History

The picture on the right was taken on the occasion of the presentation to EaRTN by the Mayors of our two boroughs of a certificate in recognition of our 1,500th issue, and shows from the left Councilor Carol Jones, Mayor of Runnymede, EaRTN members John Dickson, Mary Cobham, Anne Drevost, Editor Hugh Read, Sid Stone, Chairman Heinz Vogel and Councilor Martin Schofield Mayor of Elmbridge.

When the Talking Newspaper Association of the UK was formed in 1974, the Rotary Club of Weybridge and Byfleet decided to start a talking newspaper for blind and partially sighted people in the area. Hospital Radio Wey offered to join the project by providing recordings of their Friday evening News Digest, so resolving the problem of the news side production of the proposed 90-minute cassette. Side two was to be a magazine.

The Thames Valley Talking Newspaper (TVTN), as it then was, first reached 35 listeners in the Weybridge and Byfleet area on 21st December 1975. The early cassettes were edited and copied on Sunday mornings on a single machine in the home of Pat Cole, of Radio Wey, for more than two years.

In June 1976 Walton Rotary joined the project bringing 40 more listeners and Dick Birkhead of the Walton club took on the job of looking after the equipment and distribution. Now, 23 years on, he is still active as Chief Technical Officer.

TVTN grew in strength, with Esher Rotary joining in May 1977 and Chertsey Rotary following on in 1987. As word spread so TVTN increased its weekly circulation, and by the end of 1990 reached more than 200 blind and visually impaired people in the boroughs of Elmbridge and Runnymede.

In 1995 it was decided to take over Side One and speed up the weekly cycle, so that the news could be recorded on Thursdays, enabling listeners to receive their weekly cassette on Saturday rather than the Tuesday the following week, as was inevitable under the then current arrangement. An appeal therefore went out for volunteers, to take on the much bigger task of editing, reading and recording the weekly news from the local newspapers. With the help of a feature article in the Surrey Herald, some 50 people quickly answered the call and TVTN's own first news (on side two) reached its listeners by April1997, though still alongside Radio Wey on Side One. The re-launch was completed by November, when TVTN finally took responsibility for Side One and the new, Saturday morning, weekly all-news cassette started - under the new name of Elmbridge and Runnymede Talking Newspaper (EaRTN).

EaRTN's successful rebirth was duly recognised later that year when the Surrey Voluntary Association for the Blind voted it 'Surrey Talking Newspaper of the Year' and the Runnymede Disability Liaison Group gave it their award for 'Services to the Disabled'. Furthermore, with the monthly magazine firmly established, this received the 2003 Runnymede Access Liaison Group’s Award for its Achievement and Contribution made in enhancing the lives of disabled people in the Borough of Runnymede.

Finally, Egham, the last remaining Rotary Club in the two boroughs, joined EaRTN in 1998 and the original magazine side was reinstated in the form of the EaRTN Monthly Features Supplement, now better known as our Talking Magazine. As a result EaRTN is now producing cassettes at the rate of about 15,000 copies a year, reaching some 200 blind and visually impaired people in Elmbridge and Runnymede. These cassettes consist of the weekly news, which reached issue number 1,500 at the end of 2004, the monthly Talking Magazine, and the weekly Woman's Weekly digest (which is distributed to those who request it). Furthermore, the service is, and always has been, completely free of charge, the participating Rotary Clubs providing the bulk of the funding, with the 50 or so volunteers producing the labour of this weekly operation without fail.

As in all such undertakings, EaRTN is entirely dependant on the services of willing, unpaid, volunteers, who give between about three and 30 hours of their time each month. New recruits are always welcome and comprehensive on-the-job training is always provided. Anyone interested in joining the band of EaRTN volunteers, for whichever of the various tasks, but particularly for that of Recording Supervisors, should contact the Editor, Heinz Vogel. He will be very pleased to hear from them.