Paphos People

IT STARTED WITH A THUNDERCLAP

The world famous BBC started broadcasting radio programs on October 18th 1922. It changed the way people heard the news, instantaneously instead of waiting for the papers the following day.
The BBC set very rigid standards for their programs and ruled the airwaves around the world. And so it was for the next two decades. King George V broadcast to the nation in their own living rooms on Christmas day 1932 and Neville Chamberlaine informed the nation live that we were at war with Germany on Sunday 3rd September 1939.
The BBC played an important part in wartime coded broadcasts to undercover agents all over the world.
After the end of the World War Two, all over the British Isles there was a euphoric atmosphere, people wanted to enjoy themselves after six years of hell and uncertainty.
The influence of American troops stationed in the UK, for the duration, carried on after they had gone home. Saturday night dances with loud swing music were extremely popular as people enjoyed the new freedom of social activity that had been denied for so many years.
Then in the mid fifties something new and very exciting happened. Rock and Roll crossed the Atlantic and took the youth of England to a new level. This was their music, hated by their parents, schoolteachers, and authorities in general. American Rock and Rollers came over to sell out concerts. They encountered complications at airports from immigration officers who were suspicious of the colourful unusual clothing and especially men with long hair!
Gradually British artists copied their idols and achieved great success Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury the list is endless. They were largely accepted by the English population because they were ‘our boys’ but the Rock and Roll revolution was held at bay by the most staid of all institutions The British Broadcasting Corporation!
The BBC was already reeling from the impact of ITV taking a huge chunk of the viewing audience with slick U.S. comedy and detective programs. Plus they had advertisements amusing thirty second stories which sold the product with a catchy little song which you found yourself singing all the next day. The general public took to the modern slick presentation.
The BBC bosses who were set in their ways of believing they were the best broadcasters in the world, which they were in the years before and during the war, resisted all this modern ‘yankee’ stuff. Burying their heads in the sand they carried on still producing the same old safe programs.
The Light Program was on the radio, ‘Housewives Choice’ was a request music show every morning, followed by ‘Mrs Dales Diary’ a radio soap opera where every character addressed each other by name so that the audience could identify who was speaking to whom. This was followed by lunchtime entertainment such as ‘Workers Playtime’, then ‘Woman’s Hour’ and who can forget listen with Mother. Again this was aimed at the middle aged audience. Prior to television the six o clock news on the radio was listened to by almost the entire population. What’s more it was delivered by a news reader dressed immaculately in full evening dress!

The only concession that they made towards ‘POP MUUSIC’ was every Sunday afternoon at five o clock, there was ‘Pick of the Pops’ the top twenty hosted by Alan Freeman, a gay Australian disc jockey.
Each record was allowed three minutes, which gave Freeman little time to comment and many songs were cut short to fit them all in. Record companies had to make sure that their records complied with the rules of the BBC if they wanted them played.

Then in the midst of the swinging sixties, when British bands and singers ruled the pop music world, a rebellion was started with the literal launch of ‘Radio Caroline’ a ship which was moored outside territorial waters. Based in Holland she broadcast pop music nonstop twenty four hours a day. It was quickly followed by a plethora of ships moored all around the country broadcasting music that the sixties generation wanted, a huge audience that the BBC simply did not acknowledge the existence of - or provide for.
The BBC was apoplectic the youth were daring to challenge what was traditionally the official and only means of communication in the UK with POP MUSIC!
They asked the Wilson led Labour government to introduce laws to outlaw these pirates which they did, despite massive opposition from the youth culture, backed by the record industry and of course the pirate radio companies. Finally after two years of arguments the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act was passed by Parliament and a deadline date for the closure was set on the fourteenth of August 1967. Most of the pirates obeyed the law and came ashore but a few carried on and risked arrest if they came back to the UK.

The stuffed shirts at the BBC realised that there was a huge audience out there who wanted what the pirates were providing. So they announced a radical change in the format of radio in the country.
Radio 1 was proposed basically taking the place of the pirates.
Radio 2 was to be the replacement of the Light Program
Radio 3 was to be the classical music station
Radio 4 was to be the news and current affairs department.

They hired the cream of the pirate ship DJs to launch the new and youth orientated Radio 1.

So on Saturday September 30th 1967 at 0700 hours Radio One opened up with ex Radio Caroline DJ Tony Blackburn playing ‘Flowers in the rain’ by The Move. If you listen to the song it starts with a thunderclap! That was the moment that the BBC was dragged into modern times, shrieking and howling in protest.

Since that date the BBC changed their whole approach to entertainment with ground breaking comedy TV programming such as ‘Monty Pythons Flying Circus’. The Python crew were all university graduates as were many of the new comedians that launched themselves via the ‘new’ BBC.

Now after one hundred years of broadcasting to the world and being the most respected news agency the beloved ‘Aunty Beeb’ moves forward fighting off all the challenges from those advertising funded commercial Radio and Television interlopers. But for how much longer already people are asking why they have to pay a licence which goes totally to the BBC, when they don’t even listen or watch it.

Because it is a British institution - that’s why.