Introduction
Remember the 1970s with its dodgy fashions, three day weeks, hung parliaments, industrial unrest, droughts, and energy crises? It wasn't all gloom and doom however. There were great leaps in science and technology, some superb ground-breaking television programmes, and some great music. In the United Kingdom, lagging years behind the United States, the first commercial radio stations in the form of Independent Local Radio (ILR) were launched.
This website documents the early history of two such stations - Metro Radio and Radio Tees, both very much reflecting the social, technical and economic conditions of the decade.
So sit back, and enjoy some of the sights, sounds, and videos of a time when thanks to the Independent Broadcasting Authority, commercial radio had to be all things to all people... it rarely succeeded... but produced some great output - perhaps that's why so many people remember it!!
About the area...
The North East of England is the land of the three rivers - the Tyne, Wear and Tees, bordered by the Pennines to the west, the Cheviots and Scottish Borders to the north, the North Sea to the east, and the Vales of Pickering and York to the south.
The Tyne Bridge and the centre of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, taken from Gateshead (left) and the Transporter Bridge across the River Tees at Middlesbrough (right)
It is an area of contrasts - outstanding natural beauty in the North Pennine, Northumberland and North Yorkshire Moors, coupled with the major conurbations of Newcastle and Sunderland and Teesside.
Roseberry Topping in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park and symbol of the Cleveland Hills (left). Centrepiece of Durham City, the ancient cathedral (right).
The north east, like the commercial radio stations serving it has changed radically over the last 30 years since the first ILR stations opened. Largely gone has heavy industry such as iron and steel, coal mining, and chemical production. Its replacements include service industries, call centres, and tourism. Generally, affluence has increased, with many more people now owning their own houses, cars and shares compared to the 1970s. Many of the region's young people now successfully complete courses in higher education.
However, despite these changes and pockets of real affluence, it remains one of the most materially deprived areas in the United Kingdom. Yet many of its residents would say this fact is outweighed by a better quality of life, and that spectacular scenery!
About the webmasters
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Andy and his wife Gillian of northeastradio.co.uk
(photograph courtesy of the Hartlepool Mail)
Andy has worked for a regional newspaper company for the past 17 years, whilst Gillian has worked as a local primary school teacher, since 1984. Both still work in the Tees Valley, and both have been involved in radio in the past, hence their avid interest now!
What is Independent Local Radio?
The Sound Broadcasting Act, 1970 was introduced by Edward Heath's Conservative Government in response to growing demands for a deregulation of the radio market. This was in no small way due to the burgeoning number of pirate radio stations which continued broadcasting even after the previous Government had allowed the BBC to launch Radio 1 in 1967. Indeed, although commercial interests had entered the television broadcasting market in the early 1950s, there was still no commercial radio allowed to broadcast within the UK itself. Of course, many people had listened to Radio Luxembourg, broadcast from the nearby continent for years, and by the late 60s and early 70s many well-known presenters were broadcasting on "Luxy 208" including David "Kid" Jensen, Dave Christian, Bob Stewart and Tony Prince - to name but a few. For the listener, tuning in to such broadcasts was a labour of love - most of the North Sea pirates and Luxembourg itself could only be heard after darkness on medium wave, and reception was often poor. Even Radio 1 barely covered the UK - and was not granted its own VHF-FM sub-band.
It was within this context that the Sound Broadcasting Act envisaged ILR to be generally small-scale local radio, covering a particular city or sub-region. This was a compromise with the pirates who, like many industry pundits at the time, were expecting commercial licences to be granted on a national scale - something that would not occur for a further twenty years when Classic FM was launched.
The Independent Television Authority (ITA) was granted further powers under the Sound Broadcasting Act to set up the first tranche of ILR stations. Renamed the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) it was charged with setting up the first nineteen such stations, starting with Capital Radio and the London Broadcasting Company (LBC) in London in
autumn 1973. In the north east,
Metro Radio was launched in July, 1974 and Radio Tees in June, 1975.
Applications for the franchises had been advertised by the IBA, and each
successful group was allocated two frequencies for its station - one in the
medium wave band (as it was then called) and VHF (now FM). The same
programming was to be broadcast on each frequency, a practice to become known as
'simulcasting'. Each station was to be heavily regulated by the IBA in
terms of minority interest specialist programming, news, documentaries and
'needle time' for music.
By April, 1976, the first phase of ILR in the UK was complete, the last station
to open being Beacon Radio serving Wolverhampton and the Black Country.
By this time the UK was being administered by a Labour Government who appointed the Annan Committee to report into the future of broadcasting, which included the development of ILR. Expansion of ILR was thus placed on hold for a further five years, until the early 1980s, when a new radical Conservative Government, espousing free market policies was elected, headed, of course, by Margaret Thatcher. Under the Conservatives in the 1980s, the ILR network was allowed to grow at an ever increasing pace, with relaxation of regulation. After a couple of commercial stations such as Radio West in Bristol, and Centre Radio in Leicester failed, the Government's attitude to mergers and acquisitions relaxed substantially. All of this led to the very different commercial radio sector that we know today, with its hundreds of music genre-specific syndicated stations, largely in the control of big groups, broadcasting little local content apart from news opt-outs.
Using the 1970s definition, it is thus very difficult to argue that Independent Local Radio exists at all today.