Sign of the times

Cover by Eric Fraser from 1938

There was a golden era of Radio Times magazine; it was intelligent,creative, informative and entertaining. From its inception in 1923 the Radio Times had always been synonymous with an imaginative use of illustration. From those early days it embraced the talents of some of the finest from McKnight Kauffer to Edward Ardizzone and Abram Games to Robin Jacques. But that was back in the more innocent days of black and white when letterpress printing and a mean spirited maximum dot screen of only 65 dpi was the order of the day, so line drawing was the key vehicle for illustration. Illustrators at that time positively excelled in the limitation and squeezed the maximum out of it. Here are a few examples from a diverse range of illustrators that graced the pages of Radio Times from the 1940s to the 1960s…

Edward Ardizzone

Ronald Searle

Eric Fraser

R.F.Micklewright

James Boswell 1967

Radio Times paid a lot of attention to the quality of its editors and art directors, in order to uphold the high BBC Rithian ethos. By the late sixties, Radio Times had become a little stale and dated. With the competion of TV Times it was ready for a major change, but without losing its unique integrity and 3 million weekly readers. Radio Times turned to an external duo of Editorial Designer David Driver and Editor Geoffrey Cannon. They where given the secret task of transforming the Radio Times from cover to cover. And they did just that.

Illustration by Charles Raymond of The Joy of Sex fame
 

Prior to Radio Times, Driver art directed a number of magazines, including the now forgotten in flight publication Welcome Aboard. Much of Welcome Aboard’s visual innovation that Driver was experimenting with was developed and surpassed on Radio Times. Originally Cannon’s intention was to change the name to the acronym, RT (which alluded to Radio and Television rather than the emphasis on radio). This idea went a long way down the line with Driver creating and elegant masthead using stylish swash caps. But it was a step too far for the BBC and the long established name was retained. Driver hired designers Robert Priest and Derek Ungless, both highly talented individuals in their own right (they later went on to work independently in New York to great success). This tight knit team creatively pushed the magazine. Their choice of photography, illustration and copywriting was exceptional and it became the showcase for many of Britain’s most talented creatives. 

In 1976, Radio Times received the ultimate design accolade, a D&AD Gold Award for ‘consistently raising the standard of editorial design.’ Here are some examples of that award winning work..

By Peter Brookes

By Frank Bellamy the illustrator of the Eagle's Dan Dare

 
By Brian Grimwood

By Paul Slater 

By Tony Meeuwissen

By Ralph Steadman

By Adrian George

And 4 by the most prolific  and conceptual of the illustrator for Radio Times, Peter Brookes

Peter Brookes was also responsible for many mono pieces and diagrams (along with Nigel Holmes) that appeared within the magazine...

It is both sad and depressing that following the departure of Driver in 1981, Radio Times disintegrated in design and editorial quality. Now 30 years on it would be an understatement to call the current Radio Times a design embarrassment. It looks and reports like so many other listings magazines spewed out onto the newsstands. 21st Century’s Radio Times has no distinguishing features and is packed to the gunnels with so much graphic furniture that it plays havoc with the eyeballs.

There is little (well, actually nothing) to commend this dull, dull approach

21st century TV listings display. All me too. No I'm special.

It is clear that today’s Radio Times has no room for design innovation. No uncluttered surprising covers. No inventive use of informative diagrams. No groundbreaking illustration. No typographical integrity. It simply mirrors our over hyped culture with its obsession with celebrity and trivia. It is dumber than dumb. The hard work of all those earlier Radio Times stalwarts to bring its readers creative originality has been completely swept away.

The heyday of  British editorial design when Pearce Marchbank was at Time Out, Michael Rand and David King at The Sunday Times Colour Magazine, David Hillman at Nova and Janette Collins at The Times, all producing remarkable work has long gone. Commercial magazines these days have to fill their covers with a myriad of eye catching headlines, obliterating the photographs, which in themselves, are just procession of personality portraits, retouched to cosmetic perfection. All vacuous and instantly forgettable. We get what we deserve I guess.

