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BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock or interviews. It is aimed primarily at the 15–29 age group, although the average age of the audience is 33. Radio 1 was launched at 7:00am on 30 September 1967 as a direct response to the popularity of offshore pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline, which had been outlawed by Act of Parliament.
Despite this, it gained massive audiences, becoming the most listened to station in the world with audiences of over 10 million claimed for some of its shows (up to 20 million for Blackburn's Breakfast Show). In the early-mid 1970s Radio 1 presenters were rarely out of the British tabloids, thanks to the Publicity Department's high profile work. The popularity of Radio 1's touring summer live broadcasts the Radio 1 Roadshow - usually as part of the BBC 'Radio Weeks' promotions that took Radio 1, 2 and 4 shows on the road - drew some of the largest crowds of the decade. The station undoubtedly played a role in maintaining the high sales of 45 rpm single records although it benefited from a lack of competition, apart from Radio Luxembourg and the tiny Manx Radio in the Isle of Man. (Independent Local Radio did not begin until October 1973 and took many years to cover virtually all of the UK). Alan Freeman's 'Saturday Rock Show' was voted 'Best Radio Show' 5 years running by readers of a national music publication, and was then axed by controller Derek Chinnery.
Many listeners rebelled as the first new DJs to be introduced represented a crossover from other parts of the BBC (notably Bannister and Trevor Dann's former colleagues at the BBC's London station, GLR) with Emma Freud and Danny Baker. Another problem was that, at the time, Radio 2 was sticking resolutely to a format which appealed mainly to those who had been listening since the days of the Light Programme, and commercial radio, which was targeting the "Radio 1 and a half" audience, consequently enjoyed a massive increase in its audience share at the expense of Radio One.
After the departure of Steve Wright, who had been unsuccessfully moved from his long-running afternoon show to the breakfast show in January 1994, Bannister hired Chris Evans to present the prime morning slot in April 1995. Evans was a popular but controversial presenter who was eventually sacked in 1997 after he demanded to present the breakfast show for only four days per week. Evans was replaced from February 17, 1997 by Mark and Lard – Mark Radcliffe (along with his sidekick Marc Riley), who found the slick, mass-audience style required for a breakfast show did not come naturally to them. They were replaced by Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening eight months later in October 1997, with Greening moving on and leaving Ball as solo presenter. The re-invention of the station happened at a fortuitous time, with the rise of Britpop in the mid-90s – bands like Oasis, Blur and Pulp were popular and credible at the time and the station's popularity rose with them. Documentaries like John Peel's "Lost In Music" which looked at the influence that the use of drugs have had over popular musicians received critical acclaim but were slated inside Broadcasting House.
Later in the 90s the Britpop boom declined, and manufactured chart pop (boy bands and acts aimed at sub-teenagers) came to dominate the charts. New-genre music occupied the evenings (indie on weekdays and dance at weekends), with a mix of specialist shows and playlist fillers through late nights. The rise of rave culture through the late 80s and early 90s gave the station the opportunity to move into a controversial and youth-orientated movement by bringing in club DJ Pete Tong amongst others. There had been a dance music programme on Radio 1 since 1987 and Pete Tong was the second DJ to present an all dance music show. This quickly gave birth to the Essential Mix where underground DJs mix electronic and club based music in a two hour slot. Dance music has been a permanent feature on Radio 1 since with club DJ's such as Judge Jules, Danny Rampling and Seb Fontaine all having shows as well as Radio 1 hosting an annual weekend in Ibiza.
Listening figures continued to decline but the station succeeded in targeting a younger age-group and more cross gender groups. Eventually, this change in content was reflected by a rise in audience that is continuing to this day. Notably, the station has received praise for shows such as The Surgery with Aled, Bobby Friction and Nihal, The Evening Session with Steve Lamacq and its successor Zane Lowe. Its website has also been well received.
However, the breakfast show and the UK Top 40 continued to struggle. In 2000, Zoe Ball was replaced in the mornings by friend and fellow ladette Sara Cox, but, despite heavy promotion, listening figures for the breakfast show continued to fall. In 2004 Cox was replaced by Chris Moyles. The newly rebranded breakfast show is known as The Chris Moyles Show and has increased its audience, now ahead of The Today Programme on Radio 4 as the second most popular breakfast show (after 'Wake up with Wogan' hosted by Terry Wogan). Moyles continued to use innovative ways to try to tempt listeners from the 'Wake up with Wogan' show; in 2006, for example, creating a 'SAY NO TO WOGAN' campaign live on-air. This angered the BBC hierarchy, though the row simmered down when it was clear that the 'campaign' had totally failed to alter the listening trends of the time – Wogan still increases figures at a faster rate than Moyles. The chart show's ratings fell after the departure of long-time host Mark Goodier, amid falling single sales in the UK. Ratings for the show fell in 2002 whilst Goodier was still presenting the show, meaning that commercial radio's Network Chart overtook it in the ratings for the first time. However, the BBC denied he was being sacked. The BBC show now competes with networked commercial radio's The Big Top 40 Show which is broadcast at the same time.
