I can remember BBC Radio 1 changing from 247 meters to 275 and 285 meters. I can't believe it was all of 40 years ago. Where have all those intervening years gone! I worked in an Esso petrol station at the time and I seem to remember Esso giving out car stickers with the new frequencies to customers. Someone please back me up on that. Surely I am remembering correctly. What Esso had to do with the non commercial BBC, I can't say! Anyway, the new frequencies gave much better coverage across the UK than the previous 247 meters. Later 275/285 meters was retitled 1053/1089 kilohertz, as giving frequencies in meters was considered old fashioned. Eventually BBC Radio 1 went fully FM Stereo across the nation and the old AM (medium wave) frequencies were reallocated to Talk Sport who still broadcast on them today.
Papers like The Sun and The Mirror gave out wavelengths and frequencies for the radio listings because they realised that people still had old domestic radios, radiograms, music centres, portables and car radios marked in metres (m) as well as modern sets marked in kilohertz (kHz) on MW LW and SW.
They should have turned Radio One into a GOLD station and played all the old songs intermingled with all those classic jingles that had first being heard on the Pirate ships. Radio One Vintage the "pop up" radio station to celebrate Radio One's 50th Birthday/Anniversary showed everyone just how great Radio One Vintage/Gold would have sounded if they had made it a permanent radio station.
Oh blimey, I remember that morning (and this song) so clearly! I was working in Malvern and the radio was always on in the workshop. Is it really that long ago?
Recorded by SHOWADDYWADDY to let people know that Radio One was changing wavelengths from it's original 247meters to 275 and 285 meters on the Medium Waveband.
There were also low powered fill in transmitters, Barrow In Furness 1053 kHz / Barnstaple 1053 kHz / Hull 1053 kHz / Bournemouth 1485 kHz / Wallasey 1107 kHz and Redruth 1053 kHz. These transmitters improved the coverage in areas where reception of the main high power transmitters were poor.
Sounded like interference under Radio 1 (winter propagation at the time), and a little bit of fading there. In some parts of the UK, Radio 1 would fade in and out on MW 275m /1089 kHz and MW 285m / 1053 kHz, during the daytime in Winter because of winter AM propagation conditions which would sometimes bring in stations from abroad during the winter on Medium Wave i.e. I've heard Radio Luxembourg on winter afternoons in German on MW 208m / 1440 kHz even though they used slightly directional antennas at 600 kW, aimed 45 degrees East South East towards Germany in Luxembourg, very slowly fading out from time to time, fading badly on its weakest point, then returning on the Winter skywave path over the UK.
anthony perkins True Anthony but I usually only listened to radio in the evening anyway. The times I did hear radio 1 daytime tho it didn’t have that certain something that Radio Luxembourg had. Radio Luxembourg was just a more fun station imo.
Should have been on FM (VHF) from the get-go - medium wave sounded rubbish even on local stations! Anyone not aware of the wavelength changes must have wondered why Radio 1 had suddenly took to playing classical music and why Terry Wogan had suddenly become the Today programme!
I think their reasoning was that most of the portable radios often used by the Radio 1 audience age group at the time just had cheap portable radios, which rarely had FM.
@@stickytapenrust6869I myself got a little black and orange tranny for Christmas that year, which only had medium wave on it - if it had still been working today, and I still had it, I probably wouldn’t be able to get anything on it!
