Additionally my Grandad used to work on the ferries. Some weekends we used to go visit and he would take us down into the staff quarters to play cards while he was working..Back then it was only 40p - 50p to cross from woodside to liverpool. Ahh the good ole days
50p in the mid 70s is worth over £3 now with inflation. A single commuter ticket on the Mersey ferry is £2.90 or £3.80 return today. Nothing has changed!
Great video Lewis ❤. It was the first thing I watched while recovering from my surgery today 👍.
I hope you popped over to the Anglican cathedral while you were there to look at the antennas on the roof.
;)
There is a lot of antennas up there. Unfortunately, local radio in the US is mostly satellite fed from central locations. We are losing AM stations here, but at a slower rate. Many AM stations are religious stations . They have funds to continue, but I wonder about other stations.
How about FM stations in the US, where are they broadcast from?
@@ElliottVeares Depends on what company owns the station
Ah but did you know its primary purpose ,when built was as a flue for the district heating system of the adjoining St Johns shopping precinct and market.
It Had to be higher than the hills to the east of the city centre . The post office tower had just opened in London
Liverpool being a forward looking city copied the concept
I saw smoke coming out of it in the mid 70's. I thought it was rubbish from the market being burned as it was very dirty smoke.
@@martinconnelly1473 it was coal fired until 1979 when Liverpool became a smoke control area. Then switched to gas.
So you're right about smoke.
My da was caretaker of the building.
Market rubbish was sent down a chute into a compactor in the basement.
I never knew I was afraid of heights until I visited the tower on a windy day and yep, it feels awful, but it is really awesome to get a huge view of the city, even if the tower felt like it was gonna fall over due to the wind.
Nice 1 Lewis first time seeing lpool ssdab antenna a cardioid type which makes sense as south area has a shitty signal off another 40w erp tx
Hi Lewis, many thanks, once again super interesting info.
Great video, thank you!
I hate Bauer for what they did to local radio with the ever increasing reach of "networking". Its just so generic now and even the breakfast stuff is too far removed from the local areas for my liking.
As tor small scale DAB, it's a solution for a problem which OFCOM created by allowing the networking in the first place.
Also, there are so many duplicate stations on DAB at the minute. DAB+ on national mux, DAB on local, plus regional versions which seem to exist only to serve local ads IMO.
Not just them but Capital and Heart too.
@@jgcracknell I thought FM was bad, but I can pick up:
D1: Heart UK, Heart 70s, Heart 80s, Heart 90s, Heart 00s, Heart 10s, Heart Dance
Northamptonshire: Heart Northamptonshire
HBB: Heart Home Counties
Plus occasional overspill from Peterborough, Leicester, and whatever other multiplexes I can get.
What a waste of capacity! These are stations I will never listen to!
Great video, as ever! I've often wondered about the large triangular 'cage' below the antennas. What do you reckon it is? Cheers!
As well as giving access to the hardware I suspect it may be a microwave/radio wave shield to protect the people below it. Some of those transmitters are high power so even a small leak into the area below would result in a large dose for people spending their working day there. I worked Saturdays (and school holidays) in Lewis's department store when I was still at school and later at the Polytechnic on Byrom Street as it was before becoming John Moores University. I remember going in one Saturday and seeing black smoke coming out of the tower as it was also a tall chimney, probably for a waste incinerator connected to the market. My dad worked in Langton Dock office and knew some of the ferry captains, as a result when I was small I steered (supervised of course) one of the Mersey Ferries standing on a wooden box so I could reach the wheel. I always wondered which one it was.
It's an advertisement board.
What a cool facility.
How you can just look at a set of radio equipment and tell us what it is, is still insane to me. I'm sure there's a hell of a lot of research behind it, but it's so impressive.
Form follows function. The orientation, sizes and spacing of elements can give an indication of wavelengths which are all carefully controlled.
Lewis, i believe the stations does not transmit from the tower but its in a place called Allerton, called Allerton park, there is information out there .. radio mersey had been using this Allerton park transmitter since i was a kid back to the mid 70s .. hope the info helps
We spent last weekend in Liverpool and loved the city centre and the docks. Amogst the places we went to were St John's Beacon and the ferry. The views from the top are well worth seeing. We had to wait for the window cleaners to finish work first thought.
As always Lewis, your full work and information is Pinnacle to everyone , well done mate, well done from us the folks in Manchester
Thanks so much David
on the subject of bauer and their lovely ways of nationalising.. it seems as though all the Scottish Bauer stations (most likely all English stations will get this too as they've already done with key, city) will end up being rebranded as hits radio glasgow/edinburgh for radio clyde/forth etc.. the stream file names changed to reflect this around 2 years ago
Really interesting video, thank you! Former USAF comms for 8 years so a video about radio antennas gets a thumbs up
Excellent work. Thanks
I remember listening to the Great Eastern Express on 96.7 back in the late 70s whilst studying for my O levels. Sad to see it's all gone now.
