Radio 1

   Radio 1 is the BBC’s main popular music station for younger audiences, continuously influential and much talked about. The station was launched by the BBC in 1967, following a period of intensive activity by pirate radio stations broadcasting pop music from off-shore. The popularity of these stations and the BBC’s resistance caused renewed debate (echoing the introduction of commercial television) about standards, tastes and consumers’ rights. The Labour government outlawed the stations under the Marine Offences Act of that year and encouraged the BBC, against its institutional traditions and instincts, to establish a specialist youth pop music station alongside Radios 2, 3 and 4. Radio 1 quickly won a large audience share and a generation grew up with its music and presenters, often listening in bedrooms or workplaces on the new, cheaper portable radios. The weekend top 20 chart countdown became a national institution. Many of the station’s disc jockeys established fame in their own right, achieving a relaxed, informal relationship (casual, chatty and cheeky, though until recently mainly masculine) with their listeners. Others, of whom John Peel has been the most enduring and distinctive, developed their own eclectic musical tastes on air. Radio 1’s DJs have often gone on to appear on the other BBC radio stations (such as Tony Blackburn on Radio 2, Paul Gambaccini on Radio 3 and Andy Kershaw on Radio 4).

   In the 1980s, during discussion about the restructuring of broadcasting, Radio 1 faced possible privatization. Subsequently, in the 1990s new commercial stations have developed in keen competition, with continuous press coverage of the varying audience shares obtained by Radio 1 and its main rivals such as Virgin 1215. Controversy has been fostered by the main breakfast time presenters, with some switching between stations. Radio 1 makes considerable use of computergenerated playlists tracking successful chart records, but at other times presenters’ musical choices are more ambitious. A significant amount of live music and pre-release new music is broadcast, including music by new bands.

   Despite competition and a certain loss of listeners to Radio 2 and elsewhere as they grow older and find the station’s music and style too young for them, Radio 1 covers a wider range of contemporary music, playing more titles each week than other stations. It attracts weekly almost half the population in the 15–24 age range, and retains a key place in British culture and musical life.

   See also: commercial radio, national; local radio; Radio 2; Radio 3; Radio 4; Radio 5; radio DJs

   Further reading

    Barnard, S. (1989) On the Radio: Music Radio in Britain, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    —— (1997) ‘Postscript’, in T.O’Sullivan and Y. Jewkes (eds), The Media Studies Reader, London: Edward Arnold.

   MICHAEL GREEN