RADIO

The B.B.C.

In 2015 a review the government's Equality & Human Rights Commission stated that employees who believed in the values of the B.B.C. were legally entitled to the same workplace rights as believers of established world religions.

See Also: REPEATED INSPIRATION; MENU

Website: www.bbc.co.uk

Commercial Radio

Capital Radio

In London, Capital Radio owns Capital FM and Capital Gold.

Capital Radio's first chairman was Richard Attenborough (Lord Attenborough). His deputy was Graham Binns (1925-2003), who was associated with BET/Rediffusion.

In October 1973 Capital Radio went on air.

As the programme director at Capital Radio, Richard Park created the golden oldies format if Capital Gold.

In February 1988 Capital Radio floated.

Website: www.capitalfm.com

Choice FM

Choice FM was founded in 1990 by Patrick Berry and Neil Kenlock. The company is based in Borough.

In 2003 Capital Radio paid 11.7m for the 81% of Choice FM that it did not already own.

Website: www.capitalxtra.com

Kiss FM

In 1985 the D.J. Gordon Mac set up Kiss F.M. as an illegal radio station that played predominantly Black music. The initial presenters included Paul Trouble Anderson (1959-2018). Within two years 500,000 people were listening to the station. This popularity put pressure on the government to increase the number of commercial licences despite its wish not to. In 1990 Kiss was awarded a licence

Website: https://planetradio.co.uk/kiss

London News Radio

London News Radio owns LBC and News Direct.

In 1973 London Broadcasting Company became the first commercial radio station in the UK.

At one point, LBC was waggishly said to stand for 'Losing Bundles of Cash'.

Website: www.lbc.co.uk

Sunrise Radio

Sunrise Radio is a radio broadcasting business. The Southall, west London-based company is a subsidiary of Asian Broadcasting Corporation.

In November 1989 Sunrise Radio was launched.

In January 1994 Sunrise London started being transmitted on 1458AM.

In March 2002 Sunrise Radio was owned by Avtar Lit.

In January 2004 it was reported that through digital radio Sunrise had audiences in Coventry, Birmingham, Coventry, and Wolverhampton, and through satellite across Europe. At the time, the station s foremost attraction was Ravi Sharma.

Website: www.sunriseradio.com

XFM

XFM is an alternative rock station. The company was founded in 1993 by Chris Parry, the manager of The Cure rock band. Before winning a licence, the station only broadcast on special events.

In January 1997 a commercial FM licence was awarded to XFM.

In September 1997 XFM went on air in London.

In May 1998 Capital Radio paid 12.6m for a 90.1% stake in the station and the right to buy Mr Parry's 9.9% holding before March 2001 for not more than 2.09m. It also assumed the station's debts of 1.9m.

Website: www.radiox.co.uk

Guglielmo Marconi

David Hughes devised an effective synchronous printing telegraph. He used his musical schemes to devise a synchronous system. He held on to the money that he made. He moved from Paris to London. His subsequent inventions included the microphone and the metal detector, which used an induction balance.

Hughes heard of Bell's work and built himself a telephone. He heard a click from the earpiece even when it had been disconnected from the rest of its equipment. This derived from a flawed induction balance. He devised an electro-magnetic radiation collector that enabled him to hear the clicks. However, he did not know that it was electro-magnetic radiation.

In the 1880s the Post Office had both the telegraph and telephone. An engineer William Preece became aware of how the systems were interfering with one another even over long-distances. Initially, they solved it by twisting wires. However, they realised that it might be a means of communicating without wires, which would be an excellent system for communicating with lighthouses.¹

Oliver Lodge of University College Liverpool knew Herz. Lodge was working on lightning conductors. He realised that it does not necessarily descend through the path of least resistance. Rather, it goes to the place with the most conductance/capacitance to receive it. This brought him into conflict with Priest in the early 1890s. Subsequently, they made up their differences. Demonstrated that dots and dashes could be sent. Devised syntonic tuning, for which he received a patent in 1897. The technique enabled specific frequencies to be used for wireless communications. Marconi had been working along similar lines. As a result, the two parties conducted a dispute for several years. This was ended in 1912. When Marconi bought Lodge's patent.

Marconi was not an original engineer. He utilised equipment that others had created. What made him exceptional was that he appreciated that electromagnetic radiation could be used as a form of telegraphy. Most other researchers had interpreted it as being optical in character. Priest had been unreceptive to a similar proposal that Lodge had made. However, when Marconi appeared he proved to be open to the idea. He opted to focus on long-distances and the maritime market. He did not know sufficient physics to be know that he should not be able to transmit from side of the Atlantic to other because of the limits of the frequency range. He had Alexander Fleming as a scientific adviser. What enabled the transmission to be heard was the semiconductor diode detector that Jagadish Bose (1858-1937) had created. The other equipment did not work. Marconi did not credit Bose.

The popular magician Nevil Maskelyne had a low opinion of Marconi. When the inventor claimed that it was possible to send secure information by radio, Maskelyne intercepted the transmission.

The development of thermionic valves enabled the technology to take off.

Location: 94 Great Portland Street, W1W 7NU. Hughes's home. (purple, yellow)

71 Hereford Road, W2 5BB. Marconi's home. (blue, red)

St Martin-le-Grand, EC1A 7AJ (red, turquoise)

¹. Sir William Preece, the General Post Office's Engineer-in-Chief, gave Guglielmo Marconi considerable assistance. In 1896 Marconi made his first public transmission of radio signals from the roof of the G.P.O.'s St Martin-le-Grand building.

