1943
During the 1939-45 War in Wakefield we didn't own a proper wireless (as radios were commonly called in those days) but we did have Radio Relay and this was the sole source of music in our house. Radio Relay should not really have been referred to as the 'wireless' because the service came to us on a landline which fed a very small loudspeaker. Nevertheless we, and everyone else who had it, did refer to it as the wireless. There were just two stations: the BBC Home Service and the BBC Forces' Programme, selected by a switch fixed to the wall adjacent to the loudspeaker. The Home Service, and its regional variants, in our case the North of England Home Service, kept that name for many years and eventually became what is now Radio 4.The Forces' Programme changed its name several times and after the war it became the Light Programme and later still Radio 2, as it is today. For most of the war these were the only two BBC radio stations widely available in the UK. When bored with the offerings of one of the services, people used to 'switch over to the other side to see what's on'. Switching over was literally what we did with Radio Relay, but even today many elderly people talk about 'seeing what's on the other side' when referring to the television, as though there were still only two stations.
For several hours of every day during the war both BBC domestic radio stations transmitted the same programme simultaneously, possibly as an economy measure but perhaps because of a shortage of material. At set hours they jointly relayed some English-language news broadcasts from either the BBC European Service or the BBC General Overseas Service. In between programmes a recording of Bow Bells was used as an interval signal, sometimes playing for several minutes on end. Even though some programmes ended early, the next programme always, without fail, started at exactly the scheduled time – an art the BBC seems to have lost nowadays. The identification signal for the European Service was a recording of four soft drum taps repeated over and over again. Many people reckoned this signal was based on the opening of Beethoven's 5th Symphony but more likely it was simply a representation of the Morse signal for V, which represented Victory and I doubt if Beethoven knew that! News broadcasts on the General Overseas Service were always preceded by an 18-second stirring, military band rendition of Lillibulero with lots of side drums. Even today Lillibulero is sometimes played before news broadcasts on the BBC World Service but in a much less militaristic arrangement, apparently to avoid giving the impression that Britain is still a nation with military aspirations. (Sadly from late 2005 the BBC World Service has started playing a much shorter version of Lillibulero – is nothing sacred??
The forerunner of BBC Radio 3
A new BBC station started up soon after the war. It was called, with typical BBC imagination, The BBC Third Programme. By the time it started broadcasting on 29 September 1946 our family had acquired a proper valve wireless. Remember how they took about 30 seconds 'to warm up'? The Third Programme was devoted mainly to classical music, highbrow drama, and erudite discussions about one thing or another. The Yorkshire Evening Post newspaper for many years referred to the BBC Third Programme as the Cultural Programme in its daily listings.
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