1936 1946 1950 1955 1957 1959

10.15am-11.15 Stereophony (sound only)

1.00pm-1.25 Beunydd (Wenvoe, Blaenplwyf, Holme Moss, Sutton Coldfield only)

1.45 Summer Grandstand introduced by Alan Weeks, featuring Racing, Lawn Tennis, Swimming, Amateur Boxing

5.00 Children's Television: The Lone Ranger

5.25 The Wanderer The story of a child of our time

5.55 Today's Sport

6.00 News Summary

6.05 Wells Fargo starring Dale Robertson

7.00 Charlesworth Stories from the casebook of Detective-Superintendent Charlesworth

7.30 Secombe at Large starring Harry Secombe, with David Nixon, Cliff Michelmore, Julie Andrews

8.30 News Summary

8.35 The Saturday Film: Alice Adams starring Katharine Hepburn

10.10 Amateur Boxing

10.40 The Inheritors A report by Aidan Crawley. West Africa part 2

11.20 News Summary Weather and Closedown

6.30am News Summary

6.35 Morning Music

8.50 Melody on the Move

8.55 Your Holiday Weather

9.00 Children's Favourites

10.00 Saturday Club with Brian Matthew

12.00 What Do You Know?

1.00 Cricket

1.35 Break for Music

1.45 Sports Round-Up

2.10 Cricket; 2.35 International Swimming; 2.45 Cricket; 3.00 Swimming; 3.15 Golf; 3.20 Cricket; 3.45 Swimming; 3.55 Cricket

4.15 Bandstand

4.45 Cricket; 5.00 Sports Results; 5.30 International Swimming; 5.45 Golf; 5.55 Cricket

7.00 Radio Newsreel

7.30 Music for Dancing

8.00 The Saturday 'Pop'

9.00 Saturday's Music Album

10.30 News

10.40 Saturday's Music Album

11.00 Pick of the Pops: David Jacobs

11.55-12.00 Late News

May 1959 highlights

A typical early summer Saturday from the end of the 50s. Harry Secombe was the star of Saturday night, not to mention the cover of Radio Times, with his show Secombe at Large. Your entertainment would also include detective drama in Charleworth, the inevitable western - Wells Fargo - and music in Drumbeat which this week featured the likes of Bob Miller and the Millermen, Adam Faith and Dickie Valentine.

Meanwhile the BBC were continuing with their Stereophony experiments, which were transmitted every two weeks or so throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s. Classical music would be broadcast simultaneously on the Television Service and on Network Three, with the television transmitter broadcasting the right hand channel of the sound, and the left hand channel broadcast on the radio. This of course meant listeners would have to shuffle their equipment round the room to get the full benefit of the broadcasts, and results were mixed, to say the least. Click here for more on Stereophony (external site).

There was a lot of sport cluttering up the Light Programme - however for pop fans there was Saturday Club with Brian Matthew, which had begun in 1957, promising the 'best of today's 'pop' entertainment'. It would run for a further ten years. But destined to be even more durable would be Pick of the Pops. Having started in 1955, the show was currently shoved into a late night slot, and was presented by David Jacobs - it would be another two years before Alan Freeman would get anywhere near it. However at this point it was not yet a chart show; instead Mr Jacobs brought us 'a review of the current popular records as well as some of the latest issues'. After nearly a half a century POTP is still on the air - but now as a golden oldies show, and with the baffling choice of Dale Winton to present it.

1936 1946 1950 1955 1957 1959

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