Ben Park (presenter/writer/producer/webmaster)
Ben grew up in Malmesbury, Wiltshire then moved to Bristol in 2001.
While spending some time with his sister in Clevedon, she mentioned there was a local community FM station broadcasting there – called CurzonFM, and she knew one of the presenters. Ben sat in on one live show and he was hooked on radio broadcasting.
He put his name down to take part in the next Curzon FM broadcast, and while waiting for his application to be processed, signed up for the next BHBS (Bristol Hospital Broadcasting Service) training course.
Ben’s application to Curzon FM was successful, and he went on to single-handedly present several shows on three broadcasts. Curzon FM has been off-air ever since, but this is purely a coincidence.
Having completed the training course for hospital radio, Ben started out by lining up records and recording the news (he pressed “record”, waited 2 minutes, then pressed “stop”) before moving onto work as a producer for shows as diverse as big band music and sports (despite Ben’s hatred of almost all sports) and then switched to producing and co-presenting the Thursday evening request show – Requestline.
Ben attended the Mediafly radio broadcasting course in 2002, put on at the Galaxy101 studios (now KissFM) partly for the course, and partly to have a nose around and meet semi-famous local newsreaders and presenters.
When BHBS decided they wanted to broadcast 24-hours-a-day, there were a lot of programmes required to fill the gaps outside the live broadcast schedule. Ben (with James Wilson and Stephen Gardner) were in charge of recording shows to go out 7-9am (the breakfast show!), and the first collaboration of B, J & S was born.
In 2006, Ben got fed up with only making the sick feel worse and launched a podcast version of the hospital radio music request show. Without the music.
On the 14th May 2007, Ben created a demo and entered a BBC Talent scheme to find a new presenter for Radio Bristol. He didn’t win, but 6 weeks later was invited to a BBC Induction Day, where he got to look around the station, see how great a place to work the BBC is, and make a live demo which was unlistenable, and hopefully has since been deleted.
Ben ended up doing a bit of work for Radio Bristol in promotions (giving out frisbees and balloons), and also made the tea for some important people there.
Since April 2007, Ben (together with James and Stephen), has been presenting shows on all of GlossFM’s broadcasts (formerly ThornburyFM). Ben produces/edits the majority of idents/beds/jingles/recorded pieces for the show, and also runs this website.
He likes birds and frogs, hates cats, records a lot more TV than he watches, and is a very fussy eater.
You can keep up to date with Ben’s movements on Twitter: @BenPark
(Updated 9th May 2011)
