BBC Radio 1 (PatrZDZ's vision)

**BBC Radio 1** is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, hip hop and indie, while its sister station 1Xtra plays black contemporary music, including hip hop and R&B. Radio 1 also runs two digital radio stations, **Radio 1 Dance**, dedicated to dance music, and **Radio 1 Relax**, dedicated to chill-out music; both are available to listen only on BBC Sounds.

Radio 1 broadcasts throughout the UK on FM between 97.1 MHz and 99.7 MHz, digital radio, digital TV and BBC Sounds. It was launched in 1967 to meet the demand for music generated by pirate radio stations, when the average age of the UK population was 27. The BBC claims that it targets the 15–29 age group, and the average age of its UK audience since 2009 is 30. BBC Radio 1 started 24-hour broadcasting on 1 May 1991.

## Broadcast

### Studios

From inception for over 20 years, Radio 1 broadcast from an adjacent pair of continuity suites (originally Con A and Con B) in the main control room of Broadcasting House. These cons were configured to allow DJs to operate the equipment themselves and play their own records and jingle cartridges (called self-op). This was a departure from traditional BBC practice, where a studio manager would play in discs from the studio control cubicle. Due to needle time restrictions, much of the music was played from tapes of BBC session recordings. The DJs were assisted by one or more technical operators (TOs) who would set up tapes and control sound levels during broadcasts.

In 1985, Radio 1 moved across the road from Broadcasting House to Egton House. The station moved to Yalding House in 1996, and Egton House was demolished in 2003 to make way for extension to Broadcasting House. This extension would eventually be renamed the Egton Wing, and then the Peel Wing.

Until recently, the studios were located in the basement of Yalding House (near to BBC Broadcasting House) which is on Great Portland Street in central London. They used to broadcast from two main studios in the basement; Y2 and Y3 (there is also a smaller studio, YP1, used mainly for production). These two main studios (Y2 and Y3) are separated by the "Live Lounge", although it is mainly used as an office; there are rarely live sets recorded from it, as Maida Vale Studios is used instead for larger set-ups. The studios are linked by webcams and windows through the "Live Lounge", allowing DJs to see each other when changing between shows. Y2 is the studio from where The Chris Moyles Show was broadcast and is also the studio rigged with static cameras for when the station broadcasts on the "Live Cam". The station moved there in 1996 from Egton House.

In December 2012, Radio 1 moved from Yalding House to new studios on the 8th floor of the new BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, just a few metres away from the "Peel Wing", formerly the "Egton Wing", which occupies the land on which Egton House previously stood: it was renamed the "Peel Wing" in 2012 in honour of the long-serving BBC Radio 1 presenter, John Peel, who broadcast on the station from its launch in 1967 up until his death in 2004.

Programmes have also regularly been broadcast from other regions, notably The Mark and Lard Show, broadcast every weekday from New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester for over a decade (October 1993 – March 2004) – the longest regular broadcast on the network from outside the capital.

### UK analogue frequencies

Radio 1 originally broadcast on 1214 kHz AM (or 247 metres). On 23 November 1978, the station was moved to 1053 kHz and 1089 kHz (275 and 285 m).

The BBC had been allocated three FM frequency ranges in 1955, for the then Light Programme (now BBC Radio 2), Third Programme (now BBC Radio 3) and Home Service (now BBC Radio 4) stations. Thus, when Radio 1 was launched, there was no FM frequency range allocated for the station. The official reason was that there was no space, even though no commercial stations had yet been launched on FM. To solve this issue, from launch until the end of the 1980s Radio 1 was allocated Radio 2's FM transmitters for a few hours per week. These were Saturday afternoons, Sunday teatime and evening – most notably for the Top 40 Singles Chart on Sunday afternoons and up until midnight; 10 pm to midnight on weeknights including Sounds of the Seventies until 1975, and thereafter the John Peel show (Mon–Thurs), The Friday Rock Show with Tommy Vance and most Bank Holiday afternoons when Radio 2 was broadcasting a Bank Holiday edition of Sport on 2.

