Queer in Your Ear: Connecting space, community and identity in LGBT BBC radio programmes, 1992 – 2000

This article analyses two long-running gay and lesbian radio programmes from the BBC from the 1990s to highlight different approaches to notions of identity and definition, based on items that focused on interactions with physical space, both public and private. The weekly programme Gay and Lesbian London broadcast in London on BBC GLR94.9 contained items that constructed a different relationship between gay identity and locations, compared to Gaytalk on BBC GMR, and its relationship with Manchester.
By exploring the significance of gay and lesbian radio in relation to ideas around community, and its relationship with the editorial narrative, the paper argues there is fluidity between community and identity. The subsequent analysis of the radio output in the two programmes focuses on the intersection between spatial relationships and sexuality. Content from the Manchester programme foregrounded the prominence of the city’s commercial area, the Gay Village, in queer lives, while in London, domesticity and dispersed community apart from the gay scene dominated the narrative. The way these two programmes mediated the relationship between communities of listeners and their locations throws light on gay and lesbian experiences during an important period of social and political change.