I also remember evenings listening to the Great Eastern Express when I was at Liverpool Uni ... wasn't it Phil something or other ?
@@stevetucker8630 Yes, Phil. I used to listen to it when I worked behind a bar a couple of weekday evenings a week. I think he ran from 6pm to 9pm so I switched it off as the bar got busier.
Thanks so much for this was in liverpool in November last year rember looking up at the building wondering what was on the roof well now I no thansks
I remember when Radio City first started, it was a big deal and was played on the old Huggins Coach on the way to Carlet Park college. ONE NINE FOUR RADIO CITY.... The demise of AM radio stations I think is driven more by than the lack advertisers audience the more choice our society is given the less money is available for each provider. This is happening in the US where the 200kW + AM stations are being swallowed up so new Digital stations can use an existing AM frequency and infrastructure. Then the Digital gets multiplexed into sub channel taking the AM audience. Then the station drops AM power and maintenance. Shango66 mentions it frequently.
Huggins coach’s that’s a blast from the past thanks
@@garethhughes-tu4pu The Huggins coach was so old it had a petrol engine and efficiently dispersed hydrocarbons inside as well as out, ahhhh those were the days before Gretta spoilt it.
what a cracking vid loved this / subbed
Thanks RM. Now That is a Serious Radio Tower**** Really Cool. Take Care****
Re the death of AM radio:
Tom Petty recorded a track called "There Goes the Last DJ" that sums up the death of independent radio.
RIP Jim Ladd, the inspiration for that song. Used to listen to him in Los Angeles years ago.
I've been to a revolving restaurant a few times and it was a wonderful experience. I wonder if there are any ADS-B antennas on there.
Some years ago a pal of mine went up to the top of a Radio Tower for a peek around. He took a Video Camera with him and the Radiation was so strong it killed his Camera ! Personally and speaking as a ex RF Engineer myself I wouldn't go near that stack if you offered me a sackful of money. I do wonder if all those unfortunate people who worked up there in the offices lived to tell the tale.....
Living on the Fylde coast, Centreforce Radio 88.3 on DAB channel 10D from Moelyparc / Liverpool St John is now my usual commuting listening. I find it incredible the transmitter powers are so low. given the generally solid signal along the M55 apart from in the occasional cutting.
Oh BTW they used the dazzle camouflage in WW 2 too was very effective at confusing the German U boats to set torpedoes on the right path .
Top job Lewis, although 7:47 gave me shudders haha!
Thanks rog
My amazing and beautiful home city, in my childhood it was awesome to board the ferry from the Pier Head and sail across the river Mersey to Wallasey and either walk along the sea front or catch a bus into New Brighton. I did once go up to the Tower Restaurant with my late grand mother and as a child i found it breath taking and also scary lol. By the way you can also see Everton's ground (Goodison Park) which you forgot to mention.
I think they have to keep the radio city sign after the rebrand as hits radio
GPO (BT) Tower in London used to have a restaurant as well and was open to the public, as a kid I went up it with my Dad. But after a bomb going off in the tower in 1971 it was closed to the public.
It would be great if you could do one of these for the equipment atop Blackpool Tower! :)
I'm pretty sure Lewis already did one about Blackpool Tower or maybe it was just testing Boefung,s up there.😊
@@stephenjones9153 I had a look back through his videos but I couldn’t see one :)
I rarely listen anymore and I work for the stations. Everything now music and half the commercials are all sat feeds in our case WestWood 1. I got some that don't even have studios anymore. Just a rack of equipment at the tower now. Was talking to my engineering mentor the other day about how I wish I had been there for the hayday 80s and early 90s I grew up with where the radio stations were the social hubs of the town. When the DJs weren't on the air they were out doing remotes and at events. The soul is gone. Sadly as one of the people that replaced the DJs with PCs I had no say in it it but feel like I am partly to blame. For the sake of asking have you thought about reaching out to some of the engineering contacts for these sites and see if you can get a tour of the insides? I think most of us like to geek out when we find an enthusiast who wants to see what we work on.
I read that it was built as a ventilation shaft for the market & shopping centre below. However they changed the regs not long after construction meaning it was not needed.
A Buck Rogers-themed restaurant????
Hard to believe it didn’t make it!!!
A very cool building!!
Every teacher should watch this channel and LEARN how to captivate an audience (instead of boring them to death).
They'd do well to research like you do too Lewis and teach our kids to think critically, use THEIR OWN eyes and ears, just like you do Lewis.
