Radio days

This is a post to mark the birthday of BBC Radios 1,2,3 and 4, though the latter three have other birthdays as 30 September 1967 marked their renamings rather than the launch of entirely new services, however the BBC like to spin the event. Good excuse for some PR-friendly event scheduling, though...

I was going to mark today by quoting from my favourite radio continuity announcement, which I'd come across a few years ago on a radio history website. This was David Dunhill closing down the BBC Home Service for the last time on Friday 29 September 1967 - "This is the end of the Home Service for today, and for all days..." and ending with a very BBC pun, reminding loyal Home Service listeners that if they were moved to consider the question "What is radio fo(u)r?" they would know the answer. However, the quote appeared in the Radio Times this week, in The Daily Telegraph too, and probably elsewhere, so it's no longer my speciality any more.

So, here I am not getting very far (as usual) with a job application, and flipping between listening to Radio 1 on a Sunday morning for probably the first time since the days of Danny Baker (and I'd only started a few years before with Dave Lee Travis on his final lap of amusingly self-referential old-style Radio 1 DJing); and Radio 2's own fortieth birthday, currently replaying an entire Kenny Everett show from 1981, competitions and all. Radio 3 didn't really emerge in a recognisable form until 1970, and they just had sixtieth anniversary celebrations for the Third Programme two years ago, so are being low-key; and Radio 4's birthday programmes are this evening.

Worth enduring on Listen Again, if only to experience 1967 middle-of-the-roadness, is Paul Hollingdale's recreation of the first Radio 2 breakfast show, with a lot of background explanation (including the last Light Programme closedown - not as fun or as gracious as the Home Service farewell - and the opening moments of the convolutedly-named 'BBC Radio 2, the Light Programme, on 1500 metres Long Wave, with Radio 1 on 247 metres') and reflections on the problems of running a radio station with a split identity, where most of the budget was allocated to the five and a half hours a day of Radio 1 (for the first eleven years an opt-out of Radio 2) and where Musicians' Union rules meant that both Radios 1 and 2 had to play cover versions of chart music, often recorded by the BBC's regional orchestras (now mostly gone), so as not to exceed the limit on the number of commercial records they could broadcast.