BBC Genome Blog Feed

Sunday Post: The Radiophonic Workshop

2016-03-06T10:00:00+00:00

Radiophonic Workshop composers used various instruments and objects to create sounds

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop created music and sound effects for radio and television programmes for 40 years from 1958-98, including the iconic Doctor Who theme. Composer and Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres tells us about its history and how it operated - and why it is still significant today.

When and why was the Radiophonic Workshop set up?

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was formally opened on 1st April 1958. At least, that’s the legend! It grew out of a desire by the Third Programme (now Radio 3) to use the new electronic music techniques coming out of mainland Europe to enhance - in the main - its drama output. Producers Douglas Cleverdon and Donald McWhinnie were taking radio drama into more adventurous areas with works written specifically for the medium by playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Giles Cooper and Frederick Bradnum.

This was a different emphasis than on the continent: the French and German studios, where the likes of Pierre Henry and Karlheinz Stockhausen were building facilities to produce ‘art music’ exclusively. The Radiophonic Workshop specialised in what one might call ‘applied sound’, rather than electronic music. It’s this different approach that makes the Workshop unique and so fascinating.

Who were the prominent early figures?

It was founded by two studio managers from Broadcasting House, Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe, who had worked on early pre-Radiophonic. Daphne was immediately frustrated, as she wanted a European-style studio, so she left the BBC soon afterwards to set up on her own in an oast house in Kent. Desmond was joined by engineers Dick Mills and Richard 'Dickie' Bird. Within a few short years the staff included a roster of legendary names such as Brian Hodgson, Delia Derbyshire, John Baker and David Cain.

RW made incidental music for many Doctor Who outings, including The Keeper of Traken

What were the musical influences?

The European Avante Garde and impressionists. In John Baker’s case, the Jazz Greats. For David Cain, medieval and renaissance music. For Delia - well, she was more influenced by sound and texture. She was very young in Coventry during the early days of the war and well-remembered the sounds of German bombing runs on the city. She spent much of her life creating beautiful sounds as an antidote to the horrific ones.

What sort of programmes used the Workshop? Were there advantages to an in-house service?

In the early days, experimental drama. Then freelance composers began to realise that the Workshop offered something original that they could add to their work, so the rhythmic editing of steam train sounds provided the percussion track to Ron Grainer’s theme for documentary film Giants of Steam (predating Doctor Who).

Later, science fiction such as Out of the Unknown and even thrillers like Vendetta. But their largest clients, by far, were the educational departments for both radio and television. Radiophonic abstraction was just the thing for firing children’s imagination and illustrating mathematical games. Look and Read on television harnessed both Radiophonic sound design, and the composing and songwriting talents of Paddy Kingsland and Roger Limb. Certainly, producers were encouraged to use the Workshop - it was in-house and therefore, in effect free.

How did things develop during the 60s with advances in technology?

Slowly! Synthesisers didn’t begin to arrive until the very end of the decade. The Workshop relied on various electronic organs, the ubiquitous test oscillators, and ingenious filters and switchers plus the ever-clever use of ‘found sounds’.

Elizabeth Parker, shown in 1985, was the last remaining composer before the Workshop's demise

Radiophonic Workshop is often associated in people’s minds with Dr Who – to what extent did it dominate and even overshadow other work?

Doctor Who was a fraction of their overall output, but their biggest single client other than (as a whole) education. There are a few hundred Doctor Who tapes in the archive including 243 reels of sound effects! It certainly overshadows their other work, but in a good way. It became their calling card. Ironically, Doctor Who started soon after Desmond Briscoe had declined to take on any more work for The Goon Show, fearing that Spike Milligan’s anarchic comedic demands would take over.

There were big changes in personnel and leadership in the early 70s – what form did they take and what was their effect?

Brian Hodgson left, along with Delia Derbyshire, John Baker and David Cain. The old tape techniques were being superseded by the coming of the synthesiser and the department was becoming more of a music studio and less of a sound factory. More commercially-minded composers such as Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb and Peter Howell joined. Brian returned a few years later as Desmond took a back seat and eventually retired.

