Radio Moments - Clips

Those of a certain age can recite the names of the UK's first 19 commercial stations, a little bit like you remember those useful lists one learnt at school.

Radio Victory was one of them, bouncing on air on the 14th October, 1975. Like so many of the first tranche, it attracted a healthy audience and much local love, not least for it striking the right chord when so many in its TSA were affected by the Falklands War. It also was a victim of the contagious strife so typical of those perilous early days in the UK's nascent commercial radio sector, not eased by its comparatively small TSA.

Its life was short, being one of very few stations sacrificed by the then regulator, the IBA. After its franchise was not renewed, it went off air on 28 June 1986, to be replaced by Ocean Sound, serving a larger area. Ocean has now become Heart.

Another fond look back to this week in radio history, for the week ending October 9th 2015, as heard at the end of the week's RadioTalk podcast from Radio Today

Radio London was not amongst the first tranche of experimental BBC locals, not coming on air until 1970.

The BBC local radio journey had been a complex one, not least in the Capital, where after the off-air trials in the early 60s, it was even felt that ‘borough stations’ rather than a London-wide one might be the right answer. That idea was to resurface again later in the station’s challenging life. Running a traditional local station in a big city was always to be hard work, as it proved too in Birmingham and Manchester. Maybe that’s one reason why the station has enjoyed so many different names, becoming variously Radio London, Radio London 206, GLR, LDN, London Live – and – in October 2015, as heard here, it returned to ‘Radio London’.