The magazine was launched in response to a temporary newspaper boycott of broadcast listings. In January 1923, the proprietors of Fleet Street \u2013 perceiving radio to be a threat to their business \u2013 had refused to publish details of the BBC\u2019s upcoming programmes unless it paid a hefty fee. The solution was to go it alone \u2013 though, to begin with, the BBC needed the help of a commercial printer.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | The history of the BBC<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The first edition, priced modestly at 2d for 36 pages of closely typeset text and a smattering of pictures, ran to a quarter of a million copies \u2013 and quickly sold out. Its central offer was a bald day-by-day list of output from the BBC\u2019s six stations in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow.<\/p>\n
![\"Children]( "\\"Children's")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Children watch a children\u2019s television programme, UK, c1964. (Photo by Evening Standard\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n The listings expanded in lockstep with broadcasting\u2019s wider evolution. In the 1930s, readers could enjoy a choice between the \u2018National\u2019 and \u2018Regional\u2019 Programmes, and the first output of experimental late-night television. During the Second World War<\/a>, the Forces Programme appeared. In the 1960s, BBC2 (now BBC Two) and local radio arrived. More recently, a plethora of satellite and digital channels were launched, competing since the 2000s with streaming services such as Netflix.<\/p>\n
The growth in column inches was not quite unceasing. Paper rationing during the Second World War meant drastic cuts \u2028in size and quality, not fully reversed until the 1960s. There were stripped-down issues for the 1947 fuel crisis, too, and none at all during later industrial disputes.<\/p>\n
There were also dramatic shifts in layout. When the BBC\u2019s first regular television service began in November 1936, and despite all the razzmatazz of the launch at Alexandra Palace, the magazine allocated just two back pages for its schedule. In 1953, television was integrated with the daily radio schedules. Then, in 1957, it leapt confidently on to the front pages \u2013 as clear a sign as any that Britain\u2019s \u2018television age\u2019 had arrived.<\/p>\n
Media rivals<\/h3>\n
By then, ITV had been running for two years, and the BBC no longer enjoyed a monopoly. Nor did Radio Times<\/em>: even in the 1930s, glossy rivals such as Radio Pictorial<\/em> appeared on the newsstands. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all came in 1991, with the deregulation of television listings. This allowed Radio Times<\/em> to feature the schedules of commercial rivals for the first time \u2013 but also, of course, allowed any other publication to feature the BBC\u2019s. Purely as a source of information about the week ahead, Radio Times<\/em> was increasingly redundant.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>A Radio Times cover shows the changing nature of its coverage of broadcasting. (Image by Radio Times)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Circulation figures, though, had always been impressive: 1 million in 1928, 3 million in 1939, and 8 million in 1950. For decades, Radio Times<\/em> remained Britain\u2019s biggest-selling weekly \u2013 an advertiser\u2019s dream and an editor\u2019s nightmare. Even before the war, Maurice Gorham, general editor from 1933 to 1941, grumbled that readers had to \u201cturn over 10 or 12 pages to get to one day\u2019s programmes\u201d. Those pages now offer a fascinating timeline of consumer life. A 1923 issue is stuffed full of adverts for the arcane paraphernalia of early wireless receivers; a 1945 edition offers a Ministry of Food sandwich recipe \u2013 \u201cChoose one-day old bread, and cut fairly thin\u201d \u2013 that drives home the grinding reality of postwar austerity.<\/p>\n
Snappier and peppier<\/h3>\n
In fact, Radio Times<\/em> was always going to be so much more than a printed programme schedule. Its four prewar editors \u2013 Leonard Crocombe, Walter Fuller, Eric Maschwitz and Maurice Gorham \u2013 were all cultured men with valuable connections in the arts and media, and commissioned the best writing and artwork they could afford.<\/p>\n
Articles typically came from BBC insiders who were leaders in their own fields, with graphic art supplied by renowned illustrators such as Arthur Watts, Frank Brangwyn and Austin Cooper. In May 1937, Christopher Nevinson \u2013 who\u2019d achieved great fame as a war artist \u2013 painted the cover for Radio Times<\/em>\u2019 \u2018Coronation Number\u2019; in November, Rex Whistler did the same for a \u2018Woman\u2019s Broadcasting Number\u2019. Such special editions culminated at the end of the autumn \u2018fireside\u2019 season with a lavish Christmas double issue, the creative and commercial highpoint of the Radio Times<\/em> year. By the end of the 1930s, Gorham boasted, it was \u201cthe most catholic illustrated paper in the country\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>The tide had turned in the war, and Britons awaited news of the opening of a second front in western Europe. But paper rationing persisted, and even now the Radio Times could not avoid its cover retaining a rather sombre feel. (Image by Radio Times)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Among its riches, the letters page performed a distinctive service. Lord John Reith, the BBC\u2019s first director-general, saw Radio Times<\/em> as \u201cthe connecting link\u201d between broadcasters and their audience, so publishing correspondence \u2013 even from the most disgruntled of listeners \u2013 would offer reminders of the harsh realities of public taste to those sequestered in the company\u2019s ivory tower. The very first issue printed a missive by \u2018P.J.