Monday, January 13, 2025

A Collection of (mainly) BBC Radio Programmes

I've been scouring BBC Sounds - and other sources - for radio programmes of interest to me. Of course, you can always do the same. But it can be difficult to know what to search for if you don't know what's out there. So, to save you the trouble, here's a list of still-available material I've curated, for your enjoyment. A small number of links are to programmes no longer available from the BBC, and these I have uploaded to to YouTube, with permission. 

You'll see that the list is 'broadcasting-heavy', with a bit of 'off-topic' stuff thrown in. If you know of any programmes you think would make this listing more comprehensive, please add a comment, and I'll include it. And please let me know if any of the links become dead. Thanks!

WITNESS HISTORY - From BBC World Service
History told by the people who were there. For nine minutes every weekday, Witness History takes you back to moments which have shaped our world. A selection of curated programme links: a work in progress!

WITNESS HISTORY - SPACE CRASH - In June 1997 a resupply vessel crashed into the Mir space station. Alex Last has been speaking to Michael Foale, one of the 3 astronauts on board, about what happened next.

When the US led invasion of Afghanistan ousted the repressive Taliban regime in 2001, it was no longer illegal to listen to music or news on the radio. Afghan businessman Saad Mohseni returned to his home town of Kabul to launch Arman FM, a new radio station which played modern music and comedy programmes amongst other things which had been banned under the Taliban. He tells Rebecca Kesby why he wanted to help rebuild the cultural life of Afghanistan, how one radio station expanded into a multimedia company, and how persistent security problems have impacted his staff.

The biggest audience in TV history watch NASA's Apollo 8 mission beam back the first pictures from an orbit around the moon at Christmas 1968. The broadcast captured the world's imagination and put the Americans ahead of the Soviet Union in the Cold War battle to put the first men on the moon. Simon Watts talks to Apollo 8 commander, Frank Borman.

WITNESS HISTORY - APOLLO 13
The 1970 Moon mission that almost ended in tragedy after an explosion on board the spaceship. Fred Haise was one of the Apollo 13 astronauts. In 2010 he spoke to Richard Howells about how they managed to get back to Earth despite the odds.

In 1949, Mildred Gillars – otherwise known as Axis Sally – became the first woman in American history to be convicted of treason. The former Broadway showgirl broadcast antisemitic Nazi propaganda on German State Radio during World War Two. Her weekly shows were heard by thousands of American servicemen who gave her the nickname Axis Sally. After her capture, she denied being a traitor, but a jury in Washington convicted her of treason, and she served 12 years in prison. 

WITNESS HISTORY - BRITAIN'S SECRET PROPAGANDA WAR How sex, jazz and 'fake news' were used to undermine the Nazis in World War Two. In 1941, the UK created a top secret propaganda department, the Political Warfare Executive to wage psychological warfare on the German war machine. It was responsible for spreading rumours, generating fake news, leaflet drops and creating fake clandestine German radio stations to spread misinformation and erode enemy morale. We hear archive recordings of those involved and speak to professor Jo Fox of the Institute of Historical Research about the secret history of British "black propaganda"

WITNESS HISTORY - BRITISH REALITY TV IS BORN
The first British fly-on-the-wall documentary series aired on the BBC in 1974. It was called The Family and followed the lives of the Wilkins family in Reading. Marian Wilkins - now Archer - was the eldest daughter in The Family and has been speaking to Bethan Head about what it was like to be followed by cameras and have her wedding broadcast on television.
WITNESS HISTORY - BROADCASTING D-DAY
Hear how the BBC reported the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6th 1944. The operation was a crucial step in the liberation of western Europe. Using original BBC reports from the time - from Chester Wilmot, Richard Dimbleby, Robin Duff, Ward Smith and Alan Melville - we tell the story of D-Day.


The smart speaker Alexa is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world every day, but did you know its voice was created by two people in Poland back in 2000? Lukasz Osowski and Michal Kaszczuk were final year students at Gdansk Technical University when they decided to create a device which could understand you and talk back in a voice which sounded like a human. They went through a few versions and started getting attention from big companies before eventually making a deal with Amazon.
WITNESS HISTORY - ENGLANDSPIEL: THE DEADLY WWII SPY GAME 
In 1942, a Dutch secret agent was captured by German military intelligence in the Netherlands. The agent's name was Haub Lauwers and he worked for the Special Operations Executive, a secret organisation set up by the British to wage a guerrilla war against the Nazis in Europe. So began, the Englandspiel, the England Game, a German counter-intelligence operation that led to the capture and deaths of dozens of Dutch agents.

WITNESS HISTORY - HOW ELECTRICITY CAME TO RURAL IRELAND

In May 1948, Canon John Hayes flicked a switch and brought electricity to the parish of Bansha, in Ireland. The village was the first in County Tipperary to be connected to the grid, under the Rural Electrification Scheme. The ambitious programme ran from 1946 to 1964 and saw 300,000 homes powered up.