Many DJs either ousted by Bannister or who left during his tenure (such as Johnnie Walker, Bob Harris and Steve Wright) have joined Radio 2 which has now overtaken Radio 1 as the UK's most popular radio station, using a style that Radio 1 had until the early 1990s.
The success of Moyles' show has come alongside increased success for the station in general. In 2006, DJs Chris Moyles, Scott Mills and Zane Lowe all won gold Sony Radio Awards, while the station itself came away with the best station award.
A new evening schedule was introduced in September 2006, dividing the week by genre. Monday is mainly pop-funkrock-oriented, Tuesday is R&B; and hip-hop, Thursday and Friday are primarily dance, with specialist R&B; and reggae shows.
Following the death of John Peel in October 2004, Annie Nightingale is now the longest serving presenter, having worked there since 1970.
The day presenters on the network on weekdays are: Dev (4AM-6:30AM), Chris Moyles (6:30AM-10AM), Fearne Cotton (10AM-12:45PM), Greg James (1PM-4PM), Scott Mills (4PM-7PM).
The weekend day slots now house a number of former weekday daytime presenters, including Edith Bowman (7AM-10AM), Vernon Kay (Sat 10AM-1PM), Sara Cox (Sun 10AM-1PM), Huw Stephens (1PM-4PM), Reggie Yates (4-7PM).
Weekday 'Night' DJs from 7pm until 4am play host to eclectic and specialised content that include: Zane Lowe (7-9pm) and Nick Grimshaw (10-12pm). Huw Stephens, Nihal, Annie Nightingale, Rock Show with Daniel P Carter, Punk Show with Mike Davies, Kissy Sell Out, Benji B and Gilles Peterson each have a 2 hour slot either between 12-2am or 2-4am Tuesday to Friday mornings.
Currently, between 9pm and 10pm Monday-Thursdays, there is a variety of one hour programmes including a music documentary series named BBC Radio 1's Stories on Mondays, a review show hosted by Nihal on Tuesdays, a show hosted by Matt Edmondson known as The Matt Edmondson Show on Wednesdays, and In New DJs We Trust on Thursday evenings.
Friday evening is Radio 1's "Dance Music Marathon" from 7pm to 7am which consists of Annie Mac (7-9pm), Pete Tong (9-11pm), Judge Jules (11pm-1am), Kutski (1-3am), The Essential Mix (3-5am) and Rob da Bank (5-7am).
Saturday evenings include 12 hours of urban music which, since October 2009, has been simulcast entirely on 1Xtra. DJs include: Trevor Nelson (7-9pm), Tim Westwood (9-11pm) and MistaJam (11pm-1am). At 1am, the output changes every week offering four hours of the specialist genres of music that 1Xtra plays every weeknight from 10pm. This includes; Hip Hop, Dancehall, UKG, RnB and D&B.; Each week, between 1am and 3am, a programme known as The 1Xtra Showcase is aired offering one of these genres of urban music. This is followed by The 1Xtra Mix which follows with the same genre of music at 3am until 5am. Each week the theme of these shows change offering four hours of each genre once every 5 weeks in the same timeslot on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra. Every week this is followed by My Top 10 and 1Xtra's Best of the Week at 5am and 6am before daytime programmes resume on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra.
Sunday evenings include a magazine show hosted by Tom Deacon (7-9pm) , advice show The Surgery with Aled (9-10pm) and a show hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Annie Mac (10-12pm). This is before specialist music takes over the station at midnight with BBC Introducing in the Nations with Jen Long in Wales, Rory McConnell in Northern Ireland and Ally McCrae in Scotland (12-2am) followed by Fabio and Grooverider (2-4am)
The licence-fee funding of Radio 1, alongside Radio 2, is often criticised by the commercial sector. In the first quarter of 2011 Radio 1 was part of an efficiency review conducted by John Myers. His role, according to Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of RadioCentre, was "to identify both areas of best practice and possible savings." These cons were configured to allow DJs to operate the equipment themselves and play their own records and jingle cartridges (called self-op). This was a departure from traditional BBC practice, where a studio manager would play in discs from the studio control cubicle. Due to needle time restrictions much of the music was played from tapes of BBC session recordings. The DJs were assisted by one or more technical operators (TOs) who would set up tapes and control sound levels during broadcasts.