The Pirates

The pirate D.J.s included Ed Stewpot Stewart (n Mainwaring) (1941-2016), who was the son of a Treasury Solicitor.

Radio Caroline

Allan Crawford (d.1999) was an Australian music publisher who was based in London. He became frustrated by how there were only a limited number of outlets for his clients material. He had the idea for pirate radio. Ronan O Rahilly heard of the idea and imitated it. His family owned ports in Ireland. Subsequently, the two men merged their operations.

O Rahilly bought Frederica, a Danish passenger ferry. He renamed her M.W. Caroline, in honour of J.F.K.'s daughter, and moored off the Isle of Man. Radio Caroline was launched on Easter Day 1964. The craft was anchored three miles off Felixstowe, just beyond Britain's territorial waters. This enabled the station to broadcast to southern England. She acquired Radio Atlanta. This deal enabled Radio Caroline North to be established. She broadcast to the North of England, Scotland and Ireland. The northern station became sucessful, however, the mother station came under pressure from rival pirate stations. Crawford and O Rahilly had been getting along with one another. The latter bought out the former's interest in Caroline.

The following year O Rahilly was in a Chelsea pub one day when Tom Lodge (1936-2012) walked in and promptly complained to the landlord about the B.B.C. Light Programme that was playing on a radio. O Rahilly hired him to be the programme director.¹ In order to distinguish the southern station from its competitors, he scrapped formatted programme and playing cutting-edge contemporary music. He hired as d.j.s Simon Dee, the Emperor Rosko, Dave Lee Travis, and Johnnie Walker (n Peter Dingley). The station's audience mushroomed so that soon it was larger than those of the B.B.C.'s other three radio stations combined. By the end of 1966 it was claimed that she had 23m listeners.

Location: 7 Chesterfield Gardens, W1J 5BQ. The London base of Radio Caroline. (red, orange)

47 Dean Street, W1D 5BE. Crawford's base for Radio Atlanta. (turquoise, brown)

¹. Lodge s paternal grandfather had been Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940). In 1894 the University of Oxford physicist had been the first person to transmit a radio signal between two buildings.

Radio City

Reg Calvert (d.1966) was a hairdresser-turned-rock n roll entrepreneur. He became one of the leading figures in the Midlands. In 1966 he set up the pirate station Radio City. This was based on Shivering Sands, a Second World War marine fort seven miles off Margaret. He formed a partnership with Oliver Smedley, who had been a director of Radio Caroline. The relationship between the two men broke down over a transmitter that Smedley installed on Shivering Sands. He shot Mr Calvert dead after the latter had called upon him to discuss the matter. Smedley was acquitted of murder on the grounds of self-defence. The incident prompted the Wilson government to pass Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967.

Radio London

Radio London refused to play Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne (1967) because they regarded it as being too smutty. The B.B.C. was happy to do so.

Radio London supplied most of Radio 1's first D.J.s.

Radio Normandy

Leonard Plugge was the entrepreneur who set up Radio Normandy, a pirate radio station, in the Normandy town of F camp. Its first D.J. was an English bank clerk who worked in Le Havre. The station proved successful and was only closed down by the outbreak of the Second World War. Its most last legacy was Desert Island Discs, which Roy Plomley (1914-1985) created while working for it.

Radio Luxembourg

In 1992 Radio Luxembourg closed its English-language service.

Location: 38 Hertford Street, W1J 7SG (red, grey)

Workplace

United Biscuits Network

In the late 1960s Hector Laing, the managing director of United Biscuits, appreciated that the company had a high turnover of workers. He concluded that the company benefit from reducing this. He was aware of both the way in which, during the Second World War, light music had been played to encourage factory workers to increase their output and the contemporary popularity of pirate radio. He decided to set up a closed-circuit radio station. Three state-of-the-art studios were constructed at the company's Osterley factory. D.J.s. were recruited via the Melody Maker weekly music newspaper. Initially, the station broadcast just to the company's Osterley and Harlesden factory.

Initially, workers were wary of the proposal. They thought that it might be continuous propaganda to promote the company. However, they soon embraced the station. Using telephone lines, the service was extended to the company's other factories.

The playlists included contemporary, old ones, new material, and South Asian songs. With the last, the d.j.s. did not understand the languages. As a result, initially they played the full records which included spoken material both at the beginnings and the ends. A listener pointed out that these were advertisements for products such as soap powders.

The canteen menus would be announced.

Between songs commercials were played. These were announcements that sought to promote safe working practices. With time, the D.J.s adapted these into songs and skits.

With time U.B.N. took to tailoring its playlists to individual factories; Liverpool was played more country music than its sisters.

Other manufacturers used U.B.N. as a model for their own in-house radio stations.

U.B.N. proved to be a means of the D.J.s lifting themselves from working in clubs and hospitals to public radio stations.

Some of the factories took to playing local public radio stations. The development of the personal stereo meant that individual workers could choose what they listened to. In 1979 U.B.N. was closed down.

Location: United Biscuits factory, Grant Way, Osterley, TW7 5QD. Sky now occupies the site.

See Also: BISCUITS United Biscuits

Website: www.unitedbiscuits.com

David Backhouse 2024