A CAPITAL IDEA

Derek Lamb listens back to 50 years of domestic commercial radio

- Derek Lamb

By the time commercial radio began in 1973, the UK had been listening to continental and offshore commercial stations for more than 40 years. The most popular and enduring source was Radio Luxembourg, which began an English service in 1933. Only during the war years were listeners denied a commercial alternative to the BBC.

Postwar, Luxembourg continued to secure large audiences, albeit in the evening only and using a famously unreliable signal on 208 metres medium wave. As teenage pop music gained in popularity from the later 1950s, Luxembourg concentrated on this material. The BBC's output of pop music was meagre, partly due to its limited allocation of "needle time", the amount of commercially recorded music that it could play.

Several entrepreneurs rightly anticipated a demand for pop music broadcast throughout the day. Ships moored in international waters could ignore the constraints on the BBC. Radio Caroline began in 1964 and, within weeks, its audience was bigger than that of all three BBC networks combined. At one point, there were 11 "pirate" radio stations broadcasting from offshore locations. Despite their enormous popularity, complaints of interference from legitimate European broadcasters on "stolen" wavelengths prompted their closure in 1967. Despite their bravado, both Caroline ships were seized by creditors and went off air in March 1968.

While Harold Wilson's Labour government was not interested in the demand for legitimate "free" radio, the Conservative opposition had a more favourable attitude. It had been a Conservative government that ended the BBC's television monopoly by allowing a commercial alternative in 1955.