LASER 558. This popular pirate station operated for a few years off the Essex coast from the motor vessel (MV) Communicator. The station was American owned and staffed by U.S. disc jockeys. The station came off air after severe storms and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-based blockades in November 1985. In its short life, it highlighted the fact that the bland Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) version of Independent Local Radio had failed to replace the excitement in music-radio provided by the 1960s pirates. Ultimately, another station that began operations at about the time Laser came off air, Kiss FM, was to provide a groundswell of pressure from popular listener support to actually gain legal status.
LAUGH AND GROW FIT. Hailed as the first daily on-air keep-fit program on radio, Laugh and Grow Fit was broadcast on Radio Normandy during 1937 and 1938. Devised and presented by the Northern comedian Joe Murgatroyd, accompanied at the piano by his wife, “Poppet,” the 15-minute programs went out—usually live—at 7:45 a.m. on weekday mornings and consisted of a series of jokes and exercises to music.
LEAGUE OF OVALTINEYS. This was the radio club linked to the Ovaltineys Concert Party, which began on Radio Luxembourg in February 1935. Children joining the club received a badge, rulebook, and details of the Ovaltineys’ code, which enabled them to interprete “secret” messages on the program each week.
LETTER FROM AMERICA. This weekly 15-minute talk was broadcast to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) listeners from 1946 until the death in 2003 of the broadcaster with whom it was inextricably associated, Alastair Cooke. Originally called American Letter, the program was a reflection of current affairs in the United States, interpreted from a personal standpoint by Cooke. The elegance of his prose style and the intimate presentation gave the program a quality that ensured its longevity for approximately 3,000 editions, heard in 52 countries, worldwide. Many of the broadcasts have, by their very nature, become historical documents, responding as they do to some of the most significant moments in U.S. and world history but with the eye of an interested observer and chronicler. Cooke’s Letters gave many outside America a view of great issues and events beyond the journalistic angle of the news reporter, including John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Watergate, the Clinton impeachment hearings, and the attack on the World Trade Center. Since Cooke’s death, a selection has appeared in book form.
LEVIS, CARROLL (1910–1968). Associated with prewar British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Radio Luxembourg amateur talent shows, Carroll Levis had achieved a successful radio career in his native Canada, prior to his arrival in Great Britain in 1935. He toured the country, auditioning hopeful entertainers, choosing the best of them to appear on his program, Carroll Levis Discoveries. After the war, he continued with the broadcasts, but a mental breakdown resulted in his temporary return to Canada in 1947.
In 1950, Levis had resumed his touring talent shows, but with an unsuccessful lawsuit brought by Hughie Green against Levis and the BBC over an alleged conspiracy to keep Green’s own talent show, Opportunity Knocks, off the air, Levis’s career began to decline. He had moved into television by this time, but after November 1959, he did not broadcast. Despite numerous attempts at relaunching his career, he died, financially impoverished in obscurity in London.
LEWIS, CECIL (1898–1997). In a long and remarkable life, Cecil Lewis made his mark in many areas of entertainment, including work in Hollywood as a script writer, where he won an Oscar for his screenplay of Pygmalion. It is, however, as one of the founding fathers of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) that he is widely remembered in Great Britain. After winning the Military Cross for his work as a pilot in World War I, he joined the staff of the engineering firm, Metropolitan Vickers. In the early 1920s, this company became one of a consortium seeking to launch broadcasting in Britain, and thus Lewis became the partner of John Reith in the foundation of the British Broadcasting Company, as program manager.
Lewis mounted the first plays to be heard on radio, and also produced the early broadcasts of Children’s Hour, in which he appeared as “Uncle Caractacus.” Lewis spent only four years with the BBC, resigning in 1926 because his artistic nature baulked at the growing bureaucracy within the organization. He wrote one of the first books on the subject of radio, Broadcasting from Within, which was published in 1924.
After working as a flight instructor in World War II, Lewis came under the influence of the ideas of the Russian mystic, George Gurdjieff, and set up a farming community in South Africa to preserve the philosopher’s ideas. Thereafter, he worked as a radio producer for the United Nations and then briefly for Associated Rediffusion at the time of the launch of commercial television in the UK. Beginning in from 1956, he became involved as the organizer of the Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition.
