The Victory Roll - The Rise, Fall and resurrection of Radio Victory

Mention the names 'Victory' and generally they will think of Lord Nelson's Flagship with a lot of Portsmuthian residents and radio enthusiasts they will think of it as the name of the radio station that brought commercial radio to the South Hampshire, West Sussex and the Isle of Wight in 1975.

Although with its studios in Fratton, Portsmouth and as the ILR franchise for the city itself. The actual reach of the station took in Southampton as well, making for a pan-Solent approach to programming to cover both cities in news, sport and music as well. With the spread of local radio both via the BBC and Commercially throughout the county, Victory itself was seen to be the competitor to Radio Solent which had started in 1970 finally bringing local radio to the South of England.

In both style and content BBC Radio Solent and ILR's Radio Victory were competing on the same territory, bringing a mixture of music, chat, sport and local personalities. Such with each of them employing staff and DJ's who would go to either station at one time or another. A prime example was Kenny Everett who syndicate a show to Radio Solent at the start of the 1970's, but by the mid-seventies was syndicating one to Radio Victory.

At the time of launch in October 1975, the station had a feeling of want to be part of the community it served and it was little wonder that Victory built up a very loyal audience against Solent and was even topping the BBC's national music stations with the emphasis towards including the community as part of its programming. In particular 'Radio Victory News' looked at all aspects affect local people from planning issues to more deeper debates into local politics. With the area at that time which it served including the Naval Dockyard, never did this come into more deeper focus than in 1982. With job cuts to the workforce at the Naval Base and also the Falklands War as well. So the station during the period of the conflict went to a twenty four hour operation to cover the latest news, keeping locals up to date with breaking stories all the time.

For all its entertainment, Radio Victory was not afraid to try new things in its schedule with 'Navy News' reflecting the city's maritime links, during the first week of broadcasting, presenter Eugene Fraser partook in a live daily reading of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. This showed the link between Dickens and the city of Portsmouth where he was born. Alongside high culture sat 'The Wibbly Wobbly Wireless Show' presented by children and aided by focussing on what they liked in their day to day lives, plus for older teenagers '7-teen' looked at the issues effecting them.

In Victory playing pop music, its output reflected all types of music including Country and Western, Rhythm and Blues, Heavy Metal and Rock as well as championing new music with these programmes becoming hugely popular, not least 'Folk-Us' with local artist Shep Woolly looking the local and national folk music scene on a weekly basis. For all this success, the station one by one dropped these programmes to become a pop music station to reflect what other Commercial radio stations were doing in the early to mid-eighties. With pop music being such a big part of the output, this meant that they had their own chart show called 'Victory Roll' based on the sales at the local Co-Op department store years before there was a commercial radio chart show of any kind.

Though for being commercially successful did mean that what Radio Victory had done so well in its early years had simply vanished leaving the new DJ's to come through and form new careers for themselves. But this left the station unpopular with the IBA, with one of the problems, the station serving two major cities where as most ILR contracts served one major town or city and its surrounding area. The problem of what to do had reared its head once again, the feeling was that the IBA thought that Radio Victory was somewhat ignoring Southampton, although Victory was the holder of the contract for Portsmouth and not the Solent area as a whole. Somewhat the West Sussex problem had been solved with the launch of Southern Sound in the early 80's, but in this period rather then keep Radio Victory in place and advertise for a new Southampton contract, it was decided that Victory would be stripped of its contract and have it handed to Ocean Sound who were given a bigger area including the city of Southampton to start in October 1986.

Though where as most people would think that would be the end of the Radio Victory name, but one major world event made the station reborn again.

In 1994, the city of Portsmouth became the major focal point for the commemorations for the 50^th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the city's 800^th birthday, the new station called Victory FM was set up by Mark Samways and Kevin Huffer to be able to cover these events with the city's then Lord Mayor Alex Bentley gave space in the city's civic offices to allowing the service to go on the air for a twenty-eight day restricted service licence. This sewed the seeds for the service to be broadcast over Christmas 1994 and in June 1995 for the 50^th anniversary of D-Day both times with RSL Licences.

The name Radio Victory was re-given to the service when it was broadcast on cable television and for temporary FM licences such as to cover the UK Special Olympics in Portsmouth, with the success each time, six further RSL licences were used between 1994 and 1998. When a new ILR franchise was issued to the Greater Portsmouth area, they won it and started to broadcast from September 1999. Though with the station was taken over by The Local Radio Company in late 1999, many of the original staff who had re-set the new permanent station having left the company meant there was a whole change in personalities at the start of the year 2000.

At the turn of the new millennium in not being able to grab a foothold against more established local rivals, meant that Victory re branded twice in a couple of years before Portsmouth Football Club took a major stake in the station allying it to the club itself allowing the station to have the financial support at that difficult time, but when the football faced financial problems themselves this meant that when the station was sold to Celador's radio arm who took the station and made into to the southern offshoot of its Breeze station combining with stations from Winchester, Southampton and Haselmere.

The name of Radio Victory may have gone from radio dials, but the spirit and enthusiasts will live on for a name which meant radio in the city of Portsmouth.

"Everyone find a space on the floor.." Schools programmes and the way we learned...