The current studios are located in the basement of Yalding House (near to BBC Broadcasting House) which is on Great Portland Street in central London. The station moved there in 1996 from Egton House, which was demolished in 2003 to make way for the extensions to Broadcasting House. When complete in 2012, Radio 1 will move to new studios in Broadcasting House.
Radio 1 also uses the BBC Maida Vale Studios in west London, where artists record music sessions for various shows, including the popular Live Lounge for Fearne Cotton's show. There are also live performances held there in front of Radio 1 competition winners.
Programmes have also regularly been broadcast from other regions, notably the Mark and Lard show, broadcast every weekday from New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester for over a decade (October 1993-March 2004) – the longest regular broadcast on the network from outside the capital.
In 1988 the 97–99 MHz frequencies became available when the existing police communication allocation changed, and Radio 1 acquired them for its own national FM network. This was rolled out as of 1 September 1988, starting with the Central Scotland, Midlands & Yorkshire areas (FM broadcasts were available in London as of 31 October 1987, but this was at low power on 104.8 MHz FM – see here). Radio 1 made great efforts to promote its new FM service, renaming itself on-air initially to 'Radio 1 FM' and also later on as '1FM' until 1995.
The Conservative government then decided that to increase competition on AM it would disallow the simulcast of services available on both AM and FM. Therefore Radio 1's old medium wave frequencies were reallocated to Talk Radio UK in 1994 (now talkSPORT). Radio 1's last broadcast on MW was on 1 July that year, with Stephen Duffy's "Kiss Me" being the last record played on MW just before 9:00am. In the initial months after this closure a pre-recorded message with Bruno Brookes was played to warn listeners about the fact Radio 1 was now an "FM-only" station, but before the pre-launch test transmissions for Talk Radio UK, the new station played out a new recorded message in the style of a 1930s/40s BBC radio announcer played out, making fun of the legislation that made the BBC have to give up their AM frequencies, saying "goodbye to listeners everywhere". During this time it also began broadcasting on spare audio subcarriers on Sky Television's analogue satellite service, initially in mono (on UK Gold) and later in stereo (on UK Living).
BBC Radio 1 can be heard on the cable in the Netherlands at 105.10 FM.
===Regionalisation=== Since 1999, Radio 1 has split the home nations for localised programming in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to allow the broadcast of a showcase programme for regional talent.
Scotland's show is presented by Vic Galloway (who also presents for BBC Radio Scotland); he has presented the Radio 1 show on his own since 2004, after original co-host Gill Mills departed.
Northern and Eastern regions including the Dublin Metropolitan Area in the Republic Of Ireland are able to receive BBC Radio 1 on FM.
Wales's show is hosted by Bethan Elfyn, who previously hosted as part of a duo with Huw Stephens, until Stephens left to join the national network (Stephens can still be heard in Wales, as he also broadcasts Welsh-language music programming on BBC Radio Cymru, and hosts Radio 1's Wednesday 9pm-10pm show.)
Rory McConnell currently presents the Northern Irish programme. Before joining the national network, Colin Murray was a presenter on the Session In Northern Ireland, along with Donna Legge; after Murray's promotion to the network Legge hosted alone for a time, and on her departure McConnell took her place.
The regional opt-outs originally went out from 8:00pm to 10:00pm on Thursdays (the Evening Session's time slot) and were known as the Session In The Nations (the 'Session' tag was later dropped due to the demise of the Evening Session); they later moved to run from 7:30pm to 9:00pm, with the first half hour of Zane Lowe's programme going out across the whole of the UK. Since the early hours of 18 October 2007 the regional programmes have been aired Wednesday night/Thursday mornings from 12:00am to 2:00am under the BBC Introducing banner, allowing Lowe's Thursday show to be aired across the network; prior to this change Huw Stephens had presented the Wednesday midnight show nationally, and continues to host the slot in England.
This practice has also been used in Radio 1's T in the Park coverage where broadcasts to Scotland provide extended coverage of the festival which the rest of the United Kingdom does not receive (it instead has the normal Radio 1 schedule). This Scotland-only coverage has been presented by Vic Galloway in recent years.
These opt-outs are only available to listeners on the FM frequencies. Because of the way the DAB and digital TV services of Radio 1 are broadcast (a single-frequency network on DAB and a single broadcast feed of Radio 1 on TV platforms), the digital version of the station is not currently regionalised.