Ironically Esquire - the very magazine that trail blazed strong, ideas based covers like this… 

Designed by George Lois 1965

which in turn influenced many British art directors, recently celebrated their original creator, George Lois… with an exhibition of his ground breaking work.

Lois with one of his most famous covers

But today Esquire covers look like this…

So much for feminism

But if you happen to be a subscriber, they are presented type free… How much better they look.

Well, may be not.

So what of the key players in those golden days of Radio Times? Art Director David Driver went on the become Design Director of The Times where he has remained, along with one time regular illustrator for Radio Times, Peter Brookes, who became, and still is, The Times main political cartoonist of great merit.

Sadly the tabloid incarnation of The Times is, in my view, disappointing and pales when compared to Driver’s earlier years at the design helm of the paper when it was still an unruly broadsheet. Generally the change in size has compromised the design standard. And the switch over to a newly designed typeface in 2006 made things worse, losing its one unique typographic identifier, Stanley Morrison’s Times New Roman. The only British newspaper left that towers head and shoulders above the rest in design quality is The Guardian - a paper whose original design I lamented passing, but I have to say, in its new guise has gone from strength to strength.

Robert Priest took up residence in New York where he art directed a number of key magazines including Esquire. These days he heads up Priest + Grace, a specialists editorial design consultancy. Derek Ungless also departed to New York where he art directed Rolling Stone, New York and Vogue among others. Today he is still a major figure on the NY creative scene as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of DSW, Inc. where he is reported to receive an eye watering $6 million pay packet (who needs bankers). And the old RT Editor, Geoffrey Cannon is now a writer, speaker, editor, executive and campaigner in the field of food, nutrition and world health. He is co-author of Dieting Makes You Fat and The Food Scandal. Sadly they have terrible covers. Why didn’t he call in Driver?

Comments

[Etienneshrdlu]

Geoff, my point was that an entire area of publishing (in this case, the business sector) believed there was only one way to design their magazines: sober, dreary, stale and each one like the next. Nobody wanted to challenge that, until someone did, did it brilliantly, and shook up the whole sector.

Like you say, each magazine is different. It's just that right now they all look the same.

[Geoff Waring]

Etienne, yes I see what you meant, point taken. Though I haven't see the new Bloomberg mag it sounds like the 'perfect storm' Shem talked of earlier... (right art director, right editor, right MD, right time)

[Etienneshrdlu]

Geoff: here's the latest in a series of excellent BB covers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bizweekdesign/6079202351/in/photostream/lightbox/

It should be pointed out that the design within the mag is equally ambitious.

[Timabrahams]

Mike,

I was already signed in using my Wordpress blog name. Not hiding anything.

"We have all been dumbed down," you say. I haven't. I watch my HBO box-sets and use iPlayer to find the best on the BBC (not much on BBC4 for me. Tend not to like documentaries about landscape painting or dramas about dead comedians.) I read the LA Review of Books and McSweeney's online. I get The Economist, the Believer and the London Review of Books and read Wired, PORT and Eye Magazine and Blueprint from time to time. None of its dumb. Most of it looks good. Some of it looks amazing.

The kind of quality you seek has fled the most popular points of popular culture for now. Quality was never uniform. But I for one am not going to sit around and complain about that. Life is too short. Quality is just another step away. How long was a TV magazine going to survive as an outpost of Reithianism after the deregulation of TV listings? Not long.

I was born in 1974 and the Radio Times - sorry Shem - was only bought once a year for Christmas when we got to go through the films and then choose what we wanted. If its got a picture of that bloke out of Torchwood on it every fortnight I'm not going to get upset about it.

