RADIO may have changed in 30 years but the core principals are the same, says BBC Wiltshire’s first programme manager.

Alan Thompson was the programme organiser at the station – known as BBC Wiltshire Sound – when it came into being on February 1, 1988.

Alongside manager Tony Talmage, his assistant Caroline May, news editor David Bennett, and senior engineer Ian Anderson he helped build a team from scratch – all out of a portable building, while work on Prospect Place finished.

“We were in that portable building for about eight or nine months,” Alan told the Advertiser in the week BBC Wiltshire celebrated its 30th birthday. “We got to know each other very well.

To hire the rest of the staff they found a room in a nearby Old Town pub to carry out the interviews.

“We couldn’t very well invite people over to the portable building to do the interviews, so we hired the room,” Alan added. “I couldn’t have done it without that team, they worked perfectly well together.”

After a series of focus groups and 15-minute test transmissions, the full first live broadcast hit the airwaves on April 4, 1989.

“My godfathers it was very nerve-wracking,” added Alan.

“We knew that everyone in the industry and people in Wiltshire would be listening for the first time.

“Now it’s a totally different ball game, but the principles remain the same. You hear what the competition are doing, and you pay attention to your audience.”

One listener stopped him one day after listening to the show with the flu.

Alan said: “She told me, ‘I had you on in the afternoon and it was as though I could have reached out and touched you’.”

“I remember taking that ethos and saying lets make all these programmes so the listener can reach out and touch you.”