### Full-time FM broadcasting

Due to the rising competition from commercial FM stations, the BBC began to draw up plans for Radio 1 to broadcast on FM full time. This process began in London on 31 October 1987, at low power on a temporary frequency of 104.8 MHz. The Home Office in the UK began to free up FM police communication bandwidths, which at the time were operating from 97.9 MHz to 102.0 MHz, in preparation for new FM radio stations planned for the future, which included BBC Radio 1. The BBC acquired 97.9 FM to 99.8 FM specifically for Radio 1.

The rollout of Radio 1 on FM nationally began on 1 September 1988, starting with Central Scotland (98.6 MHz), the Midlands (98.4 MHz) and the north of England (98.8 MHz). On 24 November 1988, Belfast was added to the network on another temporary frequency on 96.0 MHz.

Due to the expansion of Radio 1's FM broadcast hours, Radio 1 scaled back its airtime on Radio 2's FM frequencies - ending on weeknights (10pm–midnight), Saturday afternoons from 1pm until 7pm and Sunday evenings (7pm–midnight). The only programme continuing to broadcast on Radio 2's FM frequency was the UK Top 40, which broadcast between 5pm and 7pm on Sunday afternoon and evening; at the finish of the Top 40 show, the FM transmitters were handed back to Radio 2 at 7pm.

By September 1990, with further expansion of Radio 1 FM's frequencies, after 23 years all usage of Radio 2's FM frequencies came to an end, resulting in BBC Radio 2 transmitting on FM full-time. This was due to the then new BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasting on Radio 2's former AM frequencies on 603 & 909 MW.

Radio 1 made great efforts to promote its new FM service, renaming itself on-air initially as 'Radio 1 FM' and later as '1FM' until 1995. After reorganisation and a change of transmitter reallocation of the FM frequencies, especially in London (from 104.8 to 98.8 MHz), the Midlands (98.4 to 97.9 MHz) and Belfast (96.0 to 99.7 MHz), the engineering programme was completed in 1995.

### End of medium wave broadcasting - 1053 / 1089 kHz

The Conservative government decided to increase competition on AM and disallowed the simulcasting of services on both AM and FM, affecting both BBC and Independent Local Radio. Radio 1's medium wave frequencies were reallocated to Independent National Radio. Radio 1's last broadcast on MW was on 1 July 1994, with Stephen Duffy's "Kiss Me" being the last record played on MW just before 9 am. For those who continued to listen, just after 9 am, Radio 1 jingles were played in reverse chronological order ending with its first jingle from 30 September 1967. In the initial months after this closure, a pre-recorded message by Mark Goodier was played to advise listeners that Radio 1 was now an "FM-only" station and to retune to the FM frequency. Around this time, Radio 1 began broadcasting on spare audio subcarriers on Sky Television's via Astra's SES satellite analogue service; initially in mono (on UK Gold) and later in stereo (on UK Living) transponders. The 1053 / 1089 frequencies were allocated to the then newly-created Talk Radio UK.

The first full-time FM broadcast began in the London area on 31 October 1987, at low power on 104.8 MHz. A year later the FM frequencies became national after the police communication allocation changed, freeing up what is known today as 97–99 FM, which the BBC acquired. The rollout of Radio 1 on FM began on 1 September 1988, starting with Central Scotland, the Midlands and the north of England. A month later, to coincide with an extension of broadcast hours, Radio 1 stopped broadcasting on Radio 2's FM frequencies on weeknights and on Sunday evenings and by 1990 all usage of Radio 2's FM frequencies had ended. Radio 1 made great efforts to promote its new FM service, renaming itself on-air initially to 'Radio 1 FM' and later as '1FM' until 1995. The engineering programme was initially completed in 1995.