How did the RW co-operate with outside composers?

One of the earliest collaborations was with Ron Grainer on Giants of Steam and Doctor Who. Later Doctor Who composers including Dudley Simpson and Geoffrey Burgon realised that taking their recordings to the Workshop for treatment added something that could not be obtained elsewhere - and cheaply, too. Even Richard Rodney Bennett mixed his Doctor Who music (The Aztecs) at the Workshop, following a successful 1962 collaboration on radio play The Long Distance Piano Player.

What technological changes affected the Workshop from the 70s into the 80s?

The coming of the synthesiser in the early 1970s - initially in the forms of EMS devices the VCS3 and the enormous Synthi 100 - killed the old techniques stone dead. Tape manipulation was no longer cost effective when there was now a machine that promised to be able to create any sound at the turn of a knob.

But the new ‘voltage control’ devices were inherently unstable and rather difficult to use. Digital control, which started to appear at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s, was far more convenient and easier to use. Sounds could now be saved and accurately recalled. The new ‘sampling’ machines (spearheaded by the expensive Fairlight CMI) soon provided a digital way to replicate the early tape experiments far more quickly, so once again ‘real’ sounds started to find a home amongst the synthetic.

With electronic music in the charts so much in the 80s, was there a feeling the RW was now more mainstream or was it being left behind?

Electronic music took off massively as the synthesiser became cheaper. But the Workshop did not rest on its laurels. Brian Hodgson won considerable investment to modernise the studios in the mid-1980s with the latest equipment. It grew to become home to six full-time composers each with their own room and, according to Yamaha UK's Marketing Director at one point, was “the most up-to-date MIDI studio in the world”. It was some time later that the wide availability of the technology finally contributed to the Workshop’s downfall.

The Workshop shown during its formative days in 1958

Who were the prominent figures in the second half of the Workshop’s existence, in the 70s onwards?

Paddy, Roger, Peter, Elizabeth Parker and Jonathan Gibbs. In the last few years, Richard Attree was the final composer to join, but Elizabeth was the last to leave, with the remains of the department being dismantled around her.

How did the closure of the Workshop come about?

John Birt introduced a scheme called Producer Choice which was supposed to make the BBC more accountable and more cost-effective. It meant that every department had to put a price on its services and, if a producer could find a service cheaper outside the BBC, they were encouraged to use it. But it was a false economy. If a producer used an in-house department, the money stayed within the BBC. If they went outside, the money did too. And the Radiophonic Workshop, having to factor in the canteen, the commissionaires and the pension schemes, could never compete on cost terms with freelance composers with similar equipment in their spare bedrooms - and that included me. Eventually, the Workshop had to close.

What is the role of the RW archivist now?

It’s a hobby role. Other than a relatively small payment at the very start, I’m not paid to do it, but I’ve labelled all the tapes and built a database, and stood in front of the bulldozers a few times! I’ve released a few CDs of Radiophonic Workshop music, enabled others, and mastered many audiobooks and DVDs that have used the contents of the library for surround sound remixes and so on.

I’ve started a digitisation programme but it needs a lot of investment to do it properly. It’s nearly 4,000 analogue tapes and they won’t last for ever. The national sound archive reckon we have about 10 years to save all this material - either it will have disintegrated beyond saving, or the equipment to reliably play it will no longer exist. I have a lovely old ex-BBC Studer A80 which is built like a tank, but even that gets harder to maintain. It does worry me.

How do you see the place of the Workshop in the history of music, broadcasting and as a cultural influence?

It’s enormously influential in all these respects. Certainly, people of my generation and younger grew up listening to this work in our playgrounds and classrooms. It’s part of our DNA. It encouraged and inspired musicians from The Beatles and Pink Floyd through to Orbital, Aphex Twin and Labrinth. Delia Derbyshire has become a feminist icon and has given her name to a charity that encourages the involvement of young women in music. It’s massively important. And there is so much more in the archive that I’d love you all to hear one day.

