Radio Moments - Clips

It's not often that all commercial radio groups and stations unite. They did on Monday 17 January 2005 for 'UK Radio Aid', raising money for the victims of the Asian Tsunami.

All usual output was dropped in favour of a 12 hour show dedicated to the cause, live from Leicester Square with some regional opt outs. It was aired on 268 radio stations, including the national Classic and Virgin, amassing a potential audience of over 20 m.

Even at such short notice, the programming initiative, chaired by Emap's Mark Story, attracted a variety of names from within the radio industry and impressively beyond. Radio names included Zoe Ball, Mark Goodier, Simon Bates and the return, after his wilderness years, of Chris Evans. This broadcast was to be the toe in the water which helped speed his way to a suitable berth at Radio 2 later in the year. Other names to pitch in on the day included Jamie Cullum, Davina McCall, Frank Skinner, Liam Gallagher, Ricky Gervais, Bryan Adams, Jamelia, David Gray, Ronan Keating, David Walliams, Prince Andrew, Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Paul Weller recorded a version of Beatles classic, 'Come Together', as the theme for the day.

It's estimated the broadcast raised £3m.

Broadcasts to the World from the UK seem a fairly logical idea, but without the early persistence of John Reith, they may never have occurred quite to promptly. He steered and launched what was originally the BBC Empire Service in 1932, immediately realising its significance: "men and women, so cut off by the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them".

Its significance became clear to all as War approached. The Empire Service, later called the Overseas Service and now the World Service was originally funded by the BBC, later by the Foreign Office and now, again by the BBC itself.

As can be heard here, its first foreign language broadcast was in Arabic in January 1938, with Spanish and Portugese added a short time after.

Just a few of those names the radio world lost in 2014.

Christopher Chataway. Olympic runner, who established commercial radio as Minister for Posts and Telecommunications, later LBC chairman.

Derek Cooper. Host of Radio 4’s The Food Programme for 22 years

Jocelyn Hay. Tireless campaigner. Founded the Voice of the Listener, prompted by prospect of Radio 4 changes, later became Voice of Listener& Viewer.

Richard Attenborough. Actor and Director; and founding Chairman of Capital Radio

Casey Kasem. American broadcaster, host of American Top 40, syndicated around the World

Mike Smith. TV and Radio 1 personality. 5th breakfast show host, where he spent 2 years

Ian McIntyre. BBC radio producer, journalist and presenter. Radio 4 Controller of BBC Radio 4 from 1976 to 1978; BBC Radio 3 Controller 1978 and 1987

Trevor Fry. BBC Bristol, GWR, Radio West; Academy Award winner.

Charles Levitt. BBC Radio Humberside journalist of note

Pippa Harben. BBC World Service announcer

James Alexander Gordon – Famed for his classified football results

John Touhey. A familiar voice across the schedule on BBC World Service

Mark Whittaker World Service presenter

Luther Masingill. 92 year old US broadcaster, who’d been on the same station for 74 years

Betty Smith. Half of the much-loved and award-winning ‘Beryl & Betty’ on BBC Radio Humberside

Paul Vaughan. Radio 4’s 1st Kaleidoscope presenter; World Service broadcaster; reporter; Panorama reporter and narrator; and famous Orange voiceover

Mike ‘the Mouth’ Elliott. Actor, comedian and fondly-remembered phone-in host. Century Radio, Magic, Sun FM

Michael Ashbee BBC World Service. Had started at the BBC as an announcer in 1949.

It must be tough taking over from the guy who’s stuck a million on the audience, and whom the nation seems to adore. Tommy Vance had to, as he replaced Tony Blackburn and the chart got serious on 10th Jan 1982.

Here for the first time, meaningful music nuggets were injected into the music flow as the deep voice of TV assumed Sunday night BBC Top 40 duty.

Charts are much tougher than they seem; and anyone who’d ever done one will recognise first night nerves here. TV’s presentation is a tad faltering as he takes over the mammoth show, and he does what we’ve all done by mixing up a few numbers here and there and playing a jingle when he didn’t mean to. He did manage to squeeze in a phenomenal number of his own namechecks though. Tommy's tenure lasted two years, before handing the reins back to Simon Bates.

Fond blog: http://davidlloyd-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/and-heres-this-weeks-number-one.html

Radio seems a natural medium for the play, or maybe it doesn’t. The first to be commissioned especially for the wireless in Britain was ‘A Comedy of Danger’, aired in January 1924. The playwright was 23 year old Richard Hughes: “I was asked by the BBC, in January of 1924, to write a play for effect by sound only, in the same way that film plays are written for effect by sight only”. The production was set in the darkness of a coalmine, where listeners and characters alike were at the same disadvantage. Both could ‘see’ nothing.

Enjoy here a slice of that first production, and sadly slices are all that remain. It is followed by comment from Head of Programmes, Val Gielgud, who insisted, correctly, that radio demands a careful sort of writing; and a great deal of listener attention too. (Val was the elder brother of Sir John Gielgud) In this statement, and in other BBC publications from the time, great emphasis was placed on the importance of the listener paying attention to what is broadcast.

‘What’s happened?’. ‘The light have gone out’ were the key lines which launched the new art of radio theatre proper.

The play, which had originally been broadcast live, was remade and broadcast in February 2013. Richard Hughes died in his beloved Wales on April 28th 1976.

Some last shows are bitter, some professional. Some fail to mention the end, others allude to it obliquely.

On this final Tony Blackburn Top 40 on Sunday 27th December 1981, he covers off the issue at the front, and then again more fully, after Duran Duran ( maybe deliberately a nod to his infamous Durren Durren intro), when he cleverly implies the question: "why have management taken a presenter off an award-winning show which has grown its audience?".

Tony appears to be just in that irreverent 'sod you then' end of term mood, with a nice mention of the razor blade edit of Godley and Creme (he was right); but he proceeded with suspiciously undue haste after playing 'the lunatics have taken over the asylum' (Funboy 3).

Tony returned for his chart of the year the following week, before making way for Tommy Vance.

Thanks to Richard White for raw audio; and to JAM for assorted jingle packages on here.

A festive edition of the RadioMoments review. A fond look back to the Christmas week up to new year in radio history. It's a bit longer than usual. A veritable bumper edition. A little like the Radio Times. Mind you, that's quite another story http://davidlloyd-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/90-years-of-radio-times.html

Another fond look back to this week in radio history, for the week ending 19th December 2014.

4th March 2002

Each week, the Radio Today podcast features interviews and content from the world of radio at https://audioboom.com/channel/radiotoday

That concludes with a slice of audio memories from the radio week in history, as they invite me to assemble a weekly compendium of my daily #radiomoments tweets @davidlloydradio, with audio and narrative.

Here's just that #radiomoments weekly review on its own, for the week ending 12th December 2014, without the sensible interviews and discussion.