Radio 1 - 50 Years of Pop Music from the BBC

During the very early hours on this day in 1967, exactly 50 years ago today, the BBC sound broadcasting services, the Home Service, the Light Programme and the Third Programme where in their death throws as it was all change at the BBC's Broadcasting House and to be radio by numbers, with the launch of four national networks instead of the current three.

Radio 4 was to be essentially the Home Service with news, current affairs, plays, documentaries, quizzes, comedy, some classical music and religious programming.

Radio 3 was to carry a similar content to the Third Programme with high brow output.

Radio 2 was to be a network carrying basically programmes formerly heard on the Light Programme together with new content, music mostly of a easy listening nature, quizzes, comedy and a daily soap.

Radio 1 was a new venture for the BBC, a pop music station. This had been brought about because it had been 'discovered' that the younger generation craved it's own pop music station. I say 'discovered' in a rather sarcastic manner as the need for a national pop station had been quite apparent for many a year, and became even more a much needed necessity following the government's outlawing of the offshore pop stations.

So Saturday 30th September 1967 and the BBC's pop station was launched, but the station had serious problems. There was very little money to spend on this new service, which caused Radio 1 to only be on air for 12 hours per day, with Radio 2 being broadcast over it's sole frequency of 247 metres Medium Wave for the rest of the day. 247 was a frequency which was the poorest for reception capability with many parts of the UK having great difficulty in receiving it's transmissions. Here in Eastbourne the listening on 247 metres came to an abrupt end each day at about 4.00pm with the trumpet call sign coming over the airwaves from Radio Tirane in Albania broadcasting with a much stronger signal and drowning out Radio 1. Looking at the Wireless World Guide to Broadcasting Stations from around this time I see Radio Tirane was broadcasting at a power of 240kW and Radio 1's local transmitter to us was in Brighton at a power of 1kW. With the South Downs hills in between Eastbourne and Brighton, you can appreciate Radio 1 was fighting a losing battle.

Another problem was the dreaded needle time restrictions, which stopped Radio 1 from filling it's programmes with records, but having to include much live music. This was not what the listeners wanted, especially after being spoilt with 24-hour a day non-stop music from the offshore stations for over 3 years.

But things over the years improved, Radio 1 eventually got it's own dedicated FM frequencies, the needle time restrictions were overhauled and transmission hours increased to 24 hours.

Of course musical tastes change over the years and Radio 1's music output has changed. I'm currently listening to a three-day pop-up station recreating those early days. If you yearn for the music output and the voices from the early years of Radio 1, such as Kenny Everett, Tony Blackburn, Johnnie Walker, Mike Read etc, etc then give Radio 1 Vintage a listen. It's on DAB and on-line from today until 2nd October.

Happy birthday Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4.