2 Day - Rewind

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 Nightride

0300 A Little Night Music

0400 Alan Dedicoat

0530 Chris Stuart

0730 Derek Jameson

0930 Ken Bruce

1100 Jimmy Young

1300 David Jacobs

1400 Gloria Hunniford

1530 Adrian Love

1700 John Dunn

1900 Wally Whyton

2100 Paul Jones

2200 Thirty Minutes’ Worth

2230 The Houghton Weavers

2300 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.

Last year’s 2Day was on 22 June 2011. The station seemed keen to have Zoe Ball do the promotion and she featured on the cover of the Radio Times alongside Chris Evans. This is Zoe on BBC1’s The One Show.

And last year I gave you Radio 2’s output for 3 April 1980 distilled into just 12 minutes.