WITNESS HISTORY - HOW THE QR CODE WAS INVENTED
In 1994, bar codes were in widespread use in businesses around the world, but the Japanese car component company, Denso Wave, wanted something quicker. It was called the Quick Response code, or QR for short. And today it’s used, in some form, by millions of us around the world every day.


When Indian independence leaders, including Gandhi, were jailed in 1942, activists set up a secret radio station to carry the message of rebellion against British rule. Among the campaigners who worked at the station was Usha Mehta, who was later imprisoned for broadcasting anti-British news and playing patriotic music. 

Professor Karlheinz Brandenburg from Germany spent more than a decade developing MP3 technology, which was developed to convert audio into digital form. He had been working on it since 1982. It compressed music into a file size that made it easier to transmit, leading to the first MP3 players and fast music sharing.

Laika the Russian stray was the first dog to orbit the Earth. She was sent into space on a flight in 1957 which had been timed to mark the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. She died after orbiting Earth four times.

WITNESS HISTORY - LANDING ON TITAN
The story of the remarkable mission to land on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. The large mysterious moon has a thick orange atmosphere. No-one had ever seen the surface. In the late 1990s, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was sent on a 7 year, 3.5 billion km journey through space to explore Saturn and Titan.

In April 1999 Nato bombed the Serbian state TV station in Belgrade, killing 16 people. It was part of a military campaign to force Serbia to withdraw from Kosovo. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to one of the survivors, Dragan Suchovic, a TV technician, who was working at the station that night.

In 1974, the BBC launched the world's first teletext service. It provided information, like news and weather, through our TV screens, whenever users wanted, at the push of a button. Rachel Naylor speaks to Angus McIntyre, son of the late Colin McIntyre, Ceefax's first editor. 

Broadcasting to countries behind the Iron Curtain without a free or independent media between 1947 and 1991 was arguably the BBC World Service's finest hour. The corporation was on the front line of the information war as the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent Bridget Kendall recalls.

The night before Halloween in 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air performed a radio adaptation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds. It would become one of the most notorious radio broadcasts in history. Up to six million people tuned in, most of whom had no idea that what they were listening to was fictional. It prompted mass panic. Orson Welles delights in recalling "Suddenly everyone started driving at 125 miles per hour," saying, "I'm going to the hills". Produced and presented by Josephine McDermott.

In September 1956, a telephone cable called TAT-1 was laid under the Atlantic Ocean, making high-quality transatlantic phone calls possible for the first time. Eight months later in May 1957, 1,000 people squeezed into St Pancras Town Hall in London to listen to a transatlantic concert. The person performing, Paul Robeson, was a globally renowned singer, but he’d been banned from travelling outside the USA. So, he made use of the new transatlantic telephone line to perform to his fans in the UK.

During World War Two, British women were employed as operators of a top-secret radar system for detecting aircraft. The new technology had helped shift the balance of power in the air war with Nazi Germany. Laura Fitzpatrick talks to Margaret Faulds, who was stationed at a Royal Navy Air Station during the war.

Seventy-five years ago, Radio Free Europe started broadcasting news to audiences behind the Iron Curtain. It initially broadcast to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania and programmes were produced in Munich, Germany. It now reaches nearly 50 million people a week, in 27 languages in 23 countries.Rachel Naylor speaks to former deputy director, Arch Puddington.

Sir Anthony Blunt, a distinguished British art historian and curator of the Queen's pictures was exposed as a former Soviet spy in the autumn of 1979. He was stripped of his knighthood and publicly shamed as a traitor for being part of the Cambridge spy ring. Susan Hulme has been speaking to Christopher Morris who was the BBC reporter sent to interview Blunt when the story broke.

At the height of the Cold War the German city of Berlin was known as the spy capital of the world. Spies were operating on both sides of the Berlin Wall as tensions between democratic West Germany and communist East Germany meant governments on both sides of the ideological divide were desperate to find out what the other side was planning. In the early 1980s Nina Willner became the first female US army officer to lead intelligence missions into East Germany. She talks about her experiences of the Cold War in Berlin.

Just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall East Germans found themselves able to walk into the communist secret police headquarters in Berlin. The much-feared Stasi agents had kept files on millions of their fellow citizens. Soon people were searching the archives. Jim Frank has spoken to Bert Konopatzky who took part in the demonstration which led to the Stasi opening its gates.

By 1915, the two great rivals, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, had brought electricity to the world.

It was reported that they were set to share the Nobel Prize for Physics, but it never happened. In 2011, Claire Bowes spoke to Tesla’s biographer Mark Seifer and relative William Terbo.

