The station was staffed by members of the research department under H. G. Bell (now manager of a B.E.A. sub-area) and by college apprentices, who often had to fill a gap by acting as artists as well as technicians. Musical evenings, both records and 'live', were directed by K. A. Wright, the present deputy director of music at the B.B.C. Several of the staff appeared as Uncles and Aunties in a popular Children's Corner; many will remember S. J. Nightingale as the Sandman, Wright as Uncle Humpty Dumpty, the Misses A. and A. L. Bennie as the Lady of the Magic Carpet and Cousin Bunny, and Miss J. M. Cormack as the Cloud Lady and pianist.

Talks ranging from gardening to welding were given by Bell and W. J. Brown, as Mr. X and Mr. Z, and humorous sketches, often impromptu, by J. W. Buckley and R. T. Fleming as Rastus and Massa Johnson. Regular announcers included A. E. Grimsdale and Victor Smythe (afterwards in charge of outside broadcasts from the B.B.C. station in Manchester).

The programme and the times of the main items soon took on the familiar form: children's hour was before the first news, the news itself at 6 and 9 p.m., talks between 7 and 8, and the main entertainment from 8 to 10. There were many amusing incidents. It is said that at the end of an unusually tiring day, Victor Smythe not only gave his usual "Good night everybody, go-o-od night", but added to the standby engineer "Pull that b.... y switch out", a remark that scandalized listeners for many miles around.

The early experimental programmes were sent out from a 50-watt transmitter constructed by the research department, but this was replaced by a 700-watt equipment (later doubled in power) made by the R.C.C. with which M-V was technically associated. Reception was reported joyfully from places as far apart as Dingwall and Paris, Londonderry and the Channel Islands.

The Company continued to broadcast for the B.B.C. until August 1923, when a station of 5-kW capacity was opened in Manchester. Towards the end of that year American programmes broadcast on extra short wave transmission were being received with some success, and these were relayed from the research station on the call sign 2AC and occasionally included in B.B.C. programmes.

The happy amateurs who started 2ZY—rather as a joke that might some day become serious—had to solve many problems in a hurry, without proper data and with makeshift apparatus. For instance the science of studio acoustics, which with the development of microphones was the concern of J. W. Buckley, was then an uncharted sea, but many quick and practical solutions have stood the test of time.

A serious problem was to find a suitable microphone. At first only the ordinary telephone mouthpiece of the carbon-granule type was available, but this played queer tricks when a musical note coincided with its own natural frequency. The same trouble was found with the 'photophone', and for a time certain Hawaiian melodies that did not contain the fatal note were in great demand.