The Conservative government decided to increase competition on AM and disallowed the simulcasting of services on both AM and FM, affecting both BBC and Independent Local Radio. Radio 1's medium wave frequencies were reallocated to Independent National Radio. Radio 1's last broadcast on MW was on 1 July 1994, with Stephen Duffy's "Kiss Me" being the last record played on MW just before 9 am. For those who continued to listen, just after 9 am, Radio 1 jingles were played in reverse chronological order ending with its first jingle from 30 September 1967. In the initial months after this closure a pre-recorded message with Mark Goodier was played to warn listeners that Radio 1 was now an "FM-only" station. Around this time, Radio 1 began broadcasting on spare audio subcarriers on Sky Television's analogue satellite service, initially in mono (on UK Gold) and later in stereo (on UK Living).

### Digital distribution

The BBC launched its national radio stations on DAB digital radio in 1995, however the technology was expensive at the time and so was not marketed, instead used as a test for future technologies. DAB was "officially" launched in 2002 as sets became cheaper. Today it can also be heard on UK digital TV services Freeview, Virgin Media, Sky and the Internet as well as FM. In July 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio began simulcasting Radio 1 across the United States as channel 11 on its own service and channel 6011 on Dish Network satellite TV. Sirius Canada began simulcasting Radio 1 when it was launched on 1 December 2005 (also on channel 11). On 12 November 2008, Radio 1 made its debut on XM Satellite Radio in both the US and Canada on channel 29, moving to XM 15 and Sirius 15 on 4 May 2011. The simulcast is time shifted five hours to allow US and Canadian listeners in the Eastern Time Zone to hear Radio 1 at the same time of day as UK listeners. Radio 1 can be heard by approximately 20.6 million listeners in North America on satellite radio alone. BBC Radio 1 can be heard on cable in the Netherlands at 105.10 FM.

## Content

### Music

Because of its youth-orientated nature, Radio 1 plays a broad mix of current and potential future hits, including independent/alternative, hip hop, rock, dance/electronica and pop. This made the station stand out from other top 40 stations, both in the UK and across the world. Since its progressive view on modern electronic music, the BBC Radio 1 is well-liked and known in the worldwide drum and bass community, frequently hosting producers and DJs like Hybrid Minds or Wilkinson.

Due to restrictions on the amount of commercial music that could be played on radio in the UK until 1988 (the "needle time" limitation) the station has recorded many live performances. Studio sessions (recordings of about four tracks made in a single day), also supplemented the live music content, many of them finding their way to commercially available LPs and CDs. The sessions recorded for John Peel's late night programme are particularly renowned. The station has continued to record live music with its Live Lounge feature and the Piano Sessions, which started in November 2014.

The station also broadcasts documentaries and interviews. Although this type of programming arose from necessity it has given the station diversity. The needletime restrictions meant the station tended to have a higher level of speech by DJs. While the station is often criticised for "waffling" by presenters, an experimental "more music day" in 1988 was declared a failure after only a third of callers favoured it.

### News and current affairs

Radio 1 has a public service broadcasting obligation to provide news, which it fulfills through regular hourly news summaries, broadcast roughly on the half-hour around the clock, with additional bulletins broadcast every 20 minutes during breakfast and drivetime on weekdays. The fifteen-minute Newsbeat programme is broadcast twice a day at 12:30 and 17:30 during the week. The vast majority of news bulletins are simulcast on both BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra.

### Online visualisation and social media

In recent years Radio 1 has used social media to help reach a younger audience. Its YouTube channel now has over 7.5 million subscribers. The highest viewed videos on the channel are predominately live music performances from the Live Lounge.

The station also has a heavy presence on social media, with audience interaction occurring through Facebook and Twitter as well as text messaging.

It was announced in 2013 that Radio 1 had submitted plans to launch its own dedicated video channel on the BBC iPlayer where videos of live performances as well as some features and shows would be streamed in a central location. Plans were approved by the BBC Trust in November 2014 and the channel launched on 10 November 2014.

