Sunday 16 December 2018

Tune-in to 1978


Tracking down programme schedules for the original ILR stations is a bit of a hit and miss affair. They were never granted any column inches in the TV Times as the ITV contractors had little vested interest in the stations, though ATV, Granada and Scottish did have minority holdings in BRMB, Piccadilly and Clyde.

Local newspapers would carry listings and each station would often publish publicity leaflets or their own mini newspaper.  There was some coverage in the NME as I recall and between 1972 and 1975 we had the subscription-only Script "the magazine on alternative radio"  whose remit covered the offshore and land-based pirates as well as both commercial and BBC local radio. 

Re-titled Radio Guide in 1975, by 1976 it dealt exclusively with the ILR stations and later that year was published by Independent Television Publications, the association of ITV companies behind the TV Times.  As a stand-alone ITP magazine it was short-lived and in 1978 became part of the quarterly Tune-in (a TV Times Extra). In 1980 that too was dropped just on the point when the network of stations was expanding beyond the initial nineteen.

So what was on your local commercial station forty years ago? The Christmas edition of Tune-in features cover stars Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard. The Radio Guide, from Beacon to Victory, features dozens of familiar names though I reckon there's no more than a handful still regularly on-air.  













3 comments:

Charlieboy said...

Hi Andy. Just wondering if you received my email a couple of weeks ago?

Regards
Charlie

Robin Carmody said...

Worth noting in this context that the amount of ILR listings available online is steadily increasing as the British Newspaper Archive expands to include more 1970s, 1980s & 1990s material - just last week they added the Belfast Telegraph for the first couple of years of Downtown Radio, and during the course of this year they've added the Liverpool Echo for the first 25-odd years of Radio City, also with listings for Red Rose & Marcher, and the Newcastle Journal & Evening Chronicle for the first 20-odd years of Metro, also with listings for Tees and, later, the incremental Sun FM. These augment the Scottish listings available for free for some years via Google's Glasgow Herald archive.

Ian said...

Great tip off Robin, thanks.

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