BBC Radio 1

One of the main reason's for Britpop happening was because of, like many things in British music, BBC Radio 1. In particular, Matthew Bannister, who became controller of the station in 1993, and changed the station's line up and output, played a major part in the resurgence of British music.

When Bannister took over Radio 1 in 1993, the station was filled with older DJs, such as Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates etc, and the music output was, for the most part, of a more MOR nature, and shows centred as much around the DJs' personality and features as it was about music. Bannister's brief was, quite simply, to cater for younger listeners and play newer music.

This was achieved mainly by getting rid of many of the older DJs in favour of younger, specialised DJs, such as Steve Lamacq (indie/rock), Trevor Nelson (R 'n' B) and Tim Westwood (hip hop). Chris Evans also took over the breakfast show, as I discussed in a previous post).

This strategy took a little while to work; listening figures dropped at first as older listeners deserted the station, but eventually, with the rise of Britpop, Bannister's move seemed to have worked. More importantly, for me, the quality of programming had improved, and Britain's younger audience were finally catered for again, which, let's not forget, is the chartered reason for Radio 1's existence in the first place.

Whether Radio 1 made Britpop, or Britpop made (a revitalised) Radio 1 is a debatable point. Certainly, they were both good for each other and they both needed each other to have achieved what they did; I doubt Bannister's strategy for Radio 1 would have been so successful without the Britpop bands, and the Britpop bands wouldn't have been so successful without Radio 1. That said, many of the (better) Britpop bands pre-dated Bannister's tenure at Radio 1, so I doubt that Radio 1 was really responsible for making any better music at the time, but it was certainly responsible getting it to a larger audience.

You can read Wikipedia's (rather brief) section on this period at Radio 1 here, a rather good article on Bannister's "cull" here, or a recent interview with Bannister himself here.