[Mike]

Well, I'm glad to hear all that. Clearly horses for courses. But I do like documentaries; BBC Four’s 'Storyville' being generally outstanding, along with their many music docs - long and in-depth. Plus too many others to mention that I have found terrific. I buy Monocle (admitted for only a £1 at the fabulous Leather Lane remainder stall), along with all the usual ‘designer’ suspects. But I hate the idea that most of society is just being fed shit. Maybe I should just be selfish and think about own needs. Have you notice how Radio 3 is sounding more like Classic FM these days? I tell you it’s creeping in everywhere, while your back is turned or while watching your HBO box set.

Mike

[Shem Law]

Come on chaps... Lets keep this debate on track, without it turning into episode of ‘Last of the Summer wine’.
Apologies but it’s Shem back here again Mike. Firstly let me reassure you that I really haven’t taken anything you’ve written or said personally, it’s just good to be able to talk about the modern business of magazine design. I have been surprised by the level of feeling out there as I’m sure you have too. And yes, we should probably both stop making assumptions about what the other gets up to when it comes to work. But, re-reading your comments (keeping aside all the ‘Modern life is rubbish’ stuff) What I’m struck by is difference between our worlds, My side being, David Driver’s, and the the other editorial designers and yours the ‘purist’ graphic designers. I have all my working life felt that most graphic designers look down on what we do on magazines as not being ‘proper graphic design’. I suppose the feeling started when one of the Pentagram big-wigs turned up at my Art School (Hornsey), to lecture us on the rewards of Graphic Design, pointing to his Porsche parked outside as Exhibit A. (He was a monumental arse) When I mentioned that I was interested in magazine design, everyone coughed politely and changed the subject. It dawned upon me then, I had spent three years of my life being fashioned into the sort of designer that was expected to join one of these ‘creative factories’ and work on the sort of projects that would take Sainsbury’s for half a million quid and in exchange tell them that “Orange is fundamentally important to your corporate look and, Oh, we’ve slimed down the apostrophe in your logo, it makes it soooo fresh and modern... Ker...Ching.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it your branch of the ‘service’ that has dumbed design down? Before the sixties, being a commercial artist was a respected job for an artisan, and some like McKnight Kauffer even managed to elevate it to an art form. But it was you guys back in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s who turned it into a profession, with all the degree course, chin stroking, navel gazing and ‘lets pin it up and leave it for a week or two’ that entails. (You see I can do sweeping generalisations too)...
But I think there is a serious point to be made here. Editorial designers are some of the few proper commercial artists left. “The best possible job in the time available” was how editorial design was once described to me and I think that pretty much sums what we do up. Graphic designers don’t like the fact that we design at 20 times the speed they do, and it’s out on the street next week or even tomorrow. Typography is not an art and neither should it be... (I should know I started life as a sign writer). Andy Cowles is a genius of editorial design, few can touch him, I’m not fit to lace his boots, yet I doubt you’d heard of him before we started this. He understands perfectly the tyrannical hold that commercialism has on our business, and he still makes magazines that sell and look terrific. He is the dictionary definition of a commercial artist.
I know that every so often you let one of us is into ‘The Club’, whether it be Fabien Baron or Michael Rand, but it’s a pretty closed shop over in D&AD-land. So maybe this is what is at the heart of all this. Maybe the ‘country cousins’ are more than a bit fed up with the ‘airs and graces’ (and pointless awards) that you have given yourselves over the years... Maybe it’s time to turn graphic design back into the ‘honest trade’ it used to be. Any takers?

