Commercial Onslaught: Commercial Television, Radio Luxembourg and the Pirates

Television would become a major threat to radio especially after the BBC Television broadcast of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and then again following the arrival of commercial television in the shape of ITV in 1955. During the 1950s, Radio Luxembourg remained for some time the only real competition for BBC Radio, but this would change by the early 1960s with the arrival of pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London which played popular music for a youth audience. The desire among the post-war generation for pop music radio and the arrival of the transistor radio meant these illegal pirate stations became enormously popular compared to BBC Radio. Devlin shows how television and pirate radio forced the BBC to re-evaluate its radio output and reposition its national radio stations.