Were you enthralled by the work of the Radiophonic Workshop? Do you think it should be saved for the nation? Let us know your thoughts in the space below.

The Sunday Post: Juke Box Jury

2015-12-13T10:00:00+00:00

Host David Jacobs dings the bell for the next disc

The format of Juke Box Jury doesn’t sound very enticing to modern ears.

New records played to a panel of four celebrities (who were not necessarily at the younger end of the age spectrum) who then gave their opinions of them, and at the end of each round voted whether they thought the disc would be a ‘hit’ or a ‘miss’.

There were no videos, not even any live performances, and only occasional personal appearances by the artists concerned. And yet it was a highly popular show for most of its original eight-year run from 1959 to 1967.

As with a large number of successful quiz and panel show formats, Juke Box Jury was an American concept. Devised and hosted by the disc jockey Peter Potter, Jukebox Jury began in Los Angeles only in 1948, before having a network run in 1953-4. The original version was a broader format than the BBC version, with more panellists per show, and features other than record reviews.

The BBC saw a recording of one of the shows and made their own untransmitted pilot version to try it out in early 1959. This was deemed successful enough to be commissioned as a series, so the BBC negotiated to be allowed to make the programme in its own way, without interference – although Potter was always credited with devising it. A deal was struck and the first programme was transmitted live on Monday 1 June 1959 at 7.30 pm.

BBC Light Programme disc jockey (and occasional actor) David Jacobs was hired as compere, and the first panel consisted of his colleague Pete Murray, singers Alma Cogan and Gary Miller, and ‘typical teenager’, Susan Stranks (who went on to present ITV children’s magazine series Magpie from 1968 to 1974). Jacobs did not feel the show had gone well, but BBC management thought otherwise.

A very British panel, 6 June 1964

The eight records played on the first programme included Personality by Anthony Newley (followed by another version of the same song by Lloyd Price and his Orchestra), Say One for Me by Bing Crosby and More, More, More Romancing by Jo Shelton.

The series’ original theme tune was Juke Box Fury by Ossie Warlock and the Wizards, but following a dispute with producer Russell Turner, it was replaced by Hit and Miss from the John Barry Seven. This record was actually reviewed on the 6 February 1960 show, then adopted as the theme from the next edition.

The first shows were all broadcast live, but eventually one live and one videotaped show made on the same day became the norm. It was a relatively simple show which needed little rehearsal and this made good use of studio time.

Some shows were missed in the early months, as when Jacobs hosted the ‘Star’ Ballroom Championships. Given the show’s popularity and chances it would fall prey to the schedules, from from 5 September 1959 Juke Box Jury moved to Saturdays, which would be its regular day until late 1967.

Even when pre-recorded the videotapes of Juke Box Jury were not kept for long after they were shown, partly because they were topical and were seen as having little use afterwards, and because tapes were expensive, and the fact that they could be reused was part of their advantage over filming. There was no market for foreign sales of the series, and no prospect of a domestic repeat. The only two complete examples of the show from its original run were some of the occasional editions recorded onto 35mm film telerecording, namely the editions from 29 October and 12 November 1960.

Scandal and controversy

Very little information about the shows overall has survived, other than documentation about who appeared and what records were played – and even at the time information was basic. In a 1966 edition Anthony Booth made remarks critical of the release of a particular Roy Orbison record when Orbison had recently suffered a personal tragedy, and Jacobs concurred. But the BBC was unable to supply a transcript of the programme to the record company when requested to, as the show had been live, unscripted, and no precise notes were made of what had been said.

The fact that so few editions remain from the series means that it is left to the imagination how the wide range of music and showbusiness personalities who featured as panellists came over. There is some evidence from reactions in correspondence and editions of Points of View, such as the fact that one appearance by American comedian Stubby Kaye was criticised, not for his opinions, but for the fact that he chewed bubble gum during the show.

