February 1969 highlights  A typical late 60s line-up on BBC2 Colour and BBC1, still in monochrome until November 1969.
Gardeners' World survives from this day - unfortunately the same can no longer be said of Tomorrow's World. Meanwhile, the early evening 'soap' The Newcomers was running in a twice-weekly format on Wednesdays and Thursdays; Z Cars took the same slot on Mondays and Tuesdays. The afternoon sequence of children's programmes had been extended again, and now normally started at 4.20 (Tue-Fri) with a repeat of that morning's Play School (a pattern which continued  until 1985). Strangely, though, we were denied our second daily fix of Big Ted and Jemima on Mondays until 1972 - the Monday slot was usually taken up by teacher training programmes. As for news, only BBC2 had a news programme longer than fifteen minutes. BBC1's answer to News at Ten, the Nine O'Clock News, started in 1970. Radio 1 was eighteen months old years old, and listeners could hear the Radio 1 Club at midday, with a different DJ in a different town each day. On this day David Symonds was in London with John Peel, who was 'introducing a group he's done so much to bring to the public - Tyrannosaurus Rex' (left).
And in Radio Times 15-21 February 1969 Price 8d  Verdi's opera Othello on BBC2 Colour took the cover this week. Page 2 saw the letters page Points from the Post, with an extremely lengthy letter about the censoring and banning of certain programmes. Other correspondents were more concerned over the imminent demise of Radio 2's The Dales, and the name of the children in the Magic Roundabout.
The Radio 1 Club had its own page, and included an item on 'Pop Gear' - the changing fashions in music over the past through years, from the 'uniforms' of the early 60s to 'pyschedelia and a greater sense of freedom and...individuality'. Readers and listeners could also take part in the Radio 1 Googly Game, while Jimmy Tarbuck had drawn this week's lucky number.  Jimmy Jewel got himself a colour feature in thus week's RT - he said he was 'the most surprised man in the world', talking about his new BBC1 comedy series Thicker than Water. The Rolf Harris Show only managed a black-and-white feature, about the show's 'singing and dancing people', The Young Generation (left), whose membership included future Blue Peter presenter Lesley Judd.
Radio Times itself seemed very mixed up at this point - a multitude of typefaces, some dating back to the 1950s, a rather cluttered layout and the features section - now including gardening, cooking and motoring - stuck right in the middle of the programme pages. But a wholesale revamp that saw RT change almost beyond recognition was just six months away. The new style launched in September 1969 with a layout which was to run and run; the next major overhaul didn't surface until 1984... 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Radio Times Covers | 
