Iain Purdon wrote:Without Caroline we wouldn’t have had BBC Radio 1...
You make that sound like a good thing.
I firmly believe that BBC Radio was much better before the 1967 bonfire. The Third Programme survived reasonably intact, likewise the Home Service.
The Light Programme had been a generic light entertainment station and was not just there for presenters to chat, play records and develop the cult of their personalities. There was a lot of live music performed (and recorded), probably because of the need to avoid confrontation with the MU over needle-time agreements, but this petered out in the years following the change to Radio 1 and 2.
There was light and shade in the station's output. In effect, the Light Programme was like an audio-only version of a public service TV channel, where you'd never expect to see the same thing all day and all evening. When you only have airspace for a few channels, you can't have stations devoted to just one genre of music to the virtual exclusion of everything else and it is unreasonable for potential audiences to expect it. There is no hardship in being exposed to a wide range of (broadly) light music and even comedy and the daily drama of "Mrs Dale's Diary" (which was originally on the Light before being shifted to Radio Four).
It doesn't stop there. The establishment of Radio 1 led to parallel changes being made at Luxembourg, which followed the herd in moving away from structured programming towards meandering two-hour slots where the presenter was king - and which became nigh on unlistenable.
Is my distaste for the 1967 changes coming across?
And all this at the behest of the Wilson government which had a screw loose about commercial radio, even if it was coming - lawfully - from outside the territory of the UK (like Luxembourg, Manx Radio and Radio Eireann).
You hated commercial radio and wanted to stamp it out, Harold?
How did that turn out, then?
PS: RIP, Ronan, the Freddy Laker of the airwaves.