Tom Roche BBC World Service Tapes



Similar to the model followed in the 400 Box project, this page has been created for an overview of the 98 tapes in the Tom Roche BBC World Service collection.

Tapes
A few notes from Tom on the tapes in his collection:

The BBC World Service shows come in 3 flavors - wooshy over the air shortwave (generally 1980's) more crisp but flat satellite feed of BBC World Service (90's-00's) and then a dozen or so shows from WRAS-Atlanta FM college radio station that briefly had an agreement with BBC World Service. The latter shows sound best, but the college DJs nearly always clipped the start of the show. Tapes labelled WRAS are from this last batch, often 3 shows stacked on a 90 minute cassette.

All shows are in mono.

The 80s shows were recorded in Atlanta via a $900 professional communications receiver like this via BBCs Caribbean Relay on the island of Antigua that a friend (and Peel fan) owned. Even at that price, some shows are markedly low-fi, but I think it is important to save that snapshot to honor the behind-the-iron-curtain listeners who listened this way for years.

In the 90s BBC World Service was placed on a satellite channel audio subcarrier accessible to people in North America with the old big backyard dishes. There is a bit of analog hiss to these shows, and the EQ is flat as this feed was for stations to rebroadcast and apply their own EQ. (RF Note: Will try and fix this in the rip)

Generally my friend with the dish would record Peel on one side of the cassette and the BBCWS Top 20 Countdown show (sometimes called "Multitrack" by the BBC.) It is your call if you want to digitize these shows also. To cover 20 songs in 30 minutes makes it a tight tidy show, and some songs are edgy outliers... but mostly it is pop "product." Still an interesting time capsules for sure.

Below are all 98 tapes as listed below. This section is intended to give at an overview of tape status, plus links for information on the tapes themselves and the shows broadcast on the dates they cover. Further information will be added when known. Not all tapes are dated accurately so some dates will be rough guesses

TR001-TR098
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TR002

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TR095

TR096

TR097

TR098