### Special programming

#### Bank Holiday programming

Radio 1 provides alternative programming on some Bank Holidays. Programmes have included 'The 10 Hour Takeover', a request-based special, in which the DJs on air would encourage listeners to select any available track to play, 'One Hit Wonder Day' and 'The Chart of the Decade' where the 150 biggest selling singles in the last 10 years were counted down and played in full.

### Anniversary programming

On Sunday 30 September 2007, Radio 1 celebrated its 40th birthday. To mark this anniversary Radio 1 hosted a week of special features, including a re-creation of Simon Bates' Golden Hour, and 40 different artists performing 40 different covers, one from each year since Radio 1 was established. On Saturday 30 September 2017, Radio 1 celebrated its 50th birthday. Tony Blackburn recreated the first ever Radio 1 broadcast on Radio 2, simulcast on pop-up station Radio 1 Vintage, followed by The Radio 1 Breakfast Show celebration, tricast on Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 1 Vintage, presented by Tony Blackburn and Nick Grimshaw, featuring former presenters as guests Simon Mayo, Sara Cox and Mike Read.

### Charity

Radio 1 regularly supports charities Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need.

On 18 March 2011, BBC's Radio 1 longest-serving breakfast DJ Chris Moyles and sidekick Dave Vitty broadcast for 52 hours as part of a Guinness World Record attempt, in aid of Comic Relief. The pair stayed on air for 52 hours in total setting a new world record for 'Radio DJ Endurance Marathon (Team)’ after already breaking Simon Mayo's 12-year record for Radio 1's Longest Show of 37 hours which he set in 1999, also for Comic Relief.

The presenters started on 16 March 2011 and came off air at 10:30 am on 18 March 2011. During this Fearne Cotton made a bet with DJ Chris Moyles that if they raise over £2,000,000 she will appear on the show in a swimsuit. After passing the £2,000,000 mark, Cotton appeared on the studio webcam in a stripy monochrome swimsuit. The appearance of Cotton between 10:10 am and 10:30 am caused the Radio 1 website to crash due to a high volume of traffic.

In total the event raised £2,622,421 for Comic Relief.

### Drama

In 1981, Radio 1 broadcast a radio adaptation of the space opera film, Star Wars. The 13-episode serial was adapted for radio by the author Brian Daley and directed by John Madden, and was a co-production between the BBC and the American Broadcaster NPR.

In 1994, Radio 1 broadcast a radio adaptation of the Batman comic book storyline Knightfall, as part of the Marc Goodier show, featuring Michael Gough recreating his movie role as Alfred. Later that same year, Radio 1 also broadcast a re-edited version of the Radio 4 Superman radio drama.

## Events

### BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend

In March 2000, Radio 1 decided to change the Roadshow format, renaming it One Big Sunday in the process. Several of these Sundays were held in large city-centre parks. In 2003, the event changed again and was rebranded One Big Weekend, with each event occurring biannually and covering two days. Under this name, it visited Derry in Northern Ireland, as part of the Music Lives campaign, and Perry Park in Birmingham.

The most recent change occurred in 2005 when the event was yet again renamed and the decision taken to hold only one per year, this time as Radio 1's Big Weekend. Venues under this title have included Herrington Country Park, Camperdown Country Park, Moor Park–which was the first Weekend to feature a third stage–Mote Park, Lydiard Park, Bangor and Carlisle Airport.

Tickets for each Big Weekend are given away free of charge, making it the largest free ticketed music festival in Europe.

BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend was replaced by a larger festival in 2012, named 'Radio 1's Hackney Weekend', with a crowd capacity of 100,000. The Hackney Weekend took place over the weekend of 23–24 June 2012 in Hackney Marshes, Hackney, London. The event was to celebrate the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London and had artists such as Rihanna, Jay-Z and Florence and the Machine.

In 2013, Radio 1's Big Weekend returned to Derry as part of the City of Culture 2013 celebrations. So far, Derry is the only city to have hosted the Big Weekend twice.

