Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and good friend, BJ Leiderman, who shares the following video on YouTube–a special Shipping Forecast tribute:
On 18 December 1993, as part of the Arena Radio Night, BBC Radio 4 and BBC 2 collaborated on a simultaneous broadcast so the shipping forecast – read that night by Laurie Macmillan – could be seen as well as heard. To date, it is the only time that it has been broadcast on television.
Click here to view/listen on YouTube.
As a huge fan of The Shipping Forecast, I absolutely love this–simply chock-full of radio nostalgia. Thank you for sharing!
Haha, that was lovely.
For those of us listening to radio 4 all our lives, that tune, “Sailing By” illustrates the very best of the BBC as an institution. The shipping forecast for me brings up images of lonely mariners waiting for the detail of their forecast, leaning close to the radio speaker. I always wished for the calmest weather for them, but the North Sea is not gentle.
The forecast itself was of course unintelligible to me, but was always broadcast in those very measured clear and easy to hear tones. An example of conveying maximum information in minimum time with little effort.
I always found this to represent great broadcasting, though it was indeed very very niche. Perhaps I’m getting old, I fear the BBC was at it’s best then. I no longer watch television and very rarely listen to broadcast national radio.
Thank you for this lovely memory.
Heard the forecast so often and never knew most of the odd names used there, I know German Bight and of course Faeroes and the Hebrides (hey I’m hoping to drive one in the future! :p) but that’s it. There’s likely an interesting history behind each of those names!
Like many others who grew up in the UK I wondered at all the names. German bite? What’s a german bite????
I have a feeling I saw this when it was broadcast on the telly – seems familiar.
That’s fun. I love on a coast (VE7) and regularly listen to Weather Band, And I have experienced Storm 10 off the Brittany coast. The music reminds me of The Onedin Line, an excellent BBC series about shipping a century ago. I believe it is all on YouTube in sections,