WITNESS HISTORY - THE BBC AT CAVERSHAM
For 75 years the BBC ran a monitoring service based in an English stately home. Its job was to listen to foreign broadcasts from all around the world. But in 2018 the BBC decided the building was no longer needed. David Sillito spoke to veterans of the monitoring service before Caversham closed its doors. WITNESS HISTORY - THE BIRTH OF THE SONY WALKMAN   The portable cassette player that brought music-on-the-move to millions of people was launched in 1979. By the time production of the Walkman came to an end 30 years later, Sony had sold more than 220 million machines worldwide. In 2019 Farhana Haider spoke to Tim Jarman, who purchased one of the original blue-and-silver Walkmans.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE BLUETOOTH STORY In the 1990s, Bluetooth was invented in a lab in Lund, Sweden. The technology is used today to wirelessly connect accessories such as mice, keyboards, speakers and headphones to desktops, laptops and mobile phones. It’s named after Harald Bluetooth, a Viking king who was said to have blue teeth. Sven Mattisson, one of the brains behind the technology, tells Gill Kearsley how the name Bluetooth came about following some drinks after a conference.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE BOMBING OF THE RAINBOW It's a quarter of a century since French secret agents succeeded in sinking the Greenpeace campaign ship, Rainbow Warrior. The ship's skipper talks to Witness about the night it was bombed. WITNESS HISTORY - THE BRAINS BEHIND THUNDERBIRDS  In 1965, a groundbreaking children's show using cutting-edge puppets first blast onto television screens. Thunderbirds was created by husband and wife Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who used supermarionation, a pioneering technique with thin wires which controlled the puppets' movements.Their daughter Dee Anderson speaks to Reena Stanton-Sharma.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE CASE OF DR CRIPPEN  How one of the most notorious murderers in Edwardian London was captured as he fled to Canada. Listen to an astonishing BBC archive account of his arrest and hear from Dr Cassie Watson, a historian of forensic medicine and crime, about why the case of Dr Crippen lived so long in the public's memory.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE COMMERCIAL THAT CHANGED ADVERTISING: 1984  In 1984, a Hollywood director, some tech revolutionaries and a group of London skinheads created a commercial that would rock the advertising world. Based on George Orwell’s dystopic novel ‘1984’, the ad was like nothing that had been seen before. But its road to being shown was rocky, and the beleaguered advert almost never made it air. Mike Murray was Apple marketing manager at the time, he speaks to Molly Pipe.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE CREATION OF GREENWICH MEAN TIME In 1676, Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed was looking to find a way to determine longitude at sea, so ships could know their position and hazards. Feuds with Sir Isaac Newton, dirty rivers and a missing key are just some of the obstacles he contended with and overcame. His labours ultimately paved the way to Greenwich Mean Time. Emily Akkermans, Curator of Time at Royal Museums Greenwich, and Keith Moore from the Royal Society of London, speak to Allis Moss. WITNESS HISTORY - THE CREATION OF YOUTUBE  An 18-second clip of a young man standing in front of an elephant enclosure at San Diego Zoo in California, describing their “really long trunks” was the first video to be posted onto YouTube in April 2005. It was uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim, who with friends Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, cooked up the idea for the video-sharing service while working together at PayPal. Twenty years later, it is now available in 100 countries and has almost three billion users around the world.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE FIRST IPHONE  The touchscreen smartphone changed mobile technology for ever. It was unveiled on January 9th 2007 by the Apple boss Steve Jobs. Within a few years smartphones had changed the way billions of people lived their lives. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to Andy Grignon a senior developer on the project.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE FIRST MOBILE PHONE CALL  In 1973, an engineer called Marty Cooper made the world’s first mobile phone call from a street in New York City. Cooper worked for a then tiny telecoms company called Motorola, but he had a vision that one day people would all want their own personal phone that could be reached anywhere. He talks to Louise Hidalgo.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE FIRST PHOTO SENT FROM A PHONE On 11 June 1997, French software engineer Philippe Kahn shared the first ever photo from a mobile phone. It was of his newborn daughter, Sophie. He created a prototype of a camera phone by connecting his digital camera to his flip phone and his laptop. WITNESS HISTORY - THE INVENTION OF GPS There are few inventions that we rely on as much as the Global Positioning System, also known as GPS. But, when it was created in the late 1970s, nobody wanted it. Nowadays, GPS helps countless people travel in the right direction. But, we also rely on it for many things you might not realise: it keeps aeroplanes in the sky, props up global trade, farming and construction, and even supports banking transactions. Ben Henderson speaks to Prof Parkinson, "the father of GPS".

WITNESS HISTORY - THE FOUNDING OF GOOGLE The world's most popular search engine was launched in September 1998 by two PHD students from Stanford University in California. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had an idea that would revolutionise the internet and create one of the world's most valuable companies.  WITNESS HISTORY - THE HOME VIDEO WAR 
In 1975 Sony launched Betamax with its half-inch-wide tape capable of recording 60 minutes of television. It was the length of most American shows - the perfect run-time. But in 1977, JVC released its VHS: it was bigger and bulkier, but capable of taping a full two-hour movie. That extra time turned out to be a game-changer, offering viewers more choice, more flexibility, and ultimately, more power. Johnny I’Anson speaks to industry veteran Marc Wielage, who watched it all unfold from the inside. Marc tells Johnny how marketing, business decisions, and consumer behaviour shaped the outcome.

