What Is Hospital Radio?

Hospital radio stations broadcast to one hospital or a group of hospitals, mostly via a bedside entertainment units that also have TV and telephone on them. It started in the UK in 1926 and currently around 90% of the UK's hospital population has access to their own locally produced programmes every day – that's about 250,000 beds in about 800 hospitals.  Some stations started by offering a service of football commentaries, but nowadays, programmes are wide and varied due to the ever changing hospital population and the huge age range of patients.

About 10,000 hours a week of hospital radio programming is produced every week.  The range of programmes produced is huge and very specific to the patients at a particular hospital.  Typically, a station's schedule will be centred around its request shows where presenters and ward visitors go and see patients before a show, the patients choose their favourite songs and then they are played on air later in the day.  Sometimes, a microphone is taken around the wards and the patient interviewed live on air with their request being played instantly and it's not unknown to have even more interactivity with competitions such as hospital radio bingo.

As technology has developed, so stations are now able to broadcast 24 hours a day using computer playout systems in the same way as professional commercial stations.  This has allowed other types of shows to be produced such as specialist music shows, documentaries and other programmes recorded in advance.