Development of ILR Until the early 1970s, the BBC had a legal
monopoly on radio broadcasting in the UK. Despite competition from the commercial
Radio Luxembourg and, for a period in the mid-1960s, the off-shore "
pirate" broadcasters, it had remained the policy of both major political parties that radio was to remain under the BBC. This policy changed after the election of
Edward Heath's government in
1970. It is possible that Heath's victory was partly due to younger voters upset by
Harold Wilson's government closing down the popular pirate radio stations. The new Minister of Post and Telecommunications and former
ITN newscaster,
Christopher Chataway, announced a bill to allow for the introduction of commercial radio in the United Kingdom. This service would be planned and regulated similarly to the existing
ITV service and would compete with the recently developed
BBC Local Radio services (rather than the four national BBC services). The
Sound Broadcasting Act 1972 received
royal assent on 12 July 1972 and the
Independent Television Authority (ITA) accordingly changed its name to the
Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) that same day. The IBA immediately began to plan the new service, placing advertisements encouraging interested groups to apply for medium-term contracts to provide programmes in given areas. The first major areas to be advertised were
London and
Glasgow, with two contracts available in London, one for "news and information", one for "general and entertainment". Contracts were for three years, extendable for one year each year; thus, they were indefinite if the IBA was satisfied with the contractor's performance. The London news contract was awarded to
London Broadcasting Company (LBC) and they began broadcasting on 8 October 1973. The London general contract went to
Capital Radio, who began broadcasting on 16 October 1973. In total, 19 contracts were awarded between 1973 and 1976. Due to government limits on capital expenditure and turbulence in the broadcasting field (mainly due to the
Annan Report), no further contracts were awarded until 1980, when a second tranche of contracts were awarded. All stations were awarded an
AM and an
FM frequency, on which they broadcast the same service.
Original contracts First tranche Second tranche In July 1981, the Home Secretary approved proposals for the creation of Independent Local Radio services in 25 more areas. This did not prevent Radio West in Bristol getting into financial trouble and having to merge with Wiltshire Radio on 1 October 1985; nor did it prevent Centre Radio going into receivership on 6 October 1983. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in several areas where ILR stations had not previously been licensed, new local radio licenses were issued in these 'white space' locations which, whilst not part of the historic ILR tranche, operated as the defacto ILR commercial radio services for their broadcast area. As these stations launched after the move to end AM/FM simulcasting (as detailed below), these newer stations were issued with only an FM license and had no AM frequency, precluding them from following other ILR licensees in splitting into younger FM/older AM services. These stations included
Fox FM in
Oxfordshire (15 Sept 1989),
Lincs FM in
Lincolnshire (1 March 1992),
Pirate FM in
Cornwall (3 April 1992),
Minster FM in
North Yorkshire (4 July 1992) and
CFM in
Cumbria (14 April 1993). (With the exception of Fox FM (now owned by Global and broadcasting as Heart), these stations have now effectively been split in twain by Bauer to broadcast
Greatest Hits Radio on their legacy FM frequencies, with a localised
Hits Radio service offered alongside it on DAB.)
Split services In 1986 the
Home Office sanctioned in principle the idea that different services could be broadcast on each station's FM and AM frequency and six experiments of split programming on Independent Local Radio of up to ten hours a week took place, although the first experimental part-time split service had taken place two years earlier when
Radio Forth created Festival City Radio for the duration of the
Edinburgh Festival. The first station to permanently split their frequencies was
Guildford's County Sound who rebranded the FM output as Premier Radio and turned the AM output into a new golden oldies station, County Sound Gold in 1988. By 1988, the government had decided that the practice of splitting was beneficial and a quick way to increase choice for listeners. The IBA then began encouraging ILR stations to split their services and most soon complied. The usual format was to have a "gold" (oldies) service on AM and pop music on FM, although Radio City tried "City Talk" on AM before abandoning the format and replacing it with a "gold" station. By the start of the 1990s, most stations had done 'the splits' with the final stations ending waveband simulcasting by the mid-1990s.
Incremental Radio Incremental Radio was a new type of radio licence given out by the IBA between 1989 and 1990. These were additional radio services introduced into areas already served by an Independent Local Radio station and most had to offer output not already available on ILR, such as specialist music, programmes for a specific section of the community or for smaller areas than ILR stations cover. 22 stations went on air, most of which were eventually acquired by the large radio groups and absorbed into their networks. As of 2024 only a few remain independently owned and operated. The regulatory model these stations were under was a precursor to commercial radio stations licensed by the incoming Radio Authority. ==The Broadcasting Act 1990==