10 years of recording to Memory Sticks

On 8th November 2008, Portsmouth Area Talking News was one of the first talking newspapers to go 'live' with memory sticks instead of cassette tapes for all of their recordings of news and magazines. Cassette tapes were getting more difficult to get hold of, so we could go to CDs or memory sticks. The decision was made to go straight to memory sticks and not mess around with CDs. The decision was also made to only do memory sticks, not a mixture of Cassette tapes, CDs and memory sticks. We managed to source some egg shaped speakers, made by Goodmans and were able to sell these on to listeners at a very small charge in comparison to the other models that were available.

Here we are, ten years later, still producing the same editions, with mostly the same volunteers, obviously some have left through age or for some other reason, but most have stayed with us. 

In that time we have produced 1100+ recordings over all of the magazines and papers. We have had problems along the way, with faulty memory sticks, equipment failing and more importantly, the loss of our purpose built studio. The loss of the studio was a traumatic time for us all, seeking help in obtaining new premises to record from. Clarity in Fratton were our first saviours, offering us an office to record in and we recorded from there for six months. It was then that the Stacey Centre came up with a room for us to use exclusively to record in. The environment is still not right, as on occasions, we have to put up with extraneous noises from other rooms - a dance class across the passage consisting of young children, who can sound like a herd of elephants wearing clogs. We did change the Blue Team's night of recording from a Tuesday to Monday, so we now only have to put up with a Yoga class, though that does bring with the odd door-banging. Of course when the lighter, warmer evenings are here and we have the windows open, we sometimes hear the outside noises which sometimes pick up on the recordings, but you tell us that you quite like it.
As always, we continue to overcome any problems that occur as promptly as we can, and thank you for your patience. 

We have also started to put the editions online, which you have already found, as they become available, which has given us another way of getting the recordings out to people that have access to a computer. The website address is contained in this link http://www.patn.org.uk/…/portsmouth-area…/latest-recordings/ just click on the whole link and see for yourself. 

The volunteers, around 50 of them, have seen the process start and continue to support us, ten years on, for which we are eternally grateful. We are always looking for volunteers, especially those who can work with computers, updating web-pages etc, and also anyone who can help with recording, transferring files to memory sticks (doesn't normally require computer use or knowledge), general background help and readers (we try to get teams that work well together).
The volunteers try to have a lunch together once a year, just so that they can keep in touch with each other. The lunch is usually at the South Downs Catering Training College at Crookhorn, usually in the early part of the year. All volunteers are welcome and can usually muster around half of them. The lunch is at a very reasonable price and consists of two or three courses with coffee or tea. Hope to see you at the next one.

Portsmouth Area Talking News, having started in 1973, and going through one or two changes in that time are looking forward to continue producing the recordings for many more years to come. As we are only five years away from our Golden Anniversary, we had better get going and start planning something special.

Thank you all for your support.