Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Keynsham & District Talking Newspaper (1983-2023)
On Saturday 16th September 2023 we held a tea party in Keynsham to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Keynsham & District Talking Newspaper.
Chairman, Mike Crane, said:
Thank you to all of you who came to St Dunstan’s Church to celebrate with us.
We received over 80 responses to the invitations we sent out, and in particular we wanted to welcome to the event and thank Alan Hale and his wife Jane for their continued support; Bob Porton – a previous chair of KTN for a decade; Gordon Pountain, husband of Rosemary, and reader for KTN for many years; Janet Mills – wife of the former Baptist Minister, Bob Mills and member of Churches Together and very early supporter of KTN; and Fred Ellison, husband of Rosemary who was a presenter on the magazine side for many years.
In fact, my thanks are so numerous that I cannot mention everyone individually today. However, I would also like to highlight our loyal VIPs – our listeners who continue to give us encouragement, support and guidance; our committee, readers and technicians, our friends and supporters in the community, past volunteers, and our behind-the-scenes volunteers who plan the rotas, edit the news; and our Post Office volunteers – especially Carole Wake who sorted our wallets in her garage during lockdown and continues to lug heavy sacks of wallets to and from the Post Office each week. And we are most grateful to the continued support of the Post Office staff.
I think that this is our first gathering since the end of Covid, and it’s great to see you all here.
It hardly seems possible that 40 years have passed since Mary Burnard originally founded KTN. Keynsham was part of the Wansdyke District Council area at the time, and it was originally thought that up to 30 listeners living within the area might be interested in receiving a tape.
Permission from all the local newspapers at the time to use their content was sought and granted, and our volunteers – there were a total of 12 at the time – divided into two groups – one to read the news and one for the magazine side. Recording was done on to a c60 cassette tape, giving 30 minutes for each group. Tricia Scammell, who is hugely active on our committee now has been very involved and contributed so much to KTN since those earliest meetings.
KTN had no facility for copying the tapes in those days – that was done by the Bristol Society for the Blind every Friday. From there they went to the Post Office, who delivered them all for us free of charge under the provisions of the ‘Articles for the Blind’ concessions.
The early recordings proved to be a success, and KTN set about raising the estimated £2,000 required to buy our own recording machine, copier, cassette tapes and wallets. Local churches, Probus clubs, Scouts and local businesses all gave their support, whilst KTN supporters arranged coffee mornings and cream teas. Wellsway School, South West Gas, and the Police, also responded very generously at the time.
Listener numbers increased, and I think at one time we had over 280 listeners! 100 of them gathered together to help us celebrate our 21st anniversary in 2004, whilst in 1991 KTN was chosen as ‘the best Talking Newspaper in the country’.
Since those early days, a total over 1,275 listeners have benefited from our services and who often enjoy the recordings in company of friends or family. Since those early days much has changed.
Four of our current listeners have been with us for over 30 years and Margaret Berryman in Radstock who celebrated her birthday recently, has been with us for 37 years!
We no longer use cassette tapes, and our tape duplicators are long gone, although one survives in my loft, just in case…….
We now have our own recording studio, record digitally, and send our recordings out via USB stick.
Our recordings are even available on the internet, via our website.
We’ve encountered our fair share of challenges along the way, including the need to move premises, a flood, the need to learn how to record and duplicate digitally and the Covid lockdown, but thanks to our helpers and volunteers we’ve always managed to pull through.
We have always been generously supported by our patrons – firstly Leslie Crowther, then his wife Jean, and now Bill Bailey.
Bill is unable to join us today, but has sent a lovely congratulations card – the message inside reads:
To all at the Keynsham and District Talking Newspaper, wishing you all heartfelt congratulations on your 40th Anniversary. It was a great pleasure to take part. All the very best – Bill Bailey.
Franchesca, daughter of Cath Dhanjal, our secretary, has very kindly arranged and provided all the catering for us this afternoon, and has also baked this magnificent cake – which we will cut after we’ve tucked into our tea.
After the grace we can all enjoy our tea, following which there will be a short talk, and a sing a long – hopefully you will all have song sheets on your table.
