National Radio Day.

 National Radio Day. 

You must have forgotten all about the significance of today. You woke up this morning and wondered what marked out today from all other days because the suspense was so great that you could hardly wait to be informed. It isn't the kind of day you'd normally associate with the final weeks of August. But the day has now asserted itself and is determined to dine out on every single moment. Please tell us, dear writer. We're anxious to know. 

So ladies and gentlemen today is National Radio Day. Yes, today we must pay homage to the good, old fashioned radio, that reliable box of sound, noise and communication that has taken pride of place in every home throughout the world for over a century and even further back if you think about it. Radio has been informative, educational, enlightening, newsworthy almost constantly and a provider of music covering all genres. It was the first voice which woke you up in the morning and the first hit single or record album that took you back in time to those nostalgic moments in your life when music had resonance or gravitas. 

Radio played music for all tastes, prejudices and interests. It reminded you of where you were when something of deeply cultural relevance suddenly hit the news headlines. It was the music that transported you, so to speak, back to a golden era of your childhood or adolescence. Radio accompanied you to football or cricket matches and sprawling parklands where the oleander or the rose wafted through your senses during the summer. Radio boosted your morale when you were dispirited or helpless. It was there. 

For those who can recall it, maybe we should fondly think back to the transistor radio. We all remember the transistor radio. That was the radio which crackled or whistled almost incessantly because you couldn't really hear what you were supposed to be listening to. It had an aerial, a dial the size of a small town and radio stations that broke every law in the land. Pirate radio dominated radio during the 1960s.

Radio Caroline, based just off the coast of Essex, violated all of the rules and regulations, remaining illegal and rebellious for quite a long time. Radio Caroline bobbed and wobbled around the heaving seas with a towering mast that had an equally as prominent aerial soaring into the air and the Home Office in Britain tracking their every move. Frequently, Caroline were raided and taken off the air because nobody had given them a proper licence and they weren't allowed to broadcast. 

After repeated attempts to give a youth oriented market its 24/7 dose of groovy, heavy rock music and an abundance of album tracks that BBC radio wouldn't have dreamt of playing, Caroline finally waved the flag of surrender in 1967 when the Marine Offences Act rendered everything that the pirate station was offering taboo and unacceptable. It was time to take Radio Caroline off the air. Permanently. Or so they thought at the time. Caroline would defy the Establishment over and over again. 

Back in Britain, radio was almost embarrassingly devoid of anything that could be considered as entertaining for teenage listeners who were desperate to hear the latest Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Cream or Hawkwind album or single as be it the case. None of the mainland radio stations could ever bring themselves to give any of these psychedelic, moody and long haired artists the oxygen of  publicity they must have been yearning for.

At Broadcasting House, BBC headquarters in London, a vast majority of Britain had to content themselves with either the Home service, the Light programme or just very serious plays over the airwaves. Throughout the two Wars such fare was regarded as both crucial and fundamental to our way of life. The likes of famous author George Orwell would unashamedly spread the latest news and current bulletins of our troops in Malaya, the evil Germans and Orwell's controversial stance on all of the above. 

But for years and decades after the Second World War we could only wonder what life would be like without  big band wartime music, men such as Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey or Ted Heath, three of the greatest bandleaders of all time. Of course both Miller, Dorsey and Heath were magnificent morale boosters and their music was remarkably stirring. Some of us though were already teenagers and in all honesty, were beginning to tire of Charlie Chester on a Sunday afternoon on Radio 2, Family Favourites earlier on in the same day and the Kings Singers just before the Top 40 with Tom Browne. 

There was of course Radio Luxembourg. Now this, in theory, seemed the ideal alternative to wartime trumpets and trombones. Sadly though Luxembourg were just a confounded nuisance. Whenever you tuned into Luxembourg you were always subjected to the most horrendous racket. The Luxembourg signal would keep fading in and out with insufferable regularity. Situated on the iconic 208 Medium Wave band, this mainstream pop music radio giant was barely audible. It was time to listen to something we could hear properly. 

Then in 1967 BBC Radio One announced itself to the British public in quite the most unprecedented fashion. How dare the BBC change the habits of a lifetime by playing loud pop music from the charts of the day? When Tony Blackburn became the first DJ to flip on Flowers in the Rain by the Move on September 30th of that year, radio had undergone a dramatic facelift. So they kept going with an almost fanatical emphasis on the music of the day. Manfred Mann, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones would have a great deal to be grateful for Radio One.

By the beginning of the 1970s commercial radio would become the viable format for those who wanted something else. In 1973 LBC, a London based commercial station, would quietly make its presence felt at 417 in the Medium Wave band but those first announcements were almost silent. Shortly, LBC would move to 261 in the Medium Wave band and, for the first time in radio history, speech and phone in radio would be invented overnight. 

During the 1970s LBC would be confronted with a metropolitan music station called Capital Radio which became the first and most pioneering commercial station at 194 in the Medium Wave band. Capital could boast one of the most inventive DJs that radio had ever heard. Kenny Everett was cheeky, naughty, outrageous and too outspoken at times but Everett gave radio a sharp injection of anarchic humour and a sense of fun. 

Now of course radio has changed again and in the USA hundreds and thousands of radio stations, catering for all musical preferences, are blasting out from millions of Digital radios and Internet stations.  There are shock jocks, radio phone in presenters with a glorious sense of improvisation, talk show maestros and then there were ground breaking programmes such as the Goons and the Archers, two BBC institutions that broke the mould in 1950s radio.

So it is that we thank radio for giving us two of the sweetest sounding sports commentators it has ever been your privilege to open your ears to. During the 1970s BBC Radio 2 presented us with Bryon Butler and Peter Jones, football commentators par excellence. Through a deafening cacophony of interference from a thousand other stations, Butler and Jones painted artistic pictures with their heartfelt descriptions of classic football matches. Their voices were instantly recognisable in much the way that the marvellous cricket aficionado John Arlott had made his voice as familiar as the National Anthem. 

It's National Radio Day. Undeniably it wakes you up in the morning or if it's the weekend you'll probably turn over in bed and just ignore it. Radio echoes the sentiments of the popular zeitgeist, provocative, always fascinating, utterly enjoyable and mood setting for the day. Radio once came out of a lovely turquoise box in our family kitchen as you were growing up and then stopped working because the batteries refused to work. But you have to put on the radio because TV could never do it justice. It's on in the background and always there should you need it. Thankyou Guglielmo Marconi. You're a scholar and a gentleman.