Monday, 30 May 2011

BBC All Network Service

The Short Life of Radio 10

In my last post I recalled how the industrial action of the Association of Broadcasting Staff (ABS) delayed the implementation of 24-hour broadcasting on Radio 2. By December 1978 that action culminated in the brief merger of Radios 1,2,3 and 4 to form the All Network Service, or Radio 10 as it was informally known.

On Friday 22 December the ABS called an all out strike and from 4 p.m. the four national networks became one.  That evening’s schedule proved a fascinating mix of musical and broadcasting styles.



16:00 News Summary – Paddy O’Byrne
16:02 John Dunn including at 16:35 Story Time
17:50 Shipping Forecast with Charles Colville
17:55 Weather Forecast with Michael Shore
18:00 News Summary – Brian Perkins
18:02 Kid Jensen
20:00 News Summary – Jan Leeming
20:02 Cormac Rigby with Popular Classics
22:00 News Summary – Brian Perkins followed by Sports Desk
22:15 Bill Rennells including Shipping and Inshore Forecast with Charles Colville
02:00 News Summary – Cormac Rigby and then closedown

That same evening an agreement was reached, mediated with ACAS, and union members were granted a 12.5% pay rise. The networks returned to virtually normal broadcasting the next day apart from some minor disruption on Radio 4 such as Any Questions being replaced with a programme about Joyce Grenfell and the dropping of Kaleidoscope Encore.

In fact radio got off lightly as that week TV screens were blacked out as BBC 1 and BBC 2 went off the air from Wednesday 20 December. For a short while viewers in the Yorkshire TV region had no TV at all as YTV was also suffering from separate industrial action that shut the channel from the Monday of that week.
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1 comment:

  1. qxr9632 June 2011 at 19:14

    An Open University programme on 'the media construction of Christmas' or some such featured footage of Kid Jensen handing over to Jan Leeming on the emergency service, as well as a glimpse of a BBC2 strike caption. As for YTV's industrial relations, there's a blog post, indeed a modest book, there!

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