[mike]

Good evening Shem – Yes, this has been an incredibly interesting and lively debate.
Reading between the lines of your latest tome I am assuming that you think that I am a Porsche driving ponce who talks at student like they were fawning Christian disciples. Some quick facts. I left school at 15, didn’t go to art school. I worked at a fitters mate. Went to evening classes and studied calligraphy, because it sounded ‘arty’. I then met a tutor there who, funnily enough worked at the Daily Express. He encouraged me to join his layout class (mainly because he didn’t have many takers – we are talking Dagenham in the late 50s). He showed me some graphic panels that had been designed for the Express. They were by Raymond Hawkey. Bingo, I knew what I wanted to do and after many extremely lowly jobs in a handful of jobbing ‘commercial art studios’ I learned the craft: past up, retouching, line drawing etc. I slowly worked my way up. Fast forward a bit - I then spent 10 years in publishing, where the budgets were embarrassingly low and work frantic. And I had sales directors breathing down my neck always wanting the type bigger. I resisted and fought my corner and manger to get many of the great designers of the day to work for me, including a very young Peter Fluck (you know all about him). So you see Shem I am not one of those egotistical award polishing wallys that you seem to think all designers are that don’t do your kind of thing. Oh yes, and I drive a VW polo. Enough said. Night.

[Brendon B]

Let's all get back to work huh?

[Brian Minards]

Let's be fair, RT lost its attraction when it ceased to be a BBC-only publication in orfer to compete with the TV Times et al in the deregulated free-for-all. With little remaining room for valuable and informative editorial and accompanying illustrative matter RT became much like all the rest many years ago. Clinging on to the wreckage is the best that can be said. It's still the best listings magazine by far but sadly its value is little now. We can only look back at its halcyon days and admire what was done safe in the knowledge that they won't return. Oh, and I use the Guide from Saturday's Guardian now to see what time X-Jungle-Brother-Soap is on... Commercial considerations have a lot to answer for in all spheres.

[T]

There's a couple of things that annoy me about all this;

1. Sales figures are a reflection of 'Good design'. This is a myth. If I put the headline on any cover to read "Queen found dead", even set in Comic Sans, big enough, it will sell the most. That is not 'good design'. The Sun doesn't sell more because it is designed better; it sells more because it is full of crap (as is it's target market).
2. How on Earth do these magazines sell more by looking the same as each other? Honestly, it is just that no-one has the balls to think different. It is that simple. Game changers don't care about being different. Being different is noticeable, commendable. Since when has standing out resulted in less sales? I'd love to see the sales figures per cover, and I bet it will have more to do with the headline than the design.

[Marko Burns]

it is important to accept that what really changed was a broader takeover of magazine departments by the new world of 'marketing' - the 'art room' lost out in the power play. In came Cover Lines and more importantly, in came Celebrity- which has essentially swallowed up the entire genre to a large extent.

http://www.popcultmag.com/criticalmass/culture/magazines/magazines0.html

http://longleaf.net/coverlines/

[Richard Scott]

@T

I think you need to define 'Good design'...

Good editorial design is about communicating the message of a story to a reader. Not about setting it all in Helvetica Ultra Light and sticking it in your portfolio.

[Mark Porter]

Fasincating discussion! George Lois has some provocative views on the same subject in this interview: http://bit.ly/hCMGuY

[Richard Turley]

Woooah! Hang on there Mr Geoff waring... I will stick a tiny bit of oar in here - Businessweek may not have to sell magazines off checkouts in the UK where we have a very limited distribution, but we have to sell them everywhere here..off newsstands of every ilk; in airports, train stations, bus depots, in the multitude of drug stores (English equivalent - think corner shops crossed with Boots), bookshops, and yes, supermarkets.

Its very gratifying that our magazine has received some attention for its design (thank you for all your kind words btw). I have no special insight into why were perceived as doing interesting work or how to do it. All I know is I have a fantastic and brave editor who takes the design of all parts of the magazine very seriously. And that we trust each other implicitly.

[Kragedesign]

I had the good fortune to work as a designer with both David Driver (hello David) and Peter Brookes at The Times in the 90's as new technology was being introduced.

New technology meant Editors could get involved in design. It became common place for an Editor to actually stand behind the designer and direct a cover or layout. It could could become design by committee. Photoshop meant that photo 'illustrations' could be produced unfortunately cutting out the illustrator. One