A New Chapter

On Saturday 30 September the BBC launched Radio 1. Charged with overseeing the transition from the Light Programme to Radio 1 and Radio 2 was Robin Scott. Ahead of the launch Scott wrote for the Corporation’s in-house magazine Ariel. In A New Chapter in Radio History he explains some of the programme schedules and name checks some of the departments responsible for getting and keeping the new services on air. 

The text of his article is reproduced below:

At 7 am on Saturday 30 September, Tony Blackburn seated in Radio Continuity 1 will switch 247 out of the Light Programme network and launch Radio 1 on its course with the first of his Monday to Saturday early Pop Shows. At 5.30 the same morning new transmitters will have come into service carrying 247 meters to cover 85 per cent of the country. The VHF network, previously linked to 247, will slave to Radio 2 on 1500 metres.

Tony Blackburn will be – technically speaking – steering his own programme, playing in the records, slotting in the ‘jingles’, ‘station idents’ and ‘promos’ on cassette.

‘Breakfast Special’

In Continuity 2, Paul Hollingdale, having carried both networks to 7 am, will guide Radio 2 over less frenetic waters to 8.30 am. He, Bruce Wyndham, Peter Latham, John Dunn, and Robin Boyle are experienced hands at running the shop on their own and have for many months been sustaining – and building – a large Breakfast Special audience with a blend of light and popular music scientifically prepared by Cyril Drake and his Popular Music Department team. The format of Breakfast Special will be adapted to provide greater contrast to the Pop on Radio 1.

At 8.30 both networks will join Junior Choice presented by Leslie Crowther but at 10 am they break away again as Keith Skues brings in Saturday Club on Radio 1 opposite Max Jaffa and the Radio Orchestra on Radio 2. At noon Keith hands over to Emperor Rosko and Max to a programme of Waltzing and Marching...

So much for the ‘pattern’ of the first few hours, which is typical of the new choice to be offered. Monday to Friday sees Jimmy Young on Radio 1 and 2 from 10 to 11 am – but opposite Radio 2’s Morning Story, The Dales and Melody on the Move presented by Jimmy Hanley from 11 to 12. Midday Spin is extended to sixty minutes and brings in Kenny Everett, Duncan Johnson, Stuart Henry, and a new BBC ‘staff-man discovery’, David Rider, to join Simon Dee. From 1 to 2 pm – as a contrast to the lunchtime Pop Shows – Radio 2 will be serving a varied bill of entertainment and music. Pete Brady is the afternoon Dee Jay on radio 1 – with a daily stint of two-and-a-half hours- Radio2 welcomes an earlier light-melodic Roundabout from 4.30 to 6.30 with Brian Matthew, followed by Sports News and Album Time – featuring the latest ‘middle-of-the-road’ LPs and EPs. Meanwhile, Radio 1 has kept tabs on the latest Pop discs and David Symonds has swung into the early evening Pop Show.

At 7.30 pm News-Time with Corbet Woodall as the Newscaster brings the tow networks together and they carry the same – but restyled – evening pattern of music and entertainment programme up to 10 pm. On Sundays and Wednesdays Radio 1 goes most of the way on its own with The Jazz Scene and Jazz Club.

Late Night Extra Monday to Friday nights fills the 10 to midnight slot (Radio 1 and 2). The programme produced by Light Entertainment reflects not only the best in Pop but also keeps a pulse on what’s new in the current scene. It is hosted by Pete Myers (from World Service), Barry Alldis, Terry Wogan, Bob Holness, and Mike Lennox. Saturday night finds Pete Murray at the helm and Sunday night reflects the best in Show Music.

Through to bedtime

At midnight after a new Midnight Newsroom a Light Programme team of announcers/presenters (Sean Kelly, Bruce Wyndham, Dwight Whylie, Roger Moffat) take the networks through to bedtime at 2 am.