The series attracted an eclectic range of celebrity panellists from Sean Connery and Peter Sellers to US film star Jayne Mansfield and music producer Phil Spector. More parochial talents such as Thora Hird and Twiggy also graced the line-ups. Though many were of the young generation of actors and musicians, there was always a balance between them and older opinions – sometimes the combination of personalities was odd to the point of surrealism.

Occasional editions had a themed panel, for example when Tonight team Cliff Michelmore, Derek Hart, Fyfe Robertson and Kenneth Allsop appeared in August 1961. After the episode which featured the Beatles, other groups sometimes formed the panel, including the Rolling Stones - the only time there was a fifth desk. One early edition had a non-celebrity panel, consisting of teenage students from the American Dependant High School, Bushy Park, but apart from them and Susan Stranks, the only element of the non-celebrity world was the introduction of voters chosen from the audience, who decided if the panel didn’t achieve a majority verdict.

From 1961 there was the innovation of the Hot Seat, where one of the artists whose records had been reviewed would be interviewed, one the first of these being Spike Milligan. His record was Sideways Through the Sewers of the Strand, though it is hard to imagine that the discussion stayed on the subject in hand for long, given Milligan’s propensity for anarchy.

Fluff goes in a new direction...

Another attempt to pep up the format of the show was trialled on 3 December 1966, which was to have a panel consisting of the four disc jockeys – Pete Murray, Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman and Simon Dee. This line-up became standard for eight weeks in early 1967, but although at first there was a slight rise in viewing figures, BBC management was not keen on the idea and it was soon dropped, although DJs continued to featured frequently, including new faces like Kenny Everett and John Peel.

Towards the middle of 1967 it was beginning to be felt that the programme had run its course. With the start of Radio 1, there was a lot more coverage of pop music on the BBC than there had been the case in 1959, and there were many more television programmes featuring it than previously. The cost of the rights to the show no longer seemed to be justified, and it was felt it was time for a change.

In the last few months production of the programme was moved from London to Manchester, perhaps an odd decision given that its days were numbered. But facilities there were not as good as in the capital and simple things like using zoom lenses and superimposing captions became more difficult.

Revived 45s

A replacement programme was sought, and finally it was decided that Manchester would produce a new show starring Alan Freeman from the start of 1968. Juke Box Jury had been moved to Wednesdays in September 1967 as part of a rejig of the Saturday schedule when Simon Dee’s chat show was promoted to that day. The final edition of the original BBC Juke Box Jury went out a few days before the end of 1967, and featured two of the panellists from the first show - Pete Murray and Susan Stranks - with frequent guests Eric Sykes and Lulu making up the numbers.

The records on this edition were Honey Chile by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas; Lantern Light by Peter and the Wolves; Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt by Billy Fury; I Can Take or Leave Your Loving by Herman’s Hermits; Mr Second Class by the Spencer Davis Group; For Your Information by The Cedars; and Don’t Change It by Ferns Brass Foundry. The ‘Hot Seat’ guest was Spencer Davis.

The new Alan Freeman show would be in an early Friday evening slot between the antiques show Going for a Song and soap opera The Newcomers. It promised ‘a look at the latest pop releases with artists live and on film, plus comment and opinion on the pop music scene’. All Systems Freeman only ran for 12 editions in total, and Freeman returned to radio.

We had not seen the last of Juke Box Jury, as it was revived in 1979 and 1989-90 (following a one-off revival by Arena in March 1989 as part of a night celebrating the centenary of the jukebox).

For all the apparent limitations of the programme, in its heyday Juke Box Jury gathered more than respectable audiences, and at a time when the generation gap seemed to be constantly widening, it helped to bring them a little closer as the disparate panel members weighed up the varied music of the era.