Due to restrictions on the amount of commercial music that could be played on radio in the UK until 1988 (the "needle time" limitation) the station has recorded many live performances and studio sessions, many of which have found their way to commercially-available LPs and CDs. The station also broadcasts documentaries and interviews. Although this type of programming arose from necessity it has given the station diversity. The needletime restrictions meant the station tended to have a higher level of speech by DJs. While the station is often criticised for "waffling" by presenters, an experimental "more music day" in 1988 was declared a failure after only a third of callers favoured it.
On 14 October 2007, Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates replaced JK & Joel as hosts of the Chart Show. Fearne Cotton became the first regular female presenter of the UK Top 40. Jo Whiley became the first female to present the UK Top 40 on 24 November 2002 (a week after Mark Goodier's departure from the show) as a string of one-off presenters each week until Scott Mills presented the UK Top 40 each week from 5 January 2003 until 2 February 2003. Wes Butters launched the Chart Show on 9 February 2003. After this date the Chart Show was known as "The Official UK Top 40." A weekly "Official Chart Update", which started on 10 March 2010, also features every Wednesday between 3.30 - 4pm in the run up to the chart show on Sunday.
;Chart Show history
Currently this slot is broadcast between 6:30am and 10:00am, Monday to Friday and has been hosted since January 2004 by Chris Moyles and his team under the alternative title The Chris Moyles Show.
The current weekday Drivetime show is hosted by Scott Mills, under the title The Scott Mills Show. Notable former presenters include Sara Cox, Chris Moyles, Peter Powell, Bruno Brookes, Nicky Campbell, Mark Goodier, Kevin Greening and Dave Pearce. The show currently broadcasts from 4:00pm until 7:00pm every weekday, with a 15 minute break at 5:45pm for Newsbeat. Scott Mills is usually joined by assistant producer Beccy Huxtable.
The presenters started on 16 March 2011 and came off air at 10:30am on 18 March 2011. During this Fearne Cotton made a bet with DJ Chris Moyles that if they raise over £2,000,000 she will appear on the show in a swimsuit. After passing the £2,000,000 mark, Cotton appeared on the studio webcam in a stripy monochrome swimsuit. The appearance of Cotton between 10:10am and 10:30am caused the Radio 1 website to crash due to a high volume of traffic.
In total the event raised £2,622,421 for Comic Relief.
;Radio 1's Big Weekend In March 2000, Radio 1 decided to change the Roadshow format, renaming it One Big Sunday in the process. Several of these Sundays were held in large city-centre parks. In 2003, the event changed again and was rebranded One Big Weekend, with each event occurring biannually and covering two days. Under this name, it visited Derry in Northern Ireland, as part of the Music Lives campaign, and Perry Park in Birmingham.
The most recent change occurred in 2005 when the event was yet again renamed and the decision taken to hold only one per year, this time as Radio 1's Big Weekend. Venues under this title have included Herrington Country Park, Camperdown Country Park, Moor Park–which was the first Weekend to feature a third stage–Mote Park, Lydiard Park, Bangor and Carlisle_Airport.
Tickets for each Big Weekend are given away free of charge, making it the largest free ticketed music festival in Europe.
BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend will be replaced by a larger festival in 2012, named 'Radio 1's Hackney Weekend', with a crowd capacity of 100,000. The event is to take place over the weekend of 23–24 June 2012 in Hackney, Central London.
;Radio 1 Switch Live The first ever BBC Switch Live was held on 12 October 2008 at the Hammersmith Apollo. With performances from McFly, Fall out Boy, Ne-Yo, Miley Cyrus, Basshunter, N-Dubz and George Sampson. The event was hosted by Annie Mac, Nick Grimshaw, Kelly Osbourne, Fearne Cotton, Greg James and Tom Deacon. The event was strictly for 14 to 17 years only and was recorded for BBC Switch's show Sound which is shown on BBC Two and is presented by Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw.
;Other events On 18 July 2008, Radio 1 broadcast live from BCM Square, Magaluf, Mallorca as part of their Summer Season 2008. The broadcast started at 4:00pm with Greg James and Judge Jules presenting. Then from 7:00pm to 9:00pm it was back to the London Studio with Pete Tong, and from 9:00pm to 11:00pm it was Kissy Sell Out standing in for Annie Mac with Annie Mac's Mash Up. Then at 11:00pm it was back to Mallorca for Dave Pearce's Dance Anthems. At 1:00am Judge Jules was back to end the night in the BCM Night Club.
1 Category:Contemporary hit radio stations Category:Sirius Satellite Radio channels Category:XM Satellite Radio channels Category:Radio stations established in 1967 Category:1967 establishments in the United Kingdom
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