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Needletime
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I have been reading in the thread about late night radio in the 70s about needletime. I have heard about this before but find it baffling. How did stations like Capital who broadcast 24 hours a day manage it?
What were the actual rescritions and when did they end?
What were the actual rescritions and when did they end?
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Needle time was created in the United Kingdom by the Musicians' Union and Phonographic Performance Limited, in order to restrict the amount of recorded music that could be transmitted by the BBC during the course of any 24-hour period. It continued to affect BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2 and Independent Local Radio until 1988.
The space left by the needle time restrictions was filled by live performances (hence the musicians unions interest) and talk-based shows.
Originally these had to be in specific shows like "What's New". At the time of Radio 1's launch, segments of shows were also allowed - like 7.30-7.45am on the Tony Blackburn show. The record label and number had to be read out after each track.
By the time of ILRs launch, the reading out was no longer required and the new releases could be scattered throughout the day.
One of my first jobs was at BBC Radio London where I used to compile and operate a continuous music sequence ( apart from News and Travel) between 5.30 and 7pm called Music On The Move. I was given 10 minutes needletime per show - the rest were Radioplay and non-PPL tracks.
At BBC Radio London we also had a big collection of Canadian Talent Library albums. Radio in Canada at the time had to play I think 30% Canadian music, and these were produced to fill the quota - it was also of course non-needletime here in the UK. You can still buy a lot of it e.g. the Laurie Bower Singers ( who I still have nightmares about because I played them so often) as MP3's on Amazon.
So a given track would count against needletime if it was played (i.e. logged) from the usual label, but the same track played off an Arcade Holland comp CD wouldn't?
The fact that the Musicians Union was told to get a life!
When the Beatles first appeared on Top of The Pops they got the going MU rate - £8!!!
9 hours a day "needletime" a day was alloted to ILR stations, 2 hours a day to BBC Local Radio and I think about 12 hours to Radio 1.
Needletime had the effect of forcing stations to be mroe creative with their programming. Its abolition seems to have led to bland, repetitive, and narrow play-listed schedules.
There were talks in the early 1980s about extending needletime to 50/50 split with ILR stations so that those which broadcast for 24 hours could have 12 hours a day, however, it wasn't until 1987 that it was abolished.
A lot of ILR stations had extensive jingle sets which padded out the music programming to make them sound as if they played more music.
A lot of album tracks and music from outside the UK didn't count as needletime as well as live recorded music and new releases.
I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen if it was brought back.
On a Sunday they had a full continuous twelve hours of chart shows where little of the content was needletime attributed followed by a three hour easy listening show designed to avoid further needletime usage. Padded out with a substantial jingle package it's easy to see how it was possible to create a station that sounded more music orientated than it actually was. There was a strict music format of single, album, breaker, single, album, oldie.
Here's part of their Sunday schedule from launch:
12:00 - 16:00 Mick Wright "Beacon 30 Albums‟ (album chart)
16:00 - 18:00 Dave Owen "Beacon 30 Breakers‟ (new releases entering the Beacon play list)
18:00 - 22:00 Mike Baker " Billboard American Hot 100‟ (US chart)
22:00 - 0100 Munro Jack (easy listening music, including film scores, music from the shows and other non-needletime music)
The effect of Laser 558 in 1984/85 is often mentioned as one of the factors that led to the removal of needletime but I do not know how much truth there is in that.
So what did the rest of the show consist of? Well, it sure wasn't phone-ins. In fact most of it was music. The music came from a number of sources. Firstly, library music, a genre which I knew back to front. Despite the common belief that library music was all either melody-free or industrial underscores, there were some great tracks if you knew where to look. Keith Mansfield, Alan Hawkshaw, Johnny Pearson and Syd Dale all appeared most nights courtesy of KPM Music, and other sources included Mozart Edition (used extensively by the BBC), de Wolfe and Boosey & Hawkes. As time went on, the library companies produced radio-friendly discs. KPM created their "Radio program Music" label which had big orchestras playing well known songs. Others included Tony Hatch's great arrangements of songs that Chappell owned the copyright to.
Next came the already referred-to "Canadian Talent Library" and as well as the Laurie Bower Singers, there were (from memory) vibes player Peter Appleyard, Polish conductor Milan Kymlica, singer Vic Franklyn and many others.
Thirdly, Radio Clyde produced its own music. To begin with the Clyde Pops Orchestra made discs we could use of instrumental versions of pop songs, and later Clyde established its own library - available to all the stations - with half a dozen or so discs of useful music.
Later, I cobbled together the "Through the Night Colour Supplement" which initially ran from 3 - 3.30am and made use of cut ups of daytime interviews, chat programmes, etc. We ran our own poetry competition and even initiated some interviews and live guests.
After a few months an audience survey showed the surprising fact that our audience was very much bigger than Radio Clyde had anticipated, and they upped the ad rates correspondingly.
This all stood me in good stead when I set up an internet station that initially couldn't afford to pay PPL or PRS - it became 24 hours a day of non needletime music and that was quite a challenge. (Mind you, these days I pay PPL and PRS!!)
I've still got one of those LPs, found it in a jumble sale years ago
Tony, next time you're dropping by the JAM Productions Dallas website, you'll find something very familiar to you on the newly updated audio sampler of JAM Personal Cuts. All sorts of people are 'on that'
I suspect the subject matter of this thread has more than a little to do with that
Similarly in the days when BBC Radio London played dance & soul, it was virtually all off the non-PPL label Street Sounds.
BBC Local Radio at the time were also able to play certain tracks off film soundtracks which were supplied by the film companies - so tracks like FM Steely Dan, certain James Bond themes, Living Doll & The Young Ones- Cliff Richard, Cry Me A River -Julie London, On Broadway - George Benson etc were all non-needletime Local radio Soundtrack. In the main on-air studio at BBC Radio London we had a bank of around 400 carts of these Non-needletime tracks - the deal was you had to play them off tape not commercial records or CDs. As someone rightly said we only had an allocation of 2 hrs needletime but were broadcasting probably in excess of 12 hours of music a day.
I also remember another Canadian Talent Library track which was actually a hit : Music Box Dancer by Frank Mills.
It was crazy - but as a Producer it was always great when you managed to find a hit track by an established artist on a NNT label.
Indeed they are. But we kick it off, eh?