Lewis spent the last years of an extraordinary life on the island of Corfu and continued to write books and plays. He married three times and died in London in January 1997, two months short of his 99th birthday.
LICENSE FEE. From its foundation, the license fee has been the mainstay of British Broadcasting Company/Corporation (BBC) finance. The system was introduced on 1 November 1922, set at a price of 10 shillings. The fee remained unchanged until 1946 when it was doubled to one pound. With the advent of television, the license was combined for both media, rising in 1965 again to 25 shillings. In 1971, a television-only license was introduced, and from that time onward radio in the UK has been license free for consumers. Apart from its value as revenue, the compulsory license fee offered a very useful measurement of the potential total audience for radio, particularly prior to the introduction of a systematic listener research unit in 1936.
LIDDELL, ALVAR (1908–1981). Coming from a Swedish background, nevertheless this British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announcer was the on-air epitome of “received” pronunciation. Beginning his career as a singer, he joined the corporation in 1932. It was Liddell who was present at the microphone to announce or introduce some of the most significant moments of UK—and world— history, such as the abdication of King Edward VIII and Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast of 3 September 1939 informing the nation that war had been declared. He retired in 1969.
LIFE WITH THE LYONS. First broadcast on the Light Programme in November 1950, this highly successful family situation comedy show starred American husband and wife Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels (billed as “Hollywood’s happiest married couple”) and their real-life offspring, Richard and Barbara. Owing something to the quick-fire style of George Burns and Gracie Allen, the show was written by Bebe and revolved around fictional situations in the bringing up of their children. The show ran through 10 series, produced the spin-offs of two films (1953 and 1954) and a book of recipes by Molly Weir, who played the family’s housekeeper, Aggie MacDonald, finally ending its last run in May 1961. Also between 1955 and 1961 were three television versions.
LIGHT PROGRAMME. With the coming of World War II, and the creation of the Forces Programme, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had taken a major step toward streaming of radio output, with the transfer of “light” entertainment into predominantly one network, with other material carried by the Home Service. After the war, the latter service continued, and the Forces Programme, which, with its successor, the Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF) Programme, had proved hugely popular with domestic listeners, was transformed into the new Light Programme. The change came on 29 July 1945, with a broadcast of music from the BBC Theatre Organ, played by Sandy Macpherson. On 30 September1967, the Light Programme became Radio 2.
THE LISTENER. The second weekly journal established by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) after The Radio Times was launched in January 1929, it had the aim of “capturing the fugitive word in print.” Initially a medium for transcriptions of broadcast talks, it expanded to become a respected journal containing reviews and general features. One of its original acknowledged aims was to “promote the BBC’s work in adult education, by linking up the interests of the occasional listener with those of the serious, regular student.” In its lifetime, it had some distinguished editors, including Richard Lambert (1929–1939), Anthony Howard (1979–1981), and Alan Coren (1987–1989). From a circulation peak of 150,000 in the early 1950s, it gradually declined until 1990 when it was selling a mere 17,000 copies a week. With losses amounting to £1 million a year by this time, the BBC decided to close it down, and the last issue was in January 1991.
Reporting its 10th anniversary celebration in January 1939, the BBC Handbook for 1940 quoted one critic as saying that it would be “invaluable to the historian as a guide to the multiple and changing interests and tastes of the age.” This view remains today an accurate assessment of the magazine’s legacy. See also JOURNALS.
LISTENING IN (1). Although not broadcast itself, this stage show is noteworthy in that it was the first of its kind based on the new medium of radio. Billed as a “Musical Burlesque in Fifteen Radio Calls,” Listening In opened in London in July 1922, with Will Hay as “Professor Broadcaster.”
“LISTENING IN” (2). As will be seen from the above, “Listening In” was the common phrase used to denote the act of experiencing radio programs in the first years of the new medium. John Reith disliked the phrase, as implying some form of eavesdropping, and in his early book Broadcast Over Britain (1924), went out of his way to denounce this “objectionable habit,” writing:
This is a relic of the days when he actually did listen in to messages not primarily intended for him; now he is the one addressed, and he accordingly listens. Only the unlicenced listen-in.
