ContactLondon Broadcasting, LBC Radio
"London Broadcasting..."
LBC Radio
London Broadcasting, LBC News Radio, News Direct 97.3, London Talkback Radio, Crown FM, LBC 97.3, LBC News 1152
LBC was the first commercial radio station in the UK. Gawd bless'em. Labour leader Harold Wilson joined a host of other politicians to record audio greetings for the station. Wilson maintained party opposition to the station, but welcomed the radio equivalent of ITN. At 6:00am on 8th October 1973, David Jessell had the first words, "This is London Broadcasting, the news and information voice of independent radio".
Interestingly the first day was rough. Ready rough. Jon Snow has some serious trouble with the studio clock, "It's 5am and here's the news. I'm sorry is half past five and here are the headlines. Half past six. Sorry..."
It originally started broadcasting from studios at Gough Square on 791 meters but later moved to 261 metres (1152KHz). (It is a little known fact that news provider IRN was a sister service to LBC, but with the development of the commercial radio network, subscribers became shareholders and so IRN broke away in the late 80s.)
LBC had a funny period in the late 80s. An attempt to buy LBC/IRN was made by Australian media mogul David Haynes from the Canadian company Selkirk Communications in 1987. The IBA refused permission for the sale to go through. LBC was also transmitted on 97.3 until the station was acquired by Crown Communications in 1989 who split the frequencies and moved location to a back street London suburb and a rented office block. This led to the launch of LBC Crown FM on 97.3FM and London Talkback Radio on 1152AM. A large amount of rot set in at this stage with a crash in property prices, and a mass exodus of listeners and money.
The licence was lost in 1994 when the Radio Authority withdrew it. IRN, still a tenant of LBC's, moved to the main ITN building in Grays Inn Road.
In September 1993, the original LBC sought a reversal of the Radio Authority decision to take away its licence and give it to London News Radio. Dame Shirley Porter, Chairperson of the station, launched a petition and planned to campaign on air for LBC to be allowed to keep its licence. In October of the same year, LBC abandoned plans to launch a judicial review of the decision to remove its licence. It said at the time that the procedure would be too expensive, time consuming and with little chance of success. Instead it planned to focus on applying for the third Independent National Radio licence, to be advertised in December of 1993. LBC's decision was presented to 1500 listeners at a rally held in the September. The RA warned LBC about possible sanctions because of its planned protest campaign, saying it was concerned that LBC was breaching impartiality rules by giving the high level of time to the campaign and associated problems. Station management subsequently told presenters that direct attacks on the RA would have to stop.
Complaints about the treatment of LBC flooded into the RA, to such an extent that a temporary secretary had to be taken on to deal with the postbag! In response, the RA said its decision to award the licence to London News Radio was made on merit. It was not required to elaborate under broadcasting legislation, legislation which has since been amended due to several award disputes..
In March 1994, LBC made plans to become part of the London News Radio consortium, even offering to sell the LBC name to its successor. LNR was still on course to replace LBC on October 8th of the same year. But, in April 1994, the original LBC went into receivership following the failure of its bid for the third INR station, which was awarded instead to Talk Radio UK.
The Radio Authority previously awarded the franchise to a group led by the former LBC MD Peter Thornton, but his group didn't have the financial clout to launch and sold out to Reuters which was one of the opposition bidders. London News Radio won the re-awarded licence in 1995. As part of London News Radio, London First and London Extra were awarded the FM and AM licences respectively, replacing those held by LBC and London Talkback. Ownership of LBC changed again in 1996 with a consortium which included, Reuters, GWR and ITN - the original LBC format returned on the medium wave frequency and this saw a return of some familiar names from the station's past: Douglas Cameron, Steve Allen, Peter Deeley, Therese Birch, Tim Crook, Clive Bull, Steve Jones, Brian Hayes & Pete Murray. The AM service remained as LBC but the FM service became News Direct 97.3FM.
On the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, 31st August 1997, LBC & News Direct abandoned programming for a comprehensive reporting service on the terrible events. It was the first UK station to report her death. LBC received a deluge of letter from listeners who appreciated the fact that it had found the right tone and approach.
2002 saw one possible and then a definite further change in ownership. In mid-July of that year, a £10million sale of the station to financial news broadcaster and information provider Bloomberg, fell through at the very last minute. If the deal had been completed, they planned to model a relaunch on New York station WBBR-AM. Instead, the same year, Chrysalis Radio (Heart & Galaxy brands) purchased the LNR stations and began an immediate revamp for a 2003 relaunch. This relaunch included putting LBC and its talk-format back on FM. News Direct's rolling news service moved to LBC's 1152 frequency.
Fresh from the purchase of the AM & FM stations, Chrysalis Radio announced who would be doing what when LBC moved to FM 97.3 from 6th January 2003 at 5:00am with Charlie Gibson presenting 'Dawn Traders'. Top names from TV, radio and newspapers would provide the mix of presentation staff who provide London with what was described as a 'compelling mix' of travel, news and entertaining debate.
LBC 97.3 is a news and entertainment speech station, with LBC NEWS 1152 operating as a rolling news service. Chrysalis made good programming decisions on the development of the two services. But despite their excellent marketing campaign, nothing is as memorable as the early 90s "News on the 1's".
Jingles over the years have been provided by Jeff Wayne (of War of the Worlds fame), David Arnold and IQ Beats.
Information amended from the excellent Aircheck UK webpageLBC Radio Jingles
- LBC Launch - 8th October 1973. The first commercial radio station in the UK arrives.
- LBC 2006 - Top of Hour from IQ Beats