in
Leeds blue plaque The station began broadcasting at the
Merrion Centre at 5.30 pm on 24 June 1968, becoming the seventh
BBC local radio station to go on air. Initially a two-year experiment and co-funded by
Leeds City Council, the station was only available in
Leeds on a low powered 50 watt VHF transmitter in
Meanwood Park, on 94.6 MHz. Listening figures were very low as at that time, the majority of listeners still listened to radio via
AM. In 1970, the station was made permanent and began broadcasting to all of
West Yorkshire from the
Holme Moss transmitting station and in 1972 the station started broadcasting on
medium wave and branded itself as "the voice of West Yorkshire". In 1974, BBC Radio Leeds, along with
BBC Look North, moved to new studios in
Woodhouse Lane, where it remained for thirty years until the studios were demolished in 2004. Until the mid-1980s, the station was generally on air from breakfast until teatime, with any programming after 6 pm devoted to specialist music and magazines aimed at specialist interests and at ethnic minority communities. These programmes did not broadcast all year round, and outside of its broadcast hours, as with all BBC Local Radio stations, Radio Leeds carried
BBC Radio 2. In August 1986, evening programmes began on a permanent basis when the station joined with the other three BBC stations in
Yorkshire to provide an early evening service of specialist music programmes on weeknights from 6 pm to 7:30 pm, although since autumn 1984, BBC Radio Leeds' Saturday evening organ music programme,
At the Console, had also been carried by
BBC Radio York and
BBC Radio Humberside. The regional specialist music service was expanded in September 1987, running six days a week (Wednesday to Monday) between 7 pm and 9 pm, with Tuesdays reserved for local sports coverage. On 29 May 1989, the
BBC Night Network launched which saw the six BBC Local Radio stations in Yorkshire and the north east broadcasting networked programming every evening from 6:05 pm (6 pm at the weekend) and midnight, with the majority of the programmes broadcast from the Leeds studios. Any local programming broadcast after 6 pm, such as sport and ethnic minority output, was transmitted only on medium wave with
Night Network continuing uninterrupted on
FM. The network expanded in May 1991 to include the four
BBC North West stations and
Night Network's hours were changed, starting an hour later, resulting in an additional hour of local output. Programming was overhauled with specialist music programmes airing from 7:05 pm to 10 pm (the exception being made for midweek sports coverage) followed, on weeknights, by a late show from
Lancaster. The late show was extended to 12:30 am a year later and eventually to 1 am. Local programming would now fully opt-out of the network with any local evening programming replacing the scheduled Night Network programme on both FM and AM. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the station was branded as "West Yorkshire's FM BBC Radio Leeds" buildings on St. Peter's Square in
Leeds. In 2002, the Yorkshire stations left the network to introduce a regional phone-in show with
Alex Hall, who had hosted a similar show on
Pulse. In 2012, the station closed its offices and studios at the
National Media Museum in
Bradford, where the public was able to see programmes being broadcast. Radio Leeds also ran district newsrooms and contribution studios in
Wakefield Town Hall, at
Dean Clough in
Halifax and at
Huddersfield Town Hall. Four years later, the station reinstated an office and studio in Bradford, located in the Horton building at
The University of Bradford. As a cost saving measure, all local early evening programmes were scrapped at the start of 2013 and they were replaced by a new evening programme which was broadcast on all local stations (the only time that stations were not able to broadcast the programme was to provide local sports coverage). BBC Radio Leeds was the location of the national programme. The late show was a regional programme. The programme continued until summer 2018, almost a year after the then
Director-General of the BBC,
Tony Hall, announced in a speech to mark BBC Local Radio's 50th anniversary that the national evening show would be axed, resulting in local programming returning to weeknight evenings.
BBC Radio Bradford On 7 December 2020, BBC Radio Bradford began broadcasting as a temporary service on the MW frequency each weekday between 6 am and 2 pm. The service provided eight hours of opt-out programming for listeners in Bradford and the surrounding area each weekday until March 2021. ==Technical==