A host of other new or extended programmes fill the weekend. Eric Robinson on Radio 2 competes with Ed Stewart on Radio 1 on Sunday mornings, both networks share a two-hour Family Favourites linking friends and relations not only in the Forces but throughout the UK and Commonwealth. Pete Drummond is principal Dee Jay for a three-hour Radio 1 show on Sunday afternoons. Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops spreads to 120 minutes from 5 to 7 pm followed by Mike Raven’s Rhythm and Blues Show on Radio 1 and Sing Something Simple on Radio 2. Such a catalogue of changes and innovations- which add up to a total of over fifty-three new hours of broadcasting and a grand Radio1 and 2 total of nearly 200 hours a week – cannot convey the style or ‘image’ of Radio 1. This will be fast-moving, fresh and ‘uncluttered’, with presenters handing over to each other –whilst Continuity continues on Radio 2. Both networks will share the same news summaries exactly slotted at the half-hours – a rigorous discipline which demands professional skill of Presentation Department headed by David Lloyd James with Mitch Raper, Presentation Editor for Radio 1 and 2, responsible for establishing the correct routines at programme junctions.

Philip Monson, Don Cummings, and their staffs on the Engineering side have been carrying through the modifications to Continuities, the provision of a new ‘spare’ Continuity, the extension of the 247 transmitter network (to name but a few of their tasks); Production Planning has been wrestling with new demands for studio space; the Popular Music, Gramophone, Light Entertainment, Light Music and Central Programme Operations Departments have faced up with enthusiasm to new tasks and new programme ideas.

Awaiting the reaction

No one expects miracles and certainly it would be rash not to expect some brickbats partly from those who want Pop throughout the twenty-four hours and partly from those who want a continuous programme of Sweet Music. The choices – governed by ‘needle-time’ and sheer economics- have been made. Our concern now is with success. After the first exciting – and no doubt very fraught – weeks we shall await the first listening figures with unusual interest. Between Ed Stewart and Eric Robinson, between Keith Skues and Max Jaffa, between Pete Drummond and The Clitheroe Kid, between David Symonds and Alan Dell, between Jimmy Young and The Dales- how will the audience break? It’s anybody’s guess.

But September the 30th will add quite a chapter to BBC Radio history.      

[Article ends]

From today’s perspective one can make a couple of observations. First is that the programme schedule is very messy and complicated with only four daytime Radio 1 DJs stripped across the week, something inherited from the pirate stations: Tony Blackburn at breakfast, Jimmy Young mid-mornings, Pete Brady in the afternoon and David Symonds at tea-time. Other than that both stations have the usual mishmash carried over from the Light where there are different programmes each day of varying lengths and where there are regular shows e.g. Breakfast Special or Late Night Extra, it’s a different presenter either each day or each week. This was what Scott referred to as a “fragmented planning pattern” in that year’s BBC Handbook. Presumably it encouraged the sale of the Radio Times to help listeners navigate their way round!       

The second thing you notice is how male-dominated it all is. The article doesn’t mention a single female presenter. Looking over the first week’s schedule the only woman broadcasting on Radio 1 is journalist Miranda Ward who reports for Scene and Heard (Saturday afternoons) whilst over on Radio 2 its Marjorie Anderson on Woman’s Hour.

Interesting too is his use of the term ‘newscaster’, a term most associated with ITN whereas the BBC uses ‘newsreader’.

Here's Robin Scott making the introductory announcement before 7am on Saturday 30 September 1967.

70 Years of Correspondence

“To be a foreign correspondent is to inhabit a world in which abroad is home, in which communications are lifeblood and in which ‘the story’ is elevated to the status of a god that must, at whatever cost, be treated with reverence and with constant attention to its capricious changes of mood or substance.” 

From Our Own Correspondent, always known in BBC-speak as FOOC, has been a fixture of the radio schedules for seven decades. It was first broadcast on the BBC Home Service on Sunday 25 September 1955 when announcer Colin Doran introduced as follows: "This is the BBC Home Service. From our own correspondent. We are broadcasting now the first of a new series of programmes in which BBC correspondents will deal with current affairs as seen from their own posts in various parts of the world," There followed reports from six BBC correspondents, three based in the States and three European-based. This actually represented nearly 50% of all the overseas correspondents the BBC employed at that time as there were only 13 of them. (1)

For many years the programme was introduced by staff announcers but since 1998 former foreign correspondent Kate Adie has been the regular presenter. FOOC is also heard on the World Service (2) and since 1990 has been produced separately from the domestic version with its own presenters. Again it was World Service announcers that introduced each edition, until about 2006 when broadcast journalists started to present it. More recent presenters have included Alan Johnston, Owen Bennett-Jones and, since 2012, Pascale Harter.   

