Radio Fun and the BBC Variety Department, 1922—67: Comedy and Popular Music on Air

Description

This book provides a narrative history of the BBC Radio Variety Department exploring, along chronological lines, the workings of, tensions within and the impact of BBC policies on the programme-making department which generated the organisation’s largest audiences. It provides an insight into key events, personalities, programmes, internal politics and trends in popular entertainment, censorship and anti-American policy as they individually or collectively affected the Department. Martin Dibbs examines how the Department's programmes became markers in the daily and weekly lives of millions of listeners, and helped shape the nation's listening habits when radio was the dominant source of domestic entertainment. The book explores events and topics which, while not directly forming part of the Variety Department’s history, nevertheless intersected with or had an impact on it. Such topics include the BBC’s attitude to jazz and rock and roll, the arrival of television with its impact on radio, the pirate radio stations, and the Popular Music and Gramophone Departments, both of whom worked closely with the Variety Department. Front Matter ....Pages i-xx Introduction (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 1-12 1922–1933: Variety Before Variety (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 13-46 1933–1939: The Show Begins (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 47-105 1939–1945: We Will Be Working Under Difficulties (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 107-170 1945–1955: A Golden Age for Radio Comedy (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 171-228 1956–1967: Sound into Vision; Popular into Pop (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 229-274 Coda (Martin Dibbs)....Pages 275-281 Back Matter ....Pages 283-298