Steve shares the excitement, the dramatic events and the fun that has made radio so special in his life. He grew up with a passion for listening to it, then working on the pirate stations before playing a role in the earliest days of UK commercial radio. Then, he worked alongside stations in the UK and around the world, as as one of the leading lights in the radio jingle industry.



Advertising executive Juan Carlos ran a campaign against the addictive qualities of cocaine, and made powerful enemies of Farc guerillas who relied on the drugs trade. A few years later, he was asked by a Colombian army chief to get a secret message to hostages being held by Farc rebels in the middle of a jungle.

The World Morse Code championships are fiendishly competitive. Contestants from many countries travel to Tunisia, where they face each other across tiny tapping machines in a competition hall silent but for the clicking. It is called High Speed Telegraphy - the skill and art of sending and receiving fast and accurately. 

How the invention of Morse code in 1837 revolutionised long distance communication on land and sea.

Radio Caroline's ship, the Mi Amigo, was rotting below the waterline but, because of its illegal status, couldn’t go to shore for repairs. The DJs did their best to keep the ship afloat, until they faced one storm too many.

In 1966, Roy Bates occupied a disused military platform in the North Sea, and moved his family aboard. The next year he declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. Five decades on, the Bates family still occupy the platform, having survived the repeated attempts by the British government to evict them by legal means, and having fought off attempts by rival groups to seize the platform by force. It's a story of coups, counter-coups, guns, petrol bombs, and rival groups of foreign businessmen. 

A look back at the life of Irish businessman who ran the pirate radio station Radio Caroline on a ship off the coast of Essex.

Martha Kearney visits Whitstable to discover the fascinating and mysterious story behind Guy Maunsell’s sea forts at Shivering Sands. Built in the second world war as air defences, these towers can still be seen from the shoreline, although they are now in a state of disrepair.

Dominic Sandbrook explores the long and involved pre-BBC history of radio in Britain. From Marconi to Savoy Hill via an old army hut in Essex, Tuning In is the story of the very earliest radio in Britain.

Edward Stourton tells the story of the BBC in the ”phoney war” of 1939-1940. How did it become a trusted source of news in the face of wartime censorship? What did it do to cheer up the nation and enliven public service messages about health and education?

Anne Karpf explores, with the help of the sound archive, the way women's voices have shaped the sound of British radio, from Auntie Kathleen of Children's Hour and those formal talks of the early BBC, via the forces' sweethearts like Jean Metcalfe and Marjorie Anderson, to today's topliners like Martha Kearney and Bridget Kendall.

Matthew Sweet travels to The University of Manchester - home of Delia Derbyshire's private collection of audio recordings - to learn more about the wider career and working methods of the woman who realised Ron Grainer's original theme to Doctor Who. 

marking one hundred years of the BBC through the riches to be found in the corporation's broadcast archive, James Naughtie and Helen Lewis demonstrate what the archive can tell us about the gathering and delivering of breaking news, from the careful patrician announcements of the 20s and 30s to the fizzing pace and punchy headlines of instant digital delivery.

Imagine a world without polling and audience research - who did the early BBC think it was talking to? Matthew Sweet unearths some of the earliest archive recordings in existence and uncovers a complicated relationship between the BBC and its vast, invisible audience.

Gillian Reynolds CBE unearths the voices that have echoed through her life as critic and broadcaster on commercial and BBC radio. Sue MacGregor, Dame Jenny Abramsky, Nick Pollard and Jimmy Gordon help to capture the seismic changes in radio during Gillian’s lifetime and its unquenchable, irresistible appeal even in the clamorous age of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  

During the last 100 years, the BBC has commissioned more drama than any other organisation, leading one former head of the corporation’s drama department to describe it as "the National Theatre of the Air.’ Michael Symmons selects dramas from across the century that reflect the many features of the genre that help distinguish it from other narrative forms, noting just how many of our greatest writers have been attracted to try their hands at radio drama. 

As well as the launch of BBC Radio 1 to 4, 1967 also saw the arrival of the BBC's first batch of local radio stations: Radio Leicester on 8th November, Radio Sheffield on 15th November and Radio Merseyside on 22nd November. Made to mark the 40th anniversary in 2007 - Libby Purves takes an affectionate look back at the first chaotic days of local programming - from unruly guests and erratic phone-ins to technological mishaps - and explores how the ideals of the early pioneers survived into the 21st Century. 
 
German writer Timur Vermes examines how the BBC used humour throughout the war to counter Nazi propaganda. The BBC's radio transmissions to Germany contained not only news and comment but also drew on an unusual method of British psychological warfare, satire and humour, as a form of counter-propaganda. What did the authors of these programmes, the BBC officials and the relevant governmental institutions hope to achieve with satire as a weapon of war? 

