How it all started...

We're a group from the north east LGBT community who wanted to have our own voice for the Northern Pride festival...a place for music, chat, gossip and the space to address to some serious issues.

We also wanted a radio station that talked about us - when was the last time you heard a radio station give a mention to a gay girl and her partner? Or wish someone well on the anniversary of a civil partnership?

No. Neither had we!! So Pride Radio was born.

Northern Pride 2010

OFCOM are the agency that hand out licences for broadcast. They offer what's called a 28 day RSL (restricted service licence) which means groups can take to the air for a month to publicise an event or try a radio format with a view to applying for a full time licence. We had such a licence, which granted us permission to broadcast  from the middle of Newcastle for a month from Monday 21 June 2010 until Sunday 18 July 2010. We know that there is a demand for the music we would be playing.

We are pleased to say that our first month on air proved to be a great success! We broadcast from Eldon Square in Newcastle City centre and, on the day of Northern Pride's Pink Picnic, we broadcast live from Leazes Park.

After the RSL ended we continued to play the great music that our listeners loved and later in 2010 we secured premises in the heart of the gay-scene in Newcastle and began broadcasting live programmes at the weekend. We expanded our broadcasting hours to include a show celebrating the camp eighties (see our schedules for more details), and we were back on FM leading up to Northern Pride 2011.

In September we introduced new programmes aimed at Lesbian and Bisexual women. Loose Lesbians airs on the first Monday of every month and Women's Hour airs on the remaining Mondays.

The Future

We plan to further expand our schedules to cater for everyone in the LGB&T community and we would love to be able to broadcast on FM permanently, but that depends on your support and OFCOM granting us a licence.