LISTEN WITH MOTHER. This much-loved program for the under-fives began in January 1950. A 15-minute mix of stories, songs, and nursery rhymes set to music by Ann Driver, it was broadcast originally—and for many years—at 1:45 p.m., prior to Woman’s Hour. Its presenters were Daphne Oxenford and Julia Lang, although for the last seven years of its life they were replaced by Nerys Hughes and Tony Aitken. For several generations of small children, its theme tune—the Berceuse from Gabriel Fauré’s Dolly Suite and its traditional opening words, “Are you sitting comfortably? then I’ll begin . . . ” became iconic, and there was a national outcry when, in September 1982, the program was taken off air, having already been transferred to a less-effective morning place in the schedule, resulting in reduced listening figures.
LOCAL RADIO. Historically, UK radio has always been firmly rooted in localness and regionality. The first British Broadcasting Company (BBC) stations created between 1922 and 1924 were essentially local, born out the limitations of transmitter power at the time.
The concept of a network of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) local radio stations, which began in 1967 with the establishment of Radio Leicester began as an experiment initiated by the then director of BBC Radio, Frank Gillard. Gillard had conceived the idea after a visit in the 1950s to the United States but determined that the BBC model would be strongly speech and community-based. Initially, stations were closely involved with local authorities who even partly funded the experiment in its early days.
Over the years, BBC local radio has been at the forefront of a number of funding crises, and threats of closure have occasionally arisen. By 2005, however, the network of 40 stations, grouped in 11 regions, was in a strong position, and audiences were loyal, largely from a 55+ demographic. Added to this, a number of ethnic inner city stations reflected the growing multicultural nature of the UK. BBC local radio increasingly sought to play proactive roles in their communities, in many cases working to a policy of developed interactivity with audiences, working in and with those communities rather than limiting their involvement to that of the traditional broadcaster/ listener relationship.
In October 1973, Independent Local Radio (ILR) began with the establishment of the London Broadcasting Company (LBC) and Capital Radio, and for nearly 20 years commercial radio in Britain developed on a purely local basis, initially with a strong community base founded on a public service ethic (hence the early insistence on the use of the term “independent” rather than “commercial” radio). As the digital revolution of the late 1990s and early 21st century gained momentum, local multiplexes developed alongside their national equivalents, providing opportunities for new digital-only local stations.
Concurrent with this came the movement toward another tier of local broadcasting in the form of community radio, which developed out of a limited experiment, with the first full licenses being granted in the spring and early summer of 2005.
THE LOCAL RADIO COMPANY. In May 2004, the Local Radio Company was formed to purchase the complete share capital of Radio Investments, a long-time investor in UK commercial radio. Radio Investments had been a share holder in Capital Radio in 1973. Since that time, the company specialized in the development of local stations, and the new company, based in High Wycombe, came into control of 26 radio stations, with a wide geographical spread of Britain, from Falkirk in Scotland to the Isle of Wight. In 2005, a 27th station was added to the roster of the Local Radio Company in the form of Durham FM. The company also runs First Radio Sales, selling advertising to local stations across the country.
LODGE, OLIVER (1851–1940). The eminent English physicist, born in Penkull, Staffordshire, studied at the Royal College of Science and University College, London, becoming in 1881 professor of physics at Liverpool University. In 1900, he was appointed first principal of Birmingham University and was knighted in 1902. Especially distinguished for his work with electricity, he was a pioneer of wireless telegraphy. In 1894, he demonstrated wireless telegraphy across more than 50 yards to the British Association. He established the importance of tuning to wireless communications and patented a circuit for this purpose in 1897. Unfortunately, he dismissed the possibilities and did not pursue his research in the area. Nevertheless, he received the Albert Medal for his work from the Royal Society of Arts in 1919. Lodge was a frequent and popular broadcaster of talks, and became interested in psychical research and communication with the spirit world, seeking to bring science and religion together. Among his writings on the subject of wireless are Signalling across Space without Wires (1897) and Talks about Wireless (1925).
LONDON BROADCASTING COMPANY (LBC). First heard on 8 October 1973, LBC was the UK’s first legal land-based commercial radio station. Initially, the station weathered troubled times both in terms of finance and listenership, and has, over its subsequent existence, been the subject of a number of takeovers, reinventions, and franchise renewals. Closely connected in its initial incarnation with Independent Radio News, in the early 21st century, it was bought by the Chrysalis Group, which invested heavily in high profile presenters in its relaunch of the station. Apart from the continuity of its name, LBC remains what it was when commercial radio began in Britain, committed to—and licensed to provide—an all-speech program format.