A visit to the headquarters of BBC Monitoring, to discover where the World Service gets its information for news stories.

BBC Monitoring's team of journalists reports on media from 150 countries in up to 100 languages and provides information and analyses to BBC newsrooms and the UK government, as well as commercial clients including universities and thinktanks. It also has an intriguing and, at times, dramatic history dating back to the eve of World War Two.

THE GLOBAL JIGSAW - MONITORING AFRICA (2023)
What does it take to track media in Africa where radio is king? Originally set up as the East Africa Unit after the Suez crisis, BBC Monitoring’s Nairobi operation has seen history unfold on the continent over six decades. The Global Jigsaw team travels to Nairobi to meet the monitors.    

For 75 years a stately home near Reading has eavesdropped on the world. As BBC Monitoring changes, Caz Graham hears why the organisation is leaving Caversham Park. Staff, past and present, talk about the vital daily work conducted behind the grand portico, amidst splendid grounds, listening in to and translating radio broadcasts since 1943. 

A tour of Caversham Park - the home of BBC Monitoring, which has been monitoring some of the world’s most seismic events for 75 years. The estate, which became BBC Monitoring's Headquarters in 1941, will be closing its doors for good, following news of a £4million pound funding cut. Rajan Datar visits the iconic building.

Continuity announcers' voices are at the heart of Radio 4 - they introduce the programmes and bring us the news. But who are they? What does it take to do their job - from introducing The Archers to reading the Shipping Forecast? And what happens on those, hopefully rare, occasions when things don't go according to plan?

At the height of the Cold War, the BBC devised a programme schedule to be transmitted from the bunker in the event of a nuclear attack.

The BBC World Service has been housed in Bush House since 1941. For over 70 years it has broadcast from this home in The Strand; through a World War, Cold War, decolonisation throughout Africa, the Iranian Revolution, Perestroika, Tiananmen Square, two Gulf Wars and into the new Millennium. Now it's leaving Bush, to join the rest of BBC News in one building elsewhere in London.

BBC World Service's daily morning editorial meeting, which normally takes place behind the doors of Bush House, is opened up and broadcast live for the first time. In this meeting - a daily part of life in the building - the newsroom's editors discuss and agree the big stories and developments and decide on which stories will shape the day's news agenda. 

WS director, Peter Horrocks, explains how the World Service is positioned to compete in the global broadcasting arena, as it reaches its 80th birthday.

Rajan Datar finds out how listeners can contribute to a day of live programmes from Bush House next Wednesday when the World Service celebrates its 80th birthday.

Over To You explores the way that the World Service's shortwave transmissions are being affected by jamming in parts of Asia. We find out how jamming of the World Service shortwave transmissions inside China is spilling over into neighbouring countries, and explore what the BBC can do to redress the situation through international organisations.

Radio Ulster crackled into life on 1st January 1975. From that day to this, Radio Ulster has covered every breaking news story, every sporting drama, it’s given listeners a voice, given us a laugh, catered for the widest musical tastes and showcased our finest performers. In this two-part series celebrating Radio Ulster’s 50th birthday, presenter Anna Curran time travels through five decades of turbulent history, mixing highlights of the station’s colourful archive with the era’s musical hits.

For 90 years the BBC World Service has been broadcasting in dozens of languages to audiences so huge they are counted in the tens of millions all over the globe. In a special 90th anniversary programme, Nick Rankin, Digs into a treasure trove of sound archive and talks to journalists who made and still make the BBC World Service such a remarkable network.

The evolution of local radio, featuring broadcasters from the industry and rare archive.

Roger Bolton examines the genesis of Reithian values and finds out how well Lord Reith - the first Director General of the BBC - lived up to his own exacting standards. 


Celebrating fifty years of World Service broadcasting. Robert Milne-Tyte begins by examining the pioneer days, followed by its evolution and future.

The first 21 years of the World Service: how it began in 1938, its important role in WW2 and its aftermath, including historic moments as they were first broadcast by Churchill, de Gaulle, Eisenhower.

Sean Street delves into the archive of one of the most innovative and controversial BBC radio producers, reviewing Charles Parker’s work from the Radio Ballads to his sacking in 1972. For a man who revolutionised radio production, who is still talked about and revered today, his death was hardly reported in the press.  

Radio played a key role in the propaganda campaigns of Nazi Germany. The most notorious personality in this radio war was William Joyce, or 'Lord Haw-Haw' - who came to be known as the English voice of Nazi Germany. But he wasn't alone in this effort. Professor Jo Fox of Durham University discovers the lost transcripts of Radio Caledonia, a 'secret station' designed to disseminate defeatist propaganda to the people of Scotland and sow seeds of dissent among its listeners. Set up by the German Propaganda Ministry in 1940, the presenter was Scottish national Donald Grant.