Hat-tip to you pal. I also love how you remind us that you're a human and prone to make mistakes, and how you invite healthy discourse on any disputed matters.
You'd be a great role model for kids mate. Much better than most of their "teachers".
If you're a parent reading this, I reckon you'd agree. Buy this guy a coffee ;)
Our local MW transmitter station changed to G Hits Radio also and now the MW towers have went silent as they closed the MW service....sad
I grew up in the lates 70's and Early 80's in Liverpool constantly asking my Dad if I could go up the tower, however he wasn't up for it due to the price to eat up there!
Excellent I agree with everything you say.
very interesting video thank you . What is the drone you used please , its fantastic quality
Local radio died about 15 years ago in my eyes. The television stations went the same way. They restrict what you can see and listen to all day everyday.
Local radio died when Global allowed Heart FM to swallow up the local stations.
@@TheSpotify95 and no commercial t/os ever happened before that?
It's so sad to see the slow death of local radio. I grew up in Stoke-on-Trent and used to do a lot of band II dx'ing. Radio city used to boom in and used to be a regular listen for me.
I watched the Beacon being constructed from my office window. I always thought it was a quite ugly construction with a bare concrete and unfinished look. I have not been back to Liverpool for many years so hopefully weathering has softened the look and the original unfinished sawn-off look of the top now shows some purpose with the antenna array.
Get a all zone save away for £6 you can use that to get on the ferry also trains
I can confirm, with the buidling being Grade II listed... (and the Radio City 96.7 signage being protected under this) the signage isn't going anywhere, unless Bauer want to go to court with it
This tower is Impressive
radio is going the same direction here in the US, local sounding stations are being phased out for garbage sounding voice tracking from somewhere else in the US, which i agree, makes radio really unlistenable to me
That DAB stack might have more than one tx combined into it. Oh, I went up the tower a few years ago, before it had public access as I'm a broadcast engineer and had work to do in the studios. It's a real pity it's rarely used now - the studios had a great view, and I can confirm it sways! While there one of the large panes of glass was removed and being worked on - it was quite disconcerting walking past the open frame!
Hey Andy that’s what I’m thinking, it’s the only logical possibility.
Interesting the refurb happened in 1999. If you watch “Firefighters” a 1997 BBC fly on the wall; it looks lit up and in use in the distance as they drive past it in a number of scenes.
Bauer media are the reason ive not listened to Radio City for about 15 years. Absolutely demolished local radio in the area.
Very cool... having a radio studio in there is ULTIMA... bravo on that move. 6:18 looks like a standard microwave link.. just follow its line of sight until you hit another microwave relay point. Microwave links are often used in radio communication to go to secondary transmitter sites or get direct feeds from others for remote control. Maybe there is a secondary transmitter or office location that feeds or there is a TV or radio station that broadcasts off of the tower that is remote to the site. The roof houses the local 10C Digital Audio Broadcasting multiplex for Liverpool. Hits Radio Liverpool and Greatest Hits Radio do not directly broadcast from the roof. Their FM signal is transmitted by the Allerton Park Transmitter, along with BBC Radio Merseyside on 95.8FM. ?? Liverpool DAB operates the new DAB multiplex in the city of Liverpool. Launched in November 2023, it provides a platform for new and interesting radio stations and has increased listener choice across Merseyside where more than 981,000 people live, travel, work, study and play. If you have a radio station you want to get on air, get in touch now using the form below.
The amalgamtion of radio broadcasts is becoming more and more a problem in Canada too. To the point that only a few stations in my area still have local broadcasts. Which is a pain if you want some local news, weather and traffic updates during your daily commute
No way! I had no idea that was there! Very cool! Like you say, how was it just left to rot?! The fact that it was just shows how grim Liverpool got at one point!
I've gotta visit it.. as a proud Stopfordian I'll probably start waxing lyrical that..
" _the Mersey starts in Stockport don'tchya know_ " 🤦♂️🙄
They have destroyed our local station in south Hampshire, R.I.P Wave 105. If I wanted to listen to a national radio I would choose that, but I liked the local element and presenters. Bauer seem to be able to gobble up everything to pay for their ex BBC presenter.
I remember the "original" Radio City...
City FM back in the day
There is some debate over the radio shitty sign.as it was installed before the grade 2 listing and it is an iconic part of the tower's identity it mught not be removed.
Also the 96 is illuminated on Hillsborough memorial day.
I wonder if they will change it to 97 as a mark of respect 🙏 😢
@@stephenjones9153 I think they do by not illuminating the 6 and the decimal
@G7OEA As a radio amateur looking at digital readouts for year's I should have thought of that great idea 👍 👍. YNWA 9 7 .
