Radio days.

Before the arrival of television, the most popular form of home entertainment was radio. Most homes had one of the old style valve radio sets that sat in the corner of the living room. The BBC news was listened to almost religiously in an era when BBC reporting standards were unchallenged. The two most listened to BBC channels of the era were the Light programme for entertainment and the Home Service for more serious fare. In the fifties there were an array of popular entertainment programmes such as 'Workers Playtime' and 'Housewives Choice and of course for us children there was 'Childrens Hour' and the request programme 'Childrens Choice' presented by 'Uncle mac'. There were also, of course the radio soaps, notably 'Mrs Dales Diary' and 'The Archers' the latter of which continues to this day. Another great favourite from that period was the science fiction serial 'Journey Into Space'.

Beyond the BBC the only other station of note was Radio Luxemburg which was a commercial station playing popular music of the day and some quiz shows. Luxemburg had a more open policy on popular music then did the BBC until the early sixties and it was there that many people got their first taste of emerging styles of music such as rythmn and blues and rock and roll.

As a child I can remember thinking that much of the BBC output was boring and tired and the existing Radio networks were swept away by first, the arrival of the pirate stations from the mid sixties and then the revamp of the existing BBC network in 1967. In Silverton reception of the pirate stations was very poor most of the time but I can remember listening to the closing programme of Radio London when the stations became illegal in 1967.

In an era of multi channel digital radio which can be received on TV as well as radio, its difficult to imagine a time when one or two networks had such dominence, or the later period when the competing pirate stations commanded such loyalties. Now, when youtube and the like mean that anyone can produce their own TV and radio output its increasingly difficult to remember the time when radio was king.