NLV Radio broadcast to the West Yorkshire town of Keighley, and were first heard in early 1988.
NLV is understood to have stood for Night Life Videotech and they transmitted on 104.9 FM in stereo. Despite their relatively low power, they were an immediate hit. This was probably helped by the fact that, due to the topography of the area, Keighley had always suffered from poor radio and even TV reception. NLV was the only place to hear pop music in stereo on the radio!
NLV’s DJ’s were mostly night club DJ’s, which meant the format was mostly dance music, although there was also a weekly 2 hour Asian show. NLV was very much a community style of station, broadcasting lots of local information and even organising charity discos. NLV’s links with the club scene was the reason why NLV in its early days – unlike most pirates – broadcast from 7am to 8pm weekdays, rather than at the weekends.
There were soon complaints from nearby ILR station Pennine Radio. This was despite the fact that reception of Pennine was poor in Keighley, and NLV could not be heard in Pennine’s own area of Bradford. Pennine were a very anti-pirate station and had helped in the closure of another small scale community pirate, Calderdale Sound, a few years earlier.
NLV announced in late March that they were to extend to a 7 day a week schedule from the 2nd April, but unfortunately the inevitable raid occurred on Thursday 31st March 1988. A court case was called for later in the year, and the DTI would have plenty of evidence for it. NLV they hadn’t been that secretive about their operation, as they thought the authorities wouldn’t be too interested due to their remote location and low power. Their on air address, phone, studio and transmitter had been all at the same place.
The station returned after the raid, this time with a slightly more secretive operation, and they slowly built the service back up again. However there were more raids which finished the station off later in 1989.
It is interesting to note, that in the early 1990s the BBC added a 1 kW relay in Keighley for its National services and also later added a 500 Watt relay for Radio Leeds. Coincidence?
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Artwork & Paper Cuttings
Audio
| NLV Radio – Mad Murdock – 18/2/88 | 92 mins |
| NLV Radio – Mad Murdock – 30/3/88 | 66 mins |