Over the past 90 years radio has proven itself a powerful political force, not just reporting on changes of government, but sending out a call to arms during some of the biggest revolutionary uprisings of the 20th Century. These events track radio's evolution, from its rise as an exciting new technology used by the Bolsheviks to demonstrate their modernity, to its reported demise amid the social media buzz of the Arab Spring. Fi Glover speaks to those who participated in these events, as well as people who stood by their radios listening during extraordinary times.  

Radio Normandy was a commercial radio station that, back in the 1930s, was often more popular than the majestic BBC. The man behind it all was called, improbably, Captain Leonard Plugge. And in this programme, Dominic Sandbrook tells the story of this clever, enterprising and subversive man.  

In the early 1980s Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, alias Santiago, was a young journalist determined to set up a clandestine radio station in the midst of El Salvador’s civil war. But the Salvadoran military had posts all over the country and the crackdown of opposition was extremely violent. Could Carlos pull it off?

A selection of programmes showcasing the World Service's programme for radio DXers.

Rajan Datar finds out about the growing concern among international broadcasters about the increase in jamming of transmissions and discusses potential solutions to the problem with the World Service's Nigel Fry and Sadeq Saba.

How is pocket radio able to recreate all the atmosphere and sounds of a football match? CrowdScience's Geoff Marsh sets off - microphone in hand - to follow the journey of sound on the radio. 
SECRET ESSEX - MARCONI'S COMMUNICATION REVOLUTION (2024)
Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi is acknowledged as the inventor of wireless technology, which led to the birth of radio and what would become the BBC. Much of this work took place in Chelmsford and nearby Writtle in the early 1900s. Radio historian Tim Wander explains how it revolutionised communication as we know it.  

A look at the story behind Guglielmo Marconi's success and his continuing legacy. Guglielmo Marconi's success in inventing the technical possibility of waves that move through the air in December 1901 was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th Century. What is the story behind his success and what is his legacy?

As Radio 4 marks one hundred years of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC, Paddy O'Connell guides us through the history and meaning of 'The Ships'. 

'The birth of the wireless'. Profile of radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, with contributions from his daughter Degna Marconi, second wife Maria and radio specialist Dexter Smith.

"He put radio waves to work" Guglielmo Marconi revolutionised communication and is described as "the father of the wireless" as he was the first to find a practical application for the use of wireless radio waves.

Sean Street examines those moments where Radio forgets itself, when laughter, alcohol or sheer emotion well up. Traditionally the wireless has been somewhat formal, but occasionally reporters have been overwhelmed by what they're witnessing. Then communication comes pure, direct and unselfconscious. Hear the moments when Radio reveals far more than what is being said.

Bonnie Greer reports on the fascinating story of how pioneering black broadcasters broke radio's racial taboos, putting radio at the heart of the national debate on race and laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement.

Through wars hot and Cold, reform and repression, reporting Russia is always a tough journalistic assignment. A look back, with archive treasures and correspondents' memories.

When Christine Finn's in-flight entertainment was accidentally tuned to cockpit radio on a transatlantic flight, the voice of air traffic control as they reached Irish airspace seemed to be welcoming her as well as the pilot. Hear archive recordings of transatlantic flights from the first by Alcock and Brown in 1919. And at the North Atlantic Communications Centre in nearby Ballygirreen, Christine met the faces behind the voices she heard coming out of the dark on her own Atlantic Crossing.

What if there was never a 'Truth' era before 'Post-Truth'? If 'fake news' is not as new as advertised, might we have something to learn from this history? Phil uses this long history of deliberate attacks on truth to identify tricks and techniques that are still in use today, drawing on the expertise of Lawrence Bittman, the ex-deputy chief of the Czechoslovak disinformation department.

From noises off to the sounds of tomorrow, composer Sarah Angliss and some of the world’s greatest effects artists celebrate 200 years of the awesome power of sound effects.

Designer Wayne Hemingway examines 100 years of British advertising on film and TV. Wayne follows advertisers’ first hesitant steps into both the big and small screen. This archive points to the moments when advertisers fuelled certain movements and fortified idealistic notions, re-defining and re-directing our sense of self and what it means to be British.

In the early 1980s, film-maker John Edwards interviewed 50 of the surviving cameramen who had worked for the cinema newsreel companies in America and Europe. His recordings were lost and recovered only recently. The story of the newsreel, from the Lindbergh take-off to the Apollo splash-downs, can now be told in the voices of the men who filmed history.

On 12 April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became an explorer like none other before him, going faster and further than any human in history, into what had always been the impenetrable and infinite unknown. Dr Kevin Fong tells the story of how 27 year old Yuri Gagarin came to launch a new chapter in the history of exploration and follows the cosmonaut’s one hour flight around the Earth. 

“The intelligence coup of the century.” The extraordinary story of the longest running and most successful secret intelligence operation of the 20th Century. For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company, Swiss-based Crypto AG, to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was owned for over 20 Cold War years by the CIA in partnership with the BND, the German Intelligence Service.