In May 2014, Radio 1's Big Weekend was held in Glasgow, Scotland. Acts which played at the event included Rita Ora, The 1975, Katy Perry, Jake Bugg and Pharrell Williams. The event was opened on the Friday with a dance set in George Square, featuring Radio 1 Dance DJs such as Danny Howard and Pete Tong, and other well-known acts such as Martin Garrix and Tiesto.

In 2015, the event was held in Norwich and featured performances from the likes of Taylor Swift, Muse, David Guetta, Years & Years and others.

2016 saw the event make its way to Exeter. It was headlined by Coldplay, who closed the weekend on the Sunday evening.

The event was in Hull in 2017 and saw performances by artists such as Zara Larsson, Shawn Mendes, Stormzy, Katy Perry, Little Mix, Sean Paul, Rita Ora, The Chainsmokers, Clean Bandit and Kings of Leon.

To take advantage of Glastonbury Festival's fallow year in 2018, 4 separate Big Weekends were held simultaneously between 25 and 28 May. Stylized as "BBC Music's Biggest Weekend", events were held in Swansea (with a line-up curated by Radio 1), Coventry and Perth (both curated by Radio 2) and Belfast (curated by Radio 6 Music). Tickets sold out for the Swansea, Perth and Coventry Big Weekends.

In 2020, the Big Weekend at Dundee was cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, Radio 1 announced a virtual Big Weekend. It took place from 22 to 24 May and featured performances from artists like Mabel and Anne-Marie.

### Ibiza Weekend

Radio 1 has annually held a dance music weekend broadcast live from Ibiza since the 1990s. The weekend is usually the first weekend in August and has performances from world-famous DJs and Radio 1's own dance music talent such as Pete Tong and Annie Mac.

### BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards

Since 2008 Radio 1 has held an annual event for teenagers aged 14 to 17 years. Originally named BBC Switch Live, the first event was held on 12 October 2008 at the Hammersmith Apollo. The event has been hosted by various Radio 1 DJs and guest co-hosts.

In 2010 the event was renamed 'BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards', and includes awards given to celebrities and particularly inspirational young people. Now hosted at Wembley Arena, the event has included guests such as One Direction, Tinie Tempah, Fall Out Boy and Jessie J.

The 2014 event took place on 19 October and was hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Rita Ora.

The 2015 event took place on 8 November and was hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Demi Lovato at Wembley Arena.

The 2016 event took place on 23 October and was hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Dua Lipa.

The 2017 event took place on 22 October and was hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Rita Ora.

The 2018 event took place on 21 October and was hosted by Greg James, Mollie King and Maya Jama.

The 2019 event took place on 24 November at Television Centre and was broadcast on Radio 1 and BBC Two on 30 November. It was hosted by Greg James, Mollie King and Maya Jama.

### Edinburgh Festival

Radio 1 often has a presence at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Past events have included 'The Fun and Filth Cabaret' and 'Scott Mills: The Musical'.

### Europe's Biggest Dance Show

"Europe's Biggest Dance Show" is a series of radio specials produced by Radio 1.

The first, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2019, was broadcast on Friday 11 October 2019 where Radio 1 joined with several European radio stations, all members of the European Broadcasting Union, including Swedish SR P3, German 1LIVE and RBB Fritz, Belgian VRT Studio Brussel, Irish RTÉ 2fm, French Radio France Mouv and Dutch NPO 3FM.

A second show, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2020, was broadcast on Friday 8 May 2020. It had the same contributing stations as 2019, however it had begun at 7pm BST, rather than 8pm as the previous year.

A third show, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2021, will be broadcast on Friday 29 October 2021.

## Digital-only stations

On 17 September 2020, the BBC announced that it would launch an digital-only sister station for BBC Radio 1, called BBC Radio 1 Dance, which would primarily play all kinds of songs from the Dance genre. The station was launched on 9 October 2020 at 6 pm BST. A second digital-only sister station, BBC Radio 1 Relax, was launched on 22 April 2021. The station plays a selection of relaxation and well-being focussed shows.