For those of you that don’t know, the BBC began its radio services in 1922. The BBC was initially licensed by the British Government through its General Post Office, which originally had control over the British airwaves as they were seen as an extension of the Post Office’s services.
The British Broadcasting Company became the British Broadcasting Corporation on the 31st of December in 1926, and they gained control of the airwaves from the General Post Office under the terms of a Royal Charter. John Reith, the first Director of the BBC set firm principles of all encompassing radio broadcasting and to this day the BBC follows his objective that radio is to “inform, educate and entertain” its listeners.

After World War 2 a European radio station, Radio Luxembourg was the only foreign radio station that carried on broadcasting to British shores and in its nightly broadcasts it featured American style entertainment and religion. Beginning in 1964, Britain became surrounded by a fleet of 10 offshore pirate radio stations, and as you would expect millions of people started tuning into these stations that were directed towards the youth of Britain and inevitably the BBC was beginning to lose its radio audience at an alarming rate. To counter this the British Government imposed the “Marine Offences Act” which eliminated all the offshore radio stations by midnight on the 14th of August 1967.
The BBC decided to copy one of the more popular offshore radio stations to try and bring back its listeners, and this was the birth of the four analogue channels that formed the base for the BBC to begin broadcasting on BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4. Another ploy to try and bring back some of their listening audience was to employ out of work broadcasting staff who had come from the offshore radio stations. Tony Blackburn, who was the man that presented the first BBC Radio One morning show after becoming very successful the same morning show on the offshore radio station, Radio Caroline, and when the BBC employed him they asked him to try and get the same sound he had on Radio Caroline for them.
The four analogue networks that the BBC have, weren’t always known simply as BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4. Initially on the 30th of September in 1967 BBC Radio 1 was rolled out as a part-time pop music station. BBC Radio 2 was originally named the BBC Light Programme, the BBC Third Programme and the BBC Radio Programme were combined and together were renamed BBC Radio 3 and finally, the BBC Home Service became BBC Radio 4.
BBC Radio 5 was launched in 1990 on the 27th of August as a home for sport and children’s programming, but was to be renamed and replaced on the 28th of March 1994 with BBC Radio Five Live and became a dedicated news and sport network.
With Digital Audio Broadcasting becoming much more of a popular way of listening to your radio and with it being pushed and pushed between 1995 and 2002, BBC Radio launched several new “digital-only” radio stations, 1Xtra, 6 Music, BBC 7 and the BBC Asian Network. The launch of 1Xtra and the BBC Asian Network were significant as these kinds of radio stations were few and far between at the time.
So you could say that there is an element of “ruggedness” about how the BBC established their first “pop-music” radio station by getting the people who were in essence breaking the law with their rise to fame in presenting the shows on the off-shore radio stations and presenting them as legitimate presenters for legitimate radio shows. One thing is for certain there is definitely a lot to thank the BBC for, for the way that our radio is presented to us today.