It's appropriately named "Hospital Radio".
What exactly is it? Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says:
Hospital Radio stations provide radio entertainment to patients in UK hospitals. Most stations are on closed-loop wires and can only be heard inside the hospital wards on headphones or speakers next to the patient's bed. There are a few stations using AM or FM free-to-air transmission. Run by volunteers, some stations broadcast for only a few hours each week, with others using computer technology to provide their service 24 hours a day.
The Hospital Broadcasting Service recounts:
"Thomas Hanstock wrote to the General Post Office in 1921 seeking permission to conduct experiments with portable wireless telegraph apparatus…[and] his initial idea would result in hundreds of hospital radio stations across the UK and many more world wide.
During 1925 and 1926 the wiring was installed throughout the [York County] hospital - 200 sets of headphones and 70 loudspeakers fed from a wireless receiving set housed in a small alcove….The hospital radio bug was with us, and it was catching. New stations began to appear, at Oldham in 1933 and Tottenham in 1935 among others."
World War II put a slight damper on the growth of Hospital Radio but during the 1950s, it began to expand again. By the 1960s, the United Kingdom boasted about 100 Hospital Radio stations and as hbs.org.uk says, “at least 90% of which were operating a music service.”
Through the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, Hospital Radio stations numbered approximately 700. But, a consolidation of hospitals and services eventually reduced that number.
Communigate.co.uk says:
Today Over 90% of the UK's hospital population has the benefit of hospital broadcasting. This means that over 18 million people can hear specially produced local programmes every year...There is a hospital broadcasting service in almost every major town and city in the UK, serving 250,000 beds in over 800 hospitals.
Today, Hospital Radio stations serve patients through various technical means including closed circuit, traditional AM and FM signals, the Internet, and LPFM (Low Power FM).
Hospital Radio is so well admired in the United Kingdom, each year the National Hospital Radio Awards are now given out by the Hospital Broadcasting Association.
