1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

9.10am-10.43 For Schools 9.10 Engineering Science, 9.38 Merry-Go-Round, 10.00 Science Session, 10.23 Living in the Present

10.45-11.00 Watch with Mother: Rag, Tag and Bobtail

11.05-11.58 For Schools 11.05 Greek Drama, 11.38 Signpost

12.50pm Heddiw gydag Owen Edwards - topical items in Welsh (Crystal Palace, Holme Moss, Sutton Coldfield only)

1.10 The News

1.15 Watch with Mother: Andy Pandy

1.30-1.50 Racing at Aintree

2.05-2.25 For Schools Spotlight

2.30-3.50 Racing at Aintree

5.05 Blue Peter with Christopher Trace and Valerie Singleton

5.30 Tales from Europe: Heidi A film from Switzerland

5.55 The News

6.05 Regional news magazines

6.30 Television Top of the Form

6.55 Tonight with Cliff Michelmore, featuring Alan Whicker, Fyfe Robertson, Julian Pettifer, Brian Redhead, Magnus Magnussion, Trevor Philpott, Macdonald Hastings

7.30 Top of the Pops with David Jacobs

8.00 Steptoe and Son

8.25 The Rogues Film series starring David Niven

9.15 The News

10.15 Gallery Political discussion with Ian Trethowan

10.45 News Extra followed by Weather, Road Works Report

11.00-11.25 Komm Mit! Learn German

BBC2

11.00am-11.30 Play School

7.27pm News and line-up for Thursday

7.30 Time Out Ludovic Kennedy on the world of leisure, including items on The Witches of Britain and The Ladies of Lacrosse

8.20 The Great War A 26-part history of the 1914-18 war

9.00 Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Play starring Sheila Hancock

10.20 Wheelbase reporting from the London Motor Show

10.40 Newsroom

11.05 Late Night Line Up

5.30am Bright and Early

6.00 Morning Music

8.00 Family Fare

9.00 Housewives' Choice

9.55 Five to Ten

10.00 Join in with Joe

10.31 Music While You Work

11.00 Morning Story

11.15 The Dales

11.31 Melody to Midday

12.31pm The Beat Show

2.00 Woman's Hour

3.00 Break for Music

3.10 Racing

3.31 Music While You Work

4.15 The Dales

4.31 Racing Results

4.35 Playtime: Records for the young

5.00 Roundabout: News, views and music

6.45 The Archers

7.31 Top of the Form

8.00 Comedy Parade

8.40 Semprini Serenade

9.30 Any Answers?

10.00 Top Gear: Pop music with Brian Matthew, featuring Manfred Mann, Mary Wells and Val Doonican

12.00 Music from Midnight

2.00am-2.02 News summary

October 1964 highlights

Early days for BBC2, having launched the preceding April. It was available only to viewers in London, and then only if you had a television capable of receiving UHF broadcasts. Apart from a morning showing of Play School, it was generally on air only from 7.30pm.

Although having been renamed BBC1, the channel was using an ident which simply stated 'BBC' - not much of a problem considering for the vast majority of viewers it was the only BBC channel. As for programmes, Blue Peter and Top of the Pops survive to this day, while the predecessor to Top Gear, Wheelbase could be seen on BBC2.

Tune into BBC1 at 10.45pm and you get news; switch over to BBC2 at the same time and you get news. So much for the alternative.

Over in radio land, the nearest the BBC got to a pop music network was the Light Programme. Here, the only true 'pop' programmes were Twelve O'Clock Spin and Top Gear (nothing to do with cars). You could also find Radio 4 stalwarts The Archers, Any Answers? and Woman's Hour. By this time the Light had become the first radio station to have hourly news bulletins, oddly on the half-hour, a tradition continued by Radio 1 to this very day.

Thursday nights were the night for Top of the Form - the radio version at 7.30 and the TV version at 6.30.

And in Radio Times 24-30 October 1964 Price 6d

Monochrome only for Radio Times - the only splash of colour being the logo. There were no major features in
the RT in these days - there were however short programme articles preceding each day's listings -
slightly less inconvenient than the late 60s look which
had all the features right in the middle of the magazine.

RT's cover this week featured three different shows - this idea of trying to squash more than one programme onto the cover disappeared in the 1969 revamp and only re-emerged 20 years later. The cover stars this week were Bill Fraser, starring in BBC1's The Wednesday Play:
A Crack in the Ice, Colette Wilde in BBC2's thriller Curtain
of Fear and Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques who began the eighth series of their sitcom on BBC1.

On the letters half-page this week, listeners lamented the disappearance of an old friend from the Light Programme - Big Ben!

1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

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