It is only just over a year ago that I, amongst others, received the bombshell news that the previous group of Talking News Trustees planned to close the service to our wonderful Listeners because, as they said, we had little money, not enough volunteers and no one wanting to serve on the Committee. I spent a few hours of a holiday in the Lake District ringing around our Volunteers who, to a woman and a man, wished to continue our weekly news operation.
Now, just about a year later, we have a growing number of listeners, a wonderful group of dedicated volunteers, a fine team of twelve on the Committee, some very welcome and helpful grants to sustain and develop our activities and our 2000th news edition under our belts.
The Recorder team (our sound engineers as I prefer to call them) are currently testing a complete set of new recording equipment aimed at improving the quality of our sound output by updating equipment that is getting on for 20 years old! In the Autumn our Readers will see new microphones installed and our Listeners will hear, I hope, a welcome improvement in audio quality.
In addition to these vital changes our Talking News and Talking Magazine can be heard online: via apps for Android and Apple devices, with Alexa, by a local telephone call and on our new website. It’s been quite a year!
David G Henderson
Technical Manager and Recorder/Sound Engineer