You can get a Mersey travel savaway for £5-50 go on buses trains and the ferry all day
I went to that revolving restaurant.
I was onky a kid but it didnt strike me as 5 star and we werent a "5 star" family if you get me.
I would like to see some transmitters and not just antennae
You can also see,Everton ground& the new one at the bramley Moore Dock.
Radio used to be fun in the US, I miss the days when stations would produce their own music. Most of the time it was satire. One of the neatest things I heard, was done in the eighties. Artists would sing the call letters of a local station. That was blended into the song, the one I remember was Madonna's, "Crazy For You". Suddenly she is singing the call letters. Of course I questioning my ears. When I heard it again, they really did it.
That sort of thing changed in 1995, when congress passed some bill allowing corporations to buy up radio stations, instead of radio stations being locally owned, they went national. Then not to long after Napster happened. That was the end of music as we knew it.
Corporations are killing everything
and the damn internet
There must be at least one Aerial up there that broadcast a subliminal message to Liverpudlians. "Calm down, Calm down, Calm down".
😂
It wasn't funny in 1990 and certainly isn't funny 34 years later. Get some new material, you tedious bore.
There are a lot of antennas up there. I wonder how much RF people are exposed to, especially people who work there?
It’s all completely harmless up there
The amalgamation of radio stations is pretty common all over the world. Broadcast radio is fading as a medium for the obvious reasons, such as the internet, playlists, streaming, and yes, TH-cam. It is more importantly fading because it is rarely exactly what people want to listen to, and given the choice of their custom playlist with their favorite songs or a station that plays a bunch of stuff they don't really enjoy with a few good ones in between, you can see how people can be sliding away.
The reaction to this from most radio companies is to consolidate formats and make things even more universally disagreeable. They offer the same single source limited program over a greater and greater number of stations, removing the regional aspects and pushing a bland, grey, regionally inoffensive package that most people just aren't into. Some radio programs do rank fairly well (particularly morning programs) but much of the rest of it is fading away.
Worse yet, "hit" stations such as the one you mention are often aiming to be inoffensive enough to get played in cafes or workplaces or whatever to drive listenership. But it insteads makes them the background noise of life and lowers the value of advertising.
This is a worldwide thing. Anywhere there is decent internet, radio is wavering on the edge.
I was sure we'd get a shot of Paul McCartney from up there.... But oh well. 8-)
AM radio? When I took delivery of my then new car in December of 2006 I sat outside for any days and nights trying to find an AM station that might be transmitting from the mainland but no luck. Way too much QRM from the National electrical grid from corona discharges along HV insulators nearby especially on really damp evenings and days. I remember listening to WLW out of Cincinnati Ohio while living in central Ohio, listening to now silent SWL stations from all over the world. I do miss those days of chasing the waves.
Even the USA they're cutting back on live local radio and AM is dying too. Luckily theres an FM hot talk station on where I live. I'm a talk radio junky
Bloody hell, Baurer have taken over everything
Hi, I have read somewhere that as it is a listed building they won't be able to take the Radio City 96.7 signage down due to this :)
It doesn’t affect it. It’s not an original feature. Bauer confirmed it’s being removed
@@RingwayManchester shame
FWIW: I was once a student pilot {although I never got my Private Pilot's License}.
I have flown in open airframe and open cockpit aircraft.
When I was an Enlisted Aircrewman in the US Coast Guard, there were a few times I got to stand on the open cargo ramp of an airborne USCG Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft.
I LOVED ALL OF IT.
Staning inside THAT TOWER?!
😱😱😱😱😱
I watched the Beacon being built from my office window. When complete it had a rather ugly look in my opinion. Bare concrete and a sawn-off top. At least it looks a bit better these days.
Listened to this in 2x speed and it's perfectly legible haha
One things for sure, they pay a packet to have antennas up there!
0:56 Also thanks to Bauer's Hits Radio trash Radio Hallam/Hallam FM no longer exists and guessing from the no reply to my question, it's 50th anniversary won't be observed in October 2024!! 😡
Reminds me of the CN tower in Ontario Canada
Always irks me when anything radio is considered an eye sore by the general public.
Fine. Go climb a hill so you can watch your mindless sitcoms then!
Amazed how you can get such awesome drone footage in a city area like that Lewis!
Thanks as always Adam
American AM is going the same way. I don't even listen to local news because it's never been one of their priorities. Just the same music over and over and endless ads.
Hey ! Awesome video. Just wondering, are you not worried you might mess up microwave links flying in front of them with the drone? Also how legal is it to be flying in these areas? Im not asking to be a pain im genuinely curious.
Is the structure under the antennas just an architectural feature?
I really should go up, I'm like 20 minutes away from Liverpool. I could probably see my house from up there 😅