FROM SPUTNIK TO SATNAV - BBC RADIO 4
Chris Bowlby traces the history of the man-made satellite, beginning with the story of the dramatic Cold War launch of Sputnik.
Continuing his investigation of how satellites in space have changed the world, Chris reveals how a broadcasting revolution showed the reach of satellite power.
Chris Bowlby concludes his series tracing the history of the man-made satellite, with a look at the competition for supremacy in the next generation of space-based technology. 

COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION - BBC RADIO 4
Communication technology is very often funded and developed for socialising and commerce. What happens when militant groups use it to influence others and spread their political ideas? This is a programme from the BBC World Service Archive, originally broadcast in 2006.
Once, messages could only move as fast as man, now they travel at the speed of light. Examining the dramatic changes in how people communicate using technology.
Exploring the concept of web communities, match-making sites, instant messaging, SMS. How modern communications technology can be used in novel ways to keep families together.

MAKING NEWS 
WHAT'S THE STORY         THE ENDLESS CYCLE              BRAVE NEW WORLDS
Journalist and broadcaster Steve Richards presents a new, three-part series examining the News: from bulletins to rolling news and citizen journalism, what News was, what it is now and what it will become. What makes something News and something else not? Is the News a public service, a cycle, an entertainment built on sensation, a constant rush of 'breaking' news or a form of national communion and shared belonging? Driven by changes in technology and in news culture itself, and as the news cycle becomes ever faster, the question of what News is is also about how we consume it, and who 'we' are becoming as a result.

BBC Political Editor, Nick Robinson's series on relations between broadcasters and politicians, over the years. From the General Strike in 1926; the dispute over foreign policy in the 1930s; the Suez crisis in 1956; the row between the Labour Party and the BBC in the early 1970s; the clashes over reporting 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, culminating in the broadcasting ban on terrorists and their supporters; the Falklands War; and the Iraq War. In the final programme, he concludes by looking at the present relationship between broadcasters and politicians.
EPISODE 1         EPISODE 2         EPISODE 3         EPISODE 4
EPISODE 5         EPISODE 6         EPISODE 7         EPISODE 8

In 2024, Ceefax reached its 50th birthday, and to celebrate this unique golden anniversary, the BBC's once-mighty teletext news service is receiving the greatest gift of all - the gift of life, courtesy of the greatest novelty politician in the omniverse, Count Binface. For eight years, Binface pledged in his election manifestos to bring back Ceefax and now, at last, the BBC is granting his wish. With just one small hitch - it's on the radio. Still, you've got to start somewhere. 



Gordon Corera gains unprecedented access to Britain's ultra secret listening station where super computers monitor the world's communications traffic and Britain's global eavesdropping and electronic surveillance operations are conducted. The layers of secrecy which have surrounded GCHQ's work are peeled away - what exactly does it do and who is it listening to?  

Stories from the intelligence agency’s hidden past, in some unlikely places. Gordon Corera reveals how GCHQ has been listening in for 100 years, starting just after the end of the First World War and through to the present day. We hear from people who worked at the listening station in Scarborough during the Second World War and the Cold War. And Gordon reveals the vital role played by the Scarborough station during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF GCHQ - SPYING ON BERLIN AND BUDE
How the intelligence agency changed direction after the end of the Cold War - and faced the challenges of the digital age. Gordon Corera becomes the first journalist allowed to record inside GCHQ's listening station at Bude, which has spied on global communications satellites for decades. Taking us from the Cold War, when GCHQ was quietly eavesdropping on the front lines in Berlin, to the current digital era, Gordon finds out how it has been forced out into the open.

For decades it was Britain's best kept secret, the huge codebreaking operation centred around a Victorian mansion in Buckinghamshire, Bletchley Park. Despite the fact that at least 8000 people worked at Bletchley, and many others in listening and codebreaking centres across the country, no-one gave the secret away. 

Many of us remember the first portable music device we owned: a transistor radio, a boombox, a Walkman or perhaps an iPod. We might even recall the songs we played on it. But we might be less aware of how profoundly audio technology developments from the 1950s to 2000s changed the ways in which we consume music and other audio outside of the home or concert venue. Iszi Lawrence uncovers the history of portable music listeners.

Well over a century on since the first wireless radio transmission from the Isle of Wight, voices from the ether continue to inform, educate and entertain us, even sometimes to save our lives. Alan logs on to connect with three of them. In Kodiak, Alaska, Terry's public radio fisheries reports are at the cutting edge of climate change. In Sydney, Ben is embracing the podcast revolution. And in St Helena, Sharon hosts a local community radio show on this, one of the most isolated islands on earth.

We use global positioning systems (GPS) for our sat navs and our mobile phones, and it's used extensively in aviation and shipping navigation. But what happens when it's disrupted? GPS jamming, when the signal isn't able to get through - and spoofing - which tricks the receiver into calculating a false position, is happening more and more. We look into the impact on the transportation sector - and on our everyday lives.