Here’s a Radio 4 example of FOOC with announcer Laurie Macmillan presenting. This edition dates from Saturday 27 December and includes reports from Tim Sebastian in Warsaw, Philip Short in Peking (now Beijing), John Thorne in Johannesburg, David Willey (who would become the BBC’s longest-serving correspondent with over 40 years based in Italy) in Rome and Bob Jobbins (later the Head of the Arabic Service) in Cairo.

     

In my last blog post on FOOC, back in September 2015, I included a recording from 1985 when the programme marked its 30th anniversary. Now, ten years on I’m going back another five years to the 25th anniversary in 1980. This programme titled Foreign Correspondent was introduced by Ian McDougall. Ian had been a BBC foreign correspondent since 1949 initially posted to Paris but eventually filing more than 10,000 reports from 40 countries. From 1979 until his retirement in 1988 he was the editor and presenter of Radio 3’s current affairs programme Six Continents.   

In Foreign Correspondent Ian talks to, as the Radio Times billing reads, “some of those who were ‘in at the beginning’ about the excitements, the frustrations and the challenges of being a foreign correspondent for the BBC”. 

In an accompanying article (above) by Vivien Lipschitz there is mention of the early difficulties of filing reports, the changing nature of foreign reporting and the increasing demands for more and more reports – at this time most correspondents tended to work in either radio or television with bi-media reporting coming back in from the mid-90s.

Contributing to Foreign Correspondent are: Angus McDermid on communication problems, Ivor Jones recalls the Hungarian revolution, Christopher Serpell with tales of Cuba, Gerald Priestland recalls one of his dispatches been sent off in a beer bottle, Charles Wheeler who had a report tapped out in Morse code, Erik de Mauny on censorship in Russia, Anthony Lawrence, the first editor of FOOC when he was Foreign Duty Editor, on finally getting into China, Douglas Stuart on the aftermath of the JFK assassination and Kenneth Matthews, the BBC’s first ever foreign correspondent, on the start of FOOC. 

If this all sounds rather like a gentlemen’s club that’s because the BBC was still six years away from appointing Diana Goodman as their first female foreign correspondent who was based in Bonn. She would be joined just a few weeks later by Elizabeth Blunt to cover West Africa and in 1989 by Bridget Kendall who was posted to Moscow.

Foreign Correspondent was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 29 September 1980 and repeated on Saturday 4 October 1980.

 

To mark the 70^th anniversary of FOOC the BBC is recording a special programme at the Radio Theatre on 1 October for broadcast in December. Hosted by former BBC Middle East correspondent and Today presenter Anna Foster, the event will feature a panel of special guests including From Our Own Correspondent presenter Kate Adie and current senior BBC foreign correspondents.

Further listening

Here are a number of Radio 4 and World Service programmes that mark the 50th and 60th anniversaries of FOOC. 

The Archive Hour: Celebrating 50 Years of From Our Own Correspondent

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kh3y

Fifty Years of FOOC – The Americas with Bridget Kendall

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03js6p7

Fifty Years of FOOC – Middle East with Lyse Doucett

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03js6ps

Fifty Years of FOOC – Europe with Caroline Wyatt

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03js6q1

Fifty Years of FOOC – Asia with Mark Tully

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03js6pw

Fifty Years of FOOC – Africa with Mark Doyle

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03js6q6

From Our Own Correspondent: 60th Anniversary Special with Owen Bennett-Jones

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b069xbmd

Archive on 4: From Our Rome Correspondent (on David Willey)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01fhlqd

There are over 1,000 editions of FOOC on BBC Sounds on BBC Radio 4 and 2,000 on the BBC World Service page.

(1) This was the number of correspondents posted abroad for fixed terms and included a resident correspondent at the UN headquarters in New York. If a major foreign news story broke the BBC could also send other home based correspondents to the area.

(2) I can’t trace exactly when the World Service also started to carry the programme other than some time in the 1960s. When FOOC started in the 50s the General Overseas Service equivalent was called Special Despatch.