About a week ago, my associate TellyCabbage when out looking for new and interesting things for my archive, when he found a set of booklets for the BBC Radio Schools Programme 'Time and Tune' ranging from the early 1960's upto the early 1980's. Now schools television is more prevalent in minds whatever age they are because of the imagery which they conjured up.  But BBC Schools Radio has been an equal partner to its televisual counterpart and some would now say more so with the radio service still continuing today albeit in the middle of the night like the television service as well.

The history of schools broadcasting starts at the beginning of radio in the UK itself with experimental schools broadcasts commencing in 1924 on the London station of the British Broadcasting Company (2LO) with talks by Sir Henry Walford Davies and E. Kay Robinson on music and natural history respectively. With Lord Reith's beliefs to 'Educate, Inform and Entertain' the education of the nation's children at heart, with the introduction of a schools service in 1925 to allow a broader curriculum to be broadcast.

As time went on secondary schools were included and the introduction of foreign language learning, but they BBC found with that there was adult audience who also followed these programmes as well.  But as the twenties moved into the 1930's and with the outbreak of the Second World War, the regional services were merge together to form a single home service for children which lead to any confusion about the new service being a laid by special news bulletins to explain the circumstances which had led for the service to be united together. By 1942 it meant that half of Britain's schools were listening to the wireless for their education.

After the Second World War, the Schools Broadcasting Council was set up in 1947 to replace what had gone before, allowing a uniting council to regulate the broadcasts and to create a varied curriculum which meant during the 1950's, the radio was there to educate the nation's children. With varying programmes covering the core subjects of Mathematics, English both Language and Literature, the sciences as well as foreign languages. But by the late fifties such was happening else where, television was becoming the dominate force which led to Associated-Rediffusion setting up Britain's first television for schools in 1957. Though the television was still a luxury it meant that radio was still an integral part of schooling, the style of programme had slowly started to move on too, from the lecture into a programme which taught.

But the 1950's was the decade that many of the longest running radio schools programmes started in including 'Stories and Rhymes' for 7 to 9 year old children which ran until 1983, these series came back year after year allowing the schedules for both the Autumn and Summer school terms themselves, though it was the introduction of television which changed schools broadcasting forever, allowing things to be seen which would have been described on radio. The world around children had become alive, some people would have said at the time with television there was no need for a teacher at all, that pupils could have been taught through the screen itself. Of which these broadcasts became, a whole class watching the same thing at the same time. The BBC started television broadcasts also in 1957, realising it was a continuation of the Reithan values of it first ever director general.

As the sixties came into view and more ITV franchises came onto the air, it allowed franchises to concentrate on a more focused range of programming, such as the bigger franchises taking the major subjects and also regional stations especially such as Scottish Television, TWW and Ulster to produce programmes specific to their area and also in different languages such as Welsh or Gaelic. The BBC itself made high quality programmes sticking close to their public service values, though as the decade went on the style changed again to from a starched up formal style to education with presenters rather then teacher and processors at the heart of it. Therefore with television set getting cheaper, it allowed more schools to slowly swap over from radio to television and with the introduction of colour slowly and surely at the start of the 70's, the programmes had settled down into a pattern. Mixing the serious subjects in programme like Scene to others teaching maths in a new way by using the newer educational techniques of the time. With these new techniques being introduced by successive governments, the public service ethos was always there.

But it did have a strange effect which a lot of people will tell you about, that these programmes were becoming entertaining in which the actual educators couldn't guess. Programmes like Look and Read were becoming like mini-drama serials, You and Me was strangely entertaining leading to Lenny the Lion and later Basil Brush to teach young children to read. This was education breaking away from itself, even the adult audience at home were interested in the programmes, with How We Used to Live getting late night repeats on Yorkshire Television because the subject matter was interesting to the viewers. With an audience being recognised for television at that time of day, meant there was an appetite for programmes during the day which I will come onto in a later blogpost. 

For myself the first experience of school programming came during the 1980's with steady reliable show such as Stop Look Listen, You and Me and My World having been on since the 70's. The likes of Science Workshop brought their own brand of humour to the school room, which included David Hargreaves and Malcolm McFee but as the years went on and technology moved into their realm with video recorders, computers and laterly the internet. The room for these programme was not needed and given away to more daytime programmes overall, with BBC Schools moving over to BBC2 in 1983 and also ITV Schools moving over to Channel Four in 1987, much like using up the spare airtime like the Open University and latterly the Open College as well so schools could have a set pattern for children to sit down in front the television at a certain time. But as the video recorded came into use, there was no need for teachers to do that and just record a programme to be used at a later time.

As the 90's drew in, the more venerable shows were politely moved out for the schedule and with the introduction of DVD's and MP3's there was no need for them to be hardly on the television at all as they were shunted to overnight on both BBC2 and Channel 4, the deathknell came when Channel 4 withdraw and the BBC as part of the their public broadcasting commitment carried on but not producing new programmes.

So schools programmes came, conquered and went and to some they will not be missed but they have educated us at some point, entertained us when we have been sick and off school and even found a new audience at time so programmes can be put in their place. Does it educate, inform and entertain? It does in a way, we can be grateful for it and if it wasn't for the education which they gave us then the next generations of teachers... So everyone find a space on the floor and celebrate these programme for what they were....