DUBLIN PIRATE RADIO - 1916-1979 
Pirate radio in Ireland has a long history, but it has tended to focus on the so-called super pirates of the 1980s. What about the journey to that point? This story brings us from rebels to giggling schoolboys, and from Irish language activists to IRA pirate stations in Rathmines bedsits. (THREE CASTLES BURNING PODCAST)

Jordan Erica Webber delves into the murky world of pirate radio, from the first black radio station to broadcast in the UK to the rise in popularity of Haitian radio in Brooklyn (GUARDIAN CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING PODCAST)

Sean Street tells the story of Marie Slocombe and the BBC Sound Archive, which began almost by accident.

Sean Street investigates the history the cultural battle between the BBC and commercial radio, which back to the 1920s

Brian Hayes looks back over 80 years of advertising on radio in the UK. Amid the changing fashions he finds some of the most finely-crafted, punchy, emotional and entertaining radio, as well as some of the most amateurish.

A look at the early days of BBC Monitoring, which opened in the early part or WWII, out of Wood Norton Hall, near Evesham.

Over the years, one of ITV's unique features has been a regional structure which no longer exists. Mark Lawson examines the history of Yorkshire Television.

A Quarrel in a Faraway Country: David Vaughan explores the archives of the national radio building in Prague to tell the story of the events of 1938 from a Czech point of view.

From BBC World Service.

Broadcast in early 1940 to inform the British public about how the BBC monitors propaganda and news by enemy and neutral countries. The BBC Monitoring Service has its origins in 1935. However, it was during World War Two that it came into its own. Staff with wide-ranging skills and experience monitored radio broadcasts and other communications from around the world.

BBC RADIO 4

Documentary focussing on the Irish port of Greenore, and its part in the story of Radio Caroline.

Paul Rowley explores the story of Independent Local Radio, which began with LBC in the fractious days of 1973.

Paul Rowley looks at the life on the lesser known pirate radio station in the Irish Sea: Radio Caroline North.

Stephen Fry traces the evolution of the mobile phone, from hefty executive bricks that required a separate briefcase to carry the battery to the smart little devices of today.

Radio Comes to Wales is an episode of the BBC Radio Wales program Radio Wales Rewind. The episode is from 1948 and celebrates the history of radio broadcasting in Wales. Huw Stephens presents the episode.

Celebrating the 60th birthday of the Isle of Man's radio station.

Roger Bolton recalls a Cold War battle between Soviet bloc radio engineers trying to jam radio signals coming from the West and their Western counterparts.

Book of the Week. Peter Pomerantsev tells the story of German-born Englishman Sefton Delmer, whose radio broadcasts were used to subvert Goebbels’ propaganda during World War II.

A selection of broadcasts from 'Lord Haw Haw'

Laurie Taylor uncovers the story of Telefon Hirmondo, the world’s first broadcasting organisation in 1890s Budapest. From 2013.

Britain has been listening to pirate radio since the 1960s and today there are more illegal broadcasters than ever. Former pirate DJ Trevor Nelson investigates the current scene.


Nick Barraclough recalls the first pirate radio stations which sprung up on the US/Mexico border in the 1950s.

Miriam Margolyes charts the life of her friend, cinema voiceover artist Bill Mitchell. With Rob Townsend. From June 2009.


Part 1. If anyone has part 2, please let me have it and I'll upload it here!

Eddie Mair presents a celebration of 40 years of Radio 4 and its gradual transformation from a rather old-fashioned service to a cornerstone of British radio.

THE STORY OF POP RADIO - BBC RADIO 2 (1997)
Noel Edmonds presents a four-part series tracing the development of pop music broadcasting, with recollections from Influential DJs and rare archive recordings.

THE CHANGING SOUND OF RADIO - BBC RADIO 4 EXTRA
Wildlife recordist Chris Watson examines some of the ways technology has changed the radio we listen to, from early experiments in sound to the podcast explosion.
PART 1      PART 2      PART 3

MUSIC IN THE AIR 
Paul Gambaccini presents a six-part history of music radio in the UK and USA.
PART 1     PART2     PART 3     PART 4     PART 5     PART 6

RADIO LUXEMBOURG 208 - YOUR STATION OF THE STARS - BBC RADIO 2 (2012)
Noel Edmonds tells the story of Luxy, the original pop music station in the UK. Hugely influential for millions of 'under the bedclothes listeners' starved of pop music.

A document left in a pub, its chance discovery and scandals already facing the secret services in post-war Britain. The document was a journalist's notebook. Passing through the hands of a barmaid, a landlord and the local police, it got perilously close to disclosing vital secrets about British surveillance - secrets that thousands of workers had taken strenuous efforts to preserve. Document discovers exactly how close they came to facing a fresh calamity.




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