BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, hip hop and indie, while its sister station 1Xtra plays black contemporary music, including hip hop and R&B. Radio 1 also runs two online streams, Radio 1 Dance, dedicated to dance music, and Radio 1 Relax, dedicated to chill-out music; both are available to listen only on BBC Sounds.
BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the state media outlet British Broadcasting Corporation. The service provides national radio stations covering the majority of musical genres, as well as local radio stations covering local news, affairs and interests. It also oversees online audio content.
Pirate radio in the United Kingdom has been a popular and enduring radio medium since the 1960s, despite expansions in licensed broadcasting, and the advent of both digital radio and internet radio. Although it peaked throughout the 1960s and again during the 1980s/1990s, it remains in existence today. Having moved from transmitting from ships in the sea to tower blocks across UK towns and cities, in 2009 the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom estimated more than 150 pirate radio stations were still operating.
Laser 558 was an offshore pirate radio station launched in May 1984 using disc jockeys from the US. It broadcast from the Panama-registered ship MV Communicator in international waters in the North Sea. Within months the station had a large audience, due to its strong signal and continuous music, mixing current records with oldies. However, insufficient advertising starved the station off the air in late 1985. In 1986 an attempt was made to return as Laser Hot Hits, but the same problems arose.
Richard Anthony Crispian Francis Prew Hope-Weston, known professionally as Tommy Vance, was an English radio broadcaster. He was an important factor in the rise of the new wave of British heavy metal, along with London-based disc jockey Neal Kay, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Vance was one of the first radio hosts in the United Kingdom to broadcast hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s, providing the only national radio forum for both bands and fans. The Friday Rock Show that he hosted gave new bands airtime for their music and fans an opportunity to hear it. He used a personal tag-line of "TV on the radio". His voice was heard by millions around the world announcing the Wembley Stadium acts at Live Aid in 1985.
David Allan "Kid" Jensen is a Canadian-born British radio DJ and television presenter. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Jensen began as a radio DJ on Radio Luxembourg. Jensen was later a broadcaster for the BBC from 1976 to 1984, as a host on BBC Radio 1 and presenter on the TV music programme Top of the Pops from 1977 to 1984. Jensen has also hosted and presented for Capital FM and ITV among other stations.
Edward Stewart Mainwaring, known as Ed "Stewpot" Stewart, was an English radio broadcaster and TV presenter. He was principally known for his work as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, and as a presenter of Top of the Pops and Crackerjack on BBC Television.
Johnnie Walker, MBE is an English radio disc jockey and broadcaster. He began his career on pirate radio, most notably on Radio Caroline. He joined BBC Radio 1 in 1969 and BBC Radio 2 in 1998. He presents Sounds of the 70s on Radio 2 on Sunday afternoons and The Radio 2 Rock Show on Friday nights.
Nicky Horne is an English DJ, who has worked for a variety of radio stations, including Capital Radio, BBC Local Radio and Boom Radio.
Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal as such due to operating outside any national jurisdiction, although after the Marine, &c., Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it.
Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL.
Tony Prince is a British radio disc jockey and businessman. He broadcast on Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg in the 1960s and 1970s, later becoming a programme director and then businessman.
William Roscoe Mercer (1927–2000), better known to millions of radio listeners simply as Rosko, was an American announcer, commercial voice over specialist and disc jockey (DJ). He is best known for his stints on New York's WOR-FM and WNEW-FM in the late 1960s and 1970s. He was often a rare African-American voice on radio stations that primarily broadcast to white audiences.
Dave Collins is a British radio DJ who has broadcast across a number of radio stations in his career including Voice of Peace and Radio Caroline and a dozen radio stations in the UK.
David Symonds is an English Radio DJ. He was among the original lineup of BBC Radio 1 in 1967 and one of the original Capital Radio DJs.
Greg Edwards is a British radio broadcaster and DJ. He is well known as the founder of Capital Radio's 'Soul Spectrum' programme and for the promotion of PIR records and associated artists when it was formed in 1971. He is credited as being a DJ who had a major influence on the promotion of soul and disco music in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s both on radio as well as the club circuit.
The history of radio disc jockeys covers the time when gramophone records were first transmitted by experimental radio broadcasters to present day radio personalities who host shows featuring a variety of recorded music.
This is a timeline of notable events relating to BBC Radio 1, a British national radio station which began in September 1967.
This is a list of events from British radio in 1942.
