Early History
The station was launched at 6:30am on 4 July 1983 - a launch featured on the cover of the Radio Times. A year prior to its launch, a temporary AM service was broadcast for coverage of Pope John Paul II's visit to the city.
BBC Radio York was the only local radio station in North Yorkshire in its first nine years of operation. The independent commercial rival, Minster FM, began broadcasting on 4 July 1992. Stray FM, the independent station covering the Harrogate and Ripon areas, made its first transmission exactly two years to the day after Minster's launch and eleven years to the day after Radio York's launch.
The first station manager was John Jefferson with the late Tony Fish as Programme Organiser. The original team included David Farwig, Derm Tanner, Andy Joynson, Will Hanrahan, Graham Pass, Andy Hitchcock, Chris Loveder and Chris Choi, Charlotte Counsel, Shirley Lewis and Sandy Barton.
Initially, the station was only on air for a few hours a day (6.30am to 1pm and 4pm to 6pm during the week with weekend programming restricted to 8am until around 2pm) and carried BBC Radio 2 the rest of the time. At first, local sports coverage was produced by BBC Radio Leeds. During the second half of the 1980s broadcast hours slowly expanded. Afternoon broadcasting was introduced and programming started earlier in the day - 6am during the week and 7am over the weekend. Radio York also started producing its own sports programmes on Saturday afternoons but did not introduce its own Sunday afternoon programming until the end of the decade.
Evening programming started in August 1986 when it joined with the other BBC local stations in Yorkshire in broadcasting an early evening service of specialist music programmes but it was the launch of the BBC Night Network in spring 1989 which provided BBC Radio York with a full time service of regional evening programming, keeping the station on air until midnight seven days a week. Recent years saw the introduction of some local evening programming but even now Radio York, along with the majority of other BBC local stations, takes regional programming as a way to keep the station on air until 1am.
Read more about this topic: BBC Radio York
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