Broadcast views: Radio Times at 100

Since its launch in 1923 as the BBC's official listings guide, the magazine has charted enormous shifts in media and society alike. David Hendy explores how its pages reflected changes across Britain

- David Hendy

When Radio Times first hit newsstands, on Friday 28 September 1923, few predicted that a printed schedule of programmes would become what one of its editors proclaimed “the most prosperous and successful timetable in the world”. It was initially described somewhat ponderously as “The Official Organ of the BBC”. Broadcasting, and broadcasting alone, was to be its subject matter. Yet broadcasting would soon bring the entire world into our sitting rooms, and broadcasting’s ‘shop-window’ would become a vivid running commentary on British life.

The magazine was launched in response to a temporary newspaper boycott of broadcast listings. In January 1923, the proprietors of Fleet Street – perceiving radio to be a threat to their business – had refused to publish details of the BBC’s upcoming programmes unless it paid a hefty fee. The solution was to go it alone – though, to begin with, the BBC needed the help of a commercial printer.

The first edition, priced modestly at 2d for 36 pages of closely typeset text and a smattering of pictures, ran to a quarter of a million copies – and quickly sold out. Its central offer was a bald day-by-day list of output from the BBC’s six stations in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow.

The listings expanded in lockstep with broadcasting’s wider evolution. In the 1930s, readers could enjoy a choice between the ‘National’ and ‘Regional’ Programmes, and the first output of experimental late-night television. During the Second World War, the Forces Programme appeared. In the 1960s, BBC2 (now BBC Two) and local radio arrived. More recently, a plethora of satellite and digital channels were launched, competing since the 2000s with streaming services such as Netflix.