The BBC Regional Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing a number of earlier

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

local stations between 1922 and 1924 – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the

BBC Home Service The BBC Home Service was a national and regional radio station that broadcast from 1939 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 4. History 1922–1939: Interwar period Between the early 1920s and the outbreak of World War II, the BBC ...

, two days before the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Both the BBC National Programme and the Regional Programme provided a mixed mainstream radio service. Whilst the two services provided different programming, allowing listeners a choice they were not streamed to appeal to different audiences, rather they were intended to offer a choice of programming to a single audience. While using the same transmitters, the National Programme broadcast significantly more speech and

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

than its successor, the BBC Light Programme. Similarly, the Regional Programme broadcast much more

light Light, visible light, or visible radiation is electromagnetic radiation that can be visual perception, perceived by the human eye. Visible light spans the visible spectrum and is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400– ...

and

dance music Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance musi ...

than its successor, the Home Service.

History

Development

When the

British Broadcasting Company The British Broadcasting Company Limited (BBC) was a short-lived British commercial broadcasting company formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom. Licensed by the British Gener ...

first began transmissions on 14 November 1922 from station 2LO in the Strand, which it had inherited from the

Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 which was a pioneer of wireless long distance communication and mass media broadcasting, eventually becoming on ...

(one of six commercial companies which created), but technology did not yet exist either for national coverage or joint programming between

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...

s. Whilst it was possible to combine large numbers of trunk

telephone line A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or oth ...

s to link transmitters for individual programmes, the process was expensive and not encouraged by the

General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific ...

as it tied up large parts of the telephone network. The stations that followed the establishment of 2LO in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

were therefore autonomously programmed using local talent and facilities. By May 1923, simultaneous broadcasting was technically possible at least between main transmitters and relay stations, the quality was not felt to be high enough to provide a national service or regular simultaneous broadcasts. In 1924, it was felt that technical standards had improved enough for London to start to provide the majority of the output, cutting the local stations back to providing items of local interest.

Main stations

Each of these main stations was broadcast at approximately 1

kilowatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

(kW):

Relay stations

Each of these relay stations were broadcast at approximately 120

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s (W):

Regional scheme

On 21 August 1927, the BBC opened a high-power

medium wave Medium wave (MW) is a part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytim ...

transmitter 5GB at its

Daventry Daventry ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England, close to the border with Warwickshire. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census, Daventry had a populati ...

site to replace the existing local stations in the

English Midlands The Midlands is the central region of England, to the south of Northern England, to the north of southern England, to the east of Wales, and to the west of the North Sea. The Midlands comprises the ceremonial counties of Derbyshire, Herefordshi ...

, that allowed the experimental

longwave In radio, longwave (also spelled long wave or long-wave and commonly abbreviated LW) is the part of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave (MW) broadcasting band. The term is historic, dati ...

transmitter 5XX to provide a service – which eventually came to be called the BBC National Programme from

and available to the majority of the population. By combining the resources of the local stations into one regional station in each area with a basic sustaining service from London, the BBC hoped to increase programme quality whilst also centralising the management of the radio service known as the "regional scheme". The local transmitters were gradually either converted to a regional service relay or closed entirely and replaced by high-power regional broadcasts. Some local studios were retained to provide for programming from specific areas within each region. Most transmitters also carried the National Programme on a local frequency to supplement the longwave broadcasts from 5XX; initially these were on three separate frequencies and programming included some local variations. As the regional network expanded these transmissions were fully synchronised with those from Brookmans Park and several other frequencies initially: A relay station for Brookmans Park on 1402 kHz was due to open at

Acle Acle ( ) is a market town on the River Bure on the The Broads, Norfolk Broads in Norfolk, located halfway between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. It has the only bridge across the River Bure between Wroxham and Great Yarmouth.Ordnance Survey (2005). ...

near

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in 1940, but construction was postponed by the outbreak of

. The station was never completed and was replaced by one at Postwick.

Closure

Upon the outbreak of

, the BBC closed both existing National and Regional radio programmes to replace them with a single channel known as the

. The transmitter network was synchronised on 668 kHz and 767 kHz in order to use the other frequencies for

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

broadcasts in foreign languages. Each transmitter group would be turned off during air raids to prevent their signals being used as navigational beacons. Listeners were required to retune to a low-powered single-frequency network on 1474 kHz which did not offer any meaningful directional information to aircraft. On 29 July 1945, within 12 weeks of

Victory in Europe Day Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945; it marked the official surrender of all German military operations ...

, the BBC reactivated the Regional Programme but kept the name "Home Service" (until 30 September 1967 as the station became

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

). The National Programme was also reopened under a new name as the BBC Light Programme.

Sources

Notes

# Until 16 February 1935. # The Brookmans Park transmitter covered

South East England South East England is one of the nine official regions of England, regions of England that are in the ITL 1 statistical regions of England, top level category for Statistics, statistical purposes. It consists of the nine counties of england, ...

and much of

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

. However as the sustaining service for the rest of the network, the London programme was not normally referred to on-air such as ''

Radio Times ''Radio Times'' is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in September 1923 by John Reith, then general manage ...

'', but simply as the "Regional Programme" (internally, "the basic Regional Programme"). # Until 13 June 1939.