LONG, NORMAN (1893–1951). Long was a musical comedian, whose act revolved around semisung monologues to his own piano accompaniment. His significance was that, having been first heard on the opening evening of transmissions from both Marconi House and Savoy Hill, he could claim to be the first comic whose reputation was created principally by the medium of radio. He also took part in the first Royal Command Performance to be broadcast (1927).
Long later appeared on commercial stations, including Radio Luxembourg, and many of his routines used radio as their subject, including “London and Daventry Calling” (1926), “Luxembourg Calling” (1935), and his satire on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) censorship, “We Can’t Let You Broadcast That” (1933). He retired after World War II, and ran a hotel in Salcombe, Devon, until his death.
LONGWAVE. The term is an archaic one, still used to describe the section of the radio spectrum used in broadcasting around the 1500 meters wavelength. Like mediumwave (MW), its transmitters utilize amplitude modulation (AM). Longwave (LW)’s advantage over mediumwave is that its ground wave is capable of greater distance than the higher frequencies employed in MW transmissions. It has also been of value in the past due to its capacity for being receivable on the most rudimentary of radio sets.
LONG MARCH OF EVERYMAN. Broadcast from November 1971 on Radio 4, over six months, this epic series of 26 programs, each lasting 45 minutes, was the most ambitious social history project ever mounted by British Broadcasting Company/Corporation (BBC) radio. Produced by Michael Mason, a vast cast of historians contributed, and there was a major sonic contribution by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The then managing-director of BBC Radio, Ian Trethowan, was a great advocate of the series, describing it as “a demonstration of faith that radio continues to be as effective in imaginative broadcasting as it is on all sides acknowledged to be in the fields of music and of news.”
LORD HAW HAW. See JOYCE, WILLIAM.
LORD OF THE RINGS. First broadcast in 1981 on Radio 4, this ambitious and highly successful adaptation of the J. R. R. Tolkien epic was created by Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell. In its original form, it was broadcast in 26 episodes, later repeated twice—in 1982 and 2002, in 13 hour-long episodes. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) also issued the broadcast commercially. The production contained many major personalities from the theater, including Ian Holm, Michael Hordern, and Robert Stephens.
LUX RADIO THEATRE. First heard by UK audiences from Radio Luxembourg in 1938, the program was broadcast on Sundays to large audiences. The great London theater producer C. B. Cochran took over the show and it became a vehicle for some of the major stars of the time, among them Flanagan and Allen, Beatrice Lillie, Jessie Matthews, and Elsie Randolph.
LYNN, VERA (1917– ). Vera Lynn made her first broadcast in 1935 with the Joe Loss Orchestra, but her career was made by her role in radio during World War II. Working with producer Howard Thomas, she hosted the radio series Sincerely Yours in November 1941, in which she read dedications and messages for those in the armed forces from loved ones at home. This, together with songs such as “We’ll Meet Again” and “The White Cliffs of Dover,” established her as a major star, and earned her the popular title of “The Forces’ Sweetheart.” After the war, she continued in radio and television, including a 1951 series for Radio Luxembourg, Vera Lynn Sings.
She was the first British artist to reach the top of the U.S. charts with her song, “Auf Wiedersehn Sweetheart.” She remained a muchloved symbol for a whole generation, and played a major part in the broadcast celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, in 2005. She received an OBE in 1969, and a Damehood in 1975.
LYTTELTON, HUMPHREY (1921– ). Educated at Eton College and Camberwell School of Art, Lyttelton saw war service from 1941–1946 in the Grenadier Guards. During this time he became proficient on the trumpet and in 1947 joined George Webb’s Dixielanders. The following year, he formed his own band and signed to Parlophone Records in 1949. In that same year, partnered by clarinetist Wally Fawkes (“Trog”), he founded the Daily Mail cartoon strip, Flook, a project he continued to work on until 1953. In 1956, his band supported Louis Armstrong in London, and produced the first British jazz record to become a hit, Bad Penny Blues. At the same time, Lyttelton developed other career strands, including radio. From 1967, he hosted Radio 2’s Best of Jazz and in 1972, commenced hosting the comedy radio series, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.