\u2019 from Birmingham, complaining about the dreariness of talks programmes \u2013 lectures such as \u2018The Decrease of Malaria in Great Britain\u2019 or \u2018How to Become a Veterinary Surgeon\u2019. The BBC, \u2018P.J.\u2019 concluded, was for those who \u201cown expensive sets and pretend to appreciate and understand only highbrow music and educational \u2018sob stuff\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In May 1926, the magazine even published a mauling from the Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, accusing the BBC of causing \u201cpain and indignation\u201d across Britain through its lopsided reporting of the General Strike. \u2028\u201cI feel like asking the Postmaster-General for my licence fee back,\u201d she wrote menacingly.<\/p>\n
Over the long term, the trend was for snappier articles, more pictures, more celebrity puffs. By the 1970s, broadsheet newspapers were starting to vacuum up some of the best long-form feature writing with their rapidly expanding Sunday supplements, and every weekly publication had to adjust \u2013 as did broadcasters.<\/p>\n
In the 1970s, Radio 4 merged several much-venerated Home Service programmes into cheery catch-all series. A glance at the Radio Times<\/em> revealed that The Critics, which had once served up rarefied conversation in the classic \u2018talks\u2019 manner, would be replaced by Kaleidoscope. This programme took a breezier, more fragmented approach: a three-minute interview with Joan Baez, a short studio discussion about Picasso, musical excerpts from Diana Ross. The Times<\/em> labelled the trend \u201cmagazinismus\u201d, while the celebrated critic Richard Hoggart used the 1971 Reith Lectures to revive a theme he\u2019d introduced in his 1957 classic The Uses of Literacy<\/em>, bemoaning a media landscape in which \u201ceverything is interesting \u2013 as interesting as the next thing \u2013 if only it is short, unconnected and pepped-up\u201d.<\/p>\n
Editorial teams were encouraged to personify their target customer as \u2018the cabman\u2019s wife\u2019 <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Complaints about a steady dumbing down were, though, exaggerated. Radio Times<\/em> had always sought a mass-market appeal, with editorial teams of the 1920s and 30s encouraged to personify their target customer as \u2018the cabman\u2019s wife\u2019. Staff were told that this fictional everywoman would buy Radio Times<\/em> for its programme listings \u2013 but, as long as the writing avoided \u201cbeing highbrow\u201d, she might read the rest of the magazine, too. In fact, Radio Times\u2019<\/em> founding philosophy was clear: just as Reith\u2019s BBC operated on the principle of the maximum benefit to the maximum number, its house magazine embodied the belief that the more people who could be educated through reading its pages, the better.<\/p>\n
Changing times<\/h3>\n
Educated about what, though? About the world at large, naturally, but also \u2013 and above all \u2013 about broadcasting itself. Radio Times<\/em> \u2013 published since 2011 by Immediate Media, which also produces BBC History Magazine<\/em> \u2013 aimed to create a more discriminating audience: one that might better appreciate what the BBC\u2019s own programme-makers were trying to achieve.<\/p>\n
![\"The]( "\\"Radio")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>The Radio Times Christmas 2017 edition. (Image by Radio Times)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Over the past century, article after article has taken readers behind the scenes at the BBC. \u2018Both Sides of the Microphone\u2019, a regular column almost from the start, was the template for countless others featuring mildly propagandist gossip about programmes and personalities. In 1966, when pirate radio ships were the rage, an item entitled \u2018Why No Continuous Pop?\u2019 provided a lengthy exposition on the agonising \u2018needle-time\u2019 restrictions facing the corporation. Elsewhere, articles have explained everything from the art of radio drama to the challenges of filming wildlife in remote locations.<\/p>\n
This kind of output, part of the magazine\u2019s vast range of informed but accessible writing, has helped shape the public image of the BBC \u2013 indeed, the whole place of broadcasting in British life \u2013 for 100 years. For a modestly titled \u2018timetable\u2019, that\u2019s an important and dangerously underappreciated role. With the BBC under increased pressure, one suspects that Radio Times<\/em> \u2013 or something very much like it \u2013 will continue to be needed over the years ahead.<\/p>\n
The BBC has a searchable archive of previous editions of Radio Times<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
![\"Children](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/09\/GettyImages-1346749594-c09da8a.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Children's")
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\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>![\"The](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/09\/KR1GNY-40c1c2e.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Radio")
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