Time to rewind and hear the sound of BBC Radio 2 back in 1989.
In the week that the network shakes up its schedule as part of this Thursday’s 2Day here’s my own Radio 2 mash-up with a chance to enjoy Thursday 9 February 1989 condensed into 20 minutes.
That days programming went something like this:
0100 Bill Rennells with Nightride0300 A Little Night Music0400 Alan Dedicoat0530 Chris Stuart0730 Derek Jameson0930 Ken Bruce1100 Jimmy Young1300 David Jacobs1400 Gloria Hunniford1530 Adrian Love1700 John Dunn1900 Wally Whyton2100 Paul Jones2200 Thirty Minutes’ Worth2230 The Houghton Weavers2300 Brain Matthew with Round Midnight
And how different it sounds to today’s station. Under Head of Music Frances Line’s management Radio 2 had changed direction with a music policy aimed squarely at the over-40s and based on “melody, familiarity and excellence”. A year later Line issued the document BBC Radio 2:Into the Nineties stipulating that all daily sequence shows should include “film music, show tunes, accessible folk, country and jazz, strict tempo, popular classics, light music, Latin, brass and military bands, music of the Twenties, Thirties, Forties, Fifties and Sixties; opera and operetta. More strings and less thump!”
So listen out for snatches of music from the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Jo Stafford (no bad thing) whom you’d be hard pressed to hear during the week these days.
This year I’ve gone multimedia and posted the file on YouTube. OK, admittedly it’s not that exciting with added photos but it’s my first attempt. Incidentally John Dunn was sick on this day and taking his place was Charles Nove. For whatever reason I didn’t record Charles’s show.
And last year I gave you Radio 2’s output for 3 April 1980 distilled into just 12 minutes.
1 comment:
I like Deadly's reference to the Beach Boys as "a noisy lot". Thing is, compared to most of the other music played on Radio 2 at the time, they *were* ...
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