Do you think Juke Box Jury is a classic programme? Which music programmes that succeeded it have caught your eye? Let us know your thoughts in the space below.

Sunday Post: The Rock 'n' Roll Years

2015-09-13T09:00:00+00:00

Pop music panel game Juke Box Jury was presided over by David Jacobs

I was on a suburban London railway platform the other day and thought I recognised one of the other people waiting for a train: I did, it was the actor Trevor Peacock, now best known for his appearances in The Vicar of Dibley. He has had a long career as an actor, and before that as a songwriter, and before that as a scriptwriter, for, among other things, the pioneering BBC pop show Six-Five Special.

Six-Five Special was one of the programmes brought in when the BBC ended its ‘Toddlers’ Truce’, when television closed down from around 6pm to 7pm, supposedly in order for parents to be able to put their children to bed. The ITV companies, who were obliged to have the same break by the Independent Television Authority, had objected as they were losing potential revenue, though the BBC actually saved money by not having to fill that time.

When the practice was abolished, on weekdays the BBC had the popular light current affairs series Tonight. On Saturdays it decided to present a show to appeal to the burgeoning teenage market. As it was to transmit at five past six, following the 6pm news, it was called Six-Five Special, and in line with the railway imagery the title sequence showed a steam train travelling at speed, with the signature tune performed by resident band, Don Lang and his Frantic Five. The hosts were Jo Douglas (who also co-produced) and Pete Murray.

The BBC had wanted a magazine programme that would feature topics other than music, so there were celebrity guests and a sports section presented by boxer Freddie Mills. But producer Jack Good knew that it was the music content that attracted his audience. After a year Good became disenchanted with the struggle to get his way and defected to ITV, where he started Oh Boy!. Six-Five Special carried on, but was eventually dropped when ratings struggled, in December 1958. (Quirky note, there was a special edition in the early hours of January 1st, 1958, called Twelve-Five Special, broadcast from a restaurant overlooking London Airport.)

Six-Five Special was of course not the first BBC programme that took an interest in popular music - it had been a feature of broadcasting both in sound and vision since the start of the two media. However it was perhaps the first show aimed at young people with music at the centre of its content. Other shows featured pop acts, including rock and roll – one long-running television show of the 50s was Off the Record presented by former bandleader Jack Payne, which included performances by many music acts of the time, including Buddy Holly and the Crickets, in the last episode of the show, in March 1958.

Legs and Co were one of the dance troupes who filled in the gaps on Top of the Pops

Rock and roll and other pop music was to gain another outlet in April 1959, when a new show Drumbeat was launched. This featured a regular roster of acts, including Bob Miller and the Millermen, and the John Barry Seven, as well as frequent appearances by Adam Faith, Vince Eager and other early British rock and rollers. Having made appearances in sketches in Six-Five Special as well as scripting it, Trevor Peacock became the presenter of Drumbeat after the first few episodes (the original host was Gus Goodwin). The show only lasted one series, finishing in August 1959.

In the meantime though, another much longer-running show had begun, based on a US format, the record review show Juke Box Jury. Presented by DJ David Jacobs, this ran from June 1959 until December 1967, with revivals in 1979 (with Noel Edmonds) and 1989-90 (with Jools Holland). The format was simple, a panel of four celebrities listened to newly released records and gave their opinions whether they would be a hit or a ‘miss’.

With no live performances, and only occasional personal appearances by the artists who made the records, it’s hard to understand the appeal other than the scarcity of pop music on television or radio at the time. The panel was not particularly young and trendy, though there was initially a ‘typical teenager’, one Susan Stranks, later to present the ITV children’s show Magpie. Pop artists would often be at least one of the line-up, but the majority seemed to be fairly middle-aged entertainers or ‘personalities’. There was the occasional attempt to be more relevant, as with special shows featuring groups, famously the Beatles on 7th December 1963, the same night as the BBC broadcast a concert of theirs from Liverpool. Later the Rolling Stones and one or two other bands repeated the trick (the Stones’ appearance being the only occasion where there were five panellists instead of four).

Towards the end of its initial run, DJs such as Pete Murray and Alan Freeman having been frequent guest panellists over the years, it was decided to have all-DJ panels for a while, but this too was dropped after a few months. The final edition on 27th December 1967 had Pete Murray and Susan Stranks (both of whom were in the first edition) along with Lulu and Eric Sykes.

Flagship of pop coverage

With the resurgence on interest in home grown rock and ‘beat’ music in the early 60s, the BBC decided to try its luck with a new regular programme featuring pop music, this time based on records that were making their way up the singles charts. With pop music on BBC radio still confined to a few shows on the Light Programme, this was to be a major new attraction – albeit a belated reaction to ITV shows Thank Your Lucky Stars which started in 1961, and Ready Steady Go which began in 1963.

Debuting on 1st January 1964, and initially broadcast from the BBC’s Manchester studio (a converted church in Dickenson Road), it was entitled Top of the Pops, and would become the flagship of BBC pop coverage. Lasting until 2006 in its regular format, with only Christmas specials, spin-offs like Top of the Pops 2 and archive repeats since, TOTP was a winning formula, especially in the first few decades of its existence, with live performances predominating - live in the sense of the artists being in the studio, only occasionally were they not miming to pre-recorded tracks.

For many years these were supposed to be specially recorded, but given the difficulty of replicating the carefully crafted sound of the original record, it is believed that this was not always adhered to. Over the years the amount of live performances decreased – even in the early years, acts like the Beatles (who only appeared in the TOTP studio once, to promote Paperback Writer/Rain in 1966) would be represented by film (either stock shots or specially made promos) or videotaped performances, as their schedules prevented them from making the studio recordings. In the early 70s some acts who could not turn up in person had their records ‘interpreted’ by specially made film clips. One or two acts also thought it beneath them to appear, and some records were banned by the BBC as not being suitable for a family audience.

By far the best-known replacement for artists though was having the show’s resident dance troupe perform a routine to accompany a song. The first of these was The Go-Jos, who were succeeded in 1968 by the most famous dancers, Pan’s People, choreographed by Flick Colby. In 1976 they were replaced briefly by Ruby Flipper, then within the same year by Legs & Co. The latter survived until they were phased out in autumn 1981, then in December that year the last in-house dance act, Zoo, started a run of just under two years. From October 1983 it was felt that pop videos made a dance troupe unnecessary, and the style of the whole show had moved on as well.

One edition of Six-Five Special featured Adam Faith and actor Jon Pertwee (foreground) performing a skiffle number

Concurrent with early Top of the Pops, BBC2 was not afraid to present its own take on the medium, in the form of The Beat Room, which favoured less chart-oriented fare, namely acts in the rhythm and blues genre, though it was advertised as ‘twenty-five minutes of non-stop beat and shake’, which sounds like someone cleaning a carpet. The first show featured Millie, The Animals and Lulu and the Luvvers, later episodes had Manfred Mann, The Hollies, The Kinks, Tom Jones, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye and many more. One early act was Davy Jones and the King Bees, whose lead singer went on to greater things once he changed his name to Bowie.

The Beat Room finished at the end of January 1965, to be succeeded immediately by Gadzooks! It’s All Happening, which had many aspects in common (as well as, additionally, a silly title – which was changed to “Gadzooks! It’s the In Crowd” after a few months. Much better…)

Over on BBC1, late 1965 brought Stramash!, a pop show made in Glasgow which included some elements of Gadzooks, but the beat boom was losing its impetus. Pop acts had long been featured on children’s programmes such as Crackerjack and occasionally Blue Peter, and this continued with acts appearing on The Basil Brush Show when it began in 1968. Also that year The Animals’ former keyboard player Alan Price presented Price to Play, an educational children’s series about the evolution of rock and roll. The following year saw Price present a more straightforward music show Monster Music Mash, including performances by Fleetwood Mac (mark 1), The Moody Blues, and Slade in their early skinhead phase.

Sole survivor

BBC2 continued to promote ‘serious’ rock music, firstly through Late Night Line-Up occasionally featuring artists like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which developed into the spin-off programme Colour Me Pop in June 1968. As the title implies, it was in colour, and the few existing editions provide some of the earliest colour pop footage. The first edition featured Manfred Mann, with each show usually based around a single artist performing either their greatest hits, or sometimes tracks from a new album. This series lasted 18 months, and was succeeded at the start of 1970 by Disco 2, another Line-Up spin-off, presented at first by Tommy Vance, and later by Richard Williams. This had a more varied content, and started to feature commentary and reviews, as well as more adventurous types of music. When this ended in July 1971, the format was rejigged, though Williams continued to present.

The new version was named after the music industry story that new tunes would be tried out on doormen, cleaners etc, to see if they could whistle them after one hearing - this was called The Old Grey Whistle Test. After the first series Richard Williams left and was replaced by DJ Bob Harris, the best-remembered host of the programme, whose laconic style and garish tank tops defined an era – to a certain section of the population at least. Harris himself left the show as punk and new wave music began to be featured at the end of the 70s. Anne Nightingale, who had latterly been his co-host, took over, and the show survived into the late 80s under the stewardship of David Hepworth, Mark Ellen, and later Andy Kershaw – by which time the title had been curtailed to just Whistle Test.

Spin-offs from the series included Sight and Sound in Concert (which had stereo sound from Radio 1 to replace the tv sound, if you wanted) and Rock Goes to College though 'OGWT' did its own occasional special broadcasts of concerts – notably Queen, Rod Stewart and Elton John. As well as music performances, the show was known for in-depth interviews, and in the absence of actual film of bands, many early editions featured unrelated archive footage to go with album tracks. In those days, album tracks mattered…

At the end of the 70s the genre of youth programming began to emerge, and this naturally featured a lot of music. Shows like Something Else, which hailed from the BBC’s Community Programmes Unit, were succeeded by the likes of The Oxford Road Show and Riverside, which ironically were more like magazine programmes – shades of Six-Five…? At the end of the 80s came the dedicated youth strand Def II which featured shows like Behind the Beat and Dance Energy.

With the advent of dedicated music cable and satellite channels, was the death knell being sounded for a certain kind of music television? Perhaps the sole surviving serious music show is “Later… with Jools Holland” which has graced our screens since 1992, preserving something of the spirit of Whistle Test, even transmitting live as did the first Whistle Tests, and itself a spin-off from The Late Show’s music content. As for the rest, while there is now blanket coverage of music festivals, and various channels showing music videos to choose from, television coverage of pop and rock music seems dominated by talent shows, while the nostalgia market is catered for by repackaging archive material on BBC4.

I didn’t like to ask Trevor what he made of it all.

Andrew Martin will be your regular Sunday guide through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the BBC Genome listings.

On This Day, 1927: First BBC Prom

2015-08-13T09:00:00+00:00

Rehearsal for the Promenade Concert inside the Queen's Hall, 1927.

"The 'Proms', which since 1895 have been the most popular series of concerts in London, were, for various reasons, to have come to an end last year. However, by arrangement with the B.B.C., it has been found possible to continue the series" - this is how the first-ever BBC Prom was listed in August 13, 1927.

The BBC saw that taking them on would provide a full season of concerts for broadcast and would fulfil the Corporation's remit to "inform, educate and entertain".

You can read the full programme as relayed from the Queen's Hall on that night and find out more about the composers and the music that was played on the BBC Proms website, where you can delve into their performances archives, containing details of all concerts since 1895 organised by date, seasons, composers and artists.

You can also listen to this clip of Henry Wood, founder-conductor of the Proms, talking about Rule Britannia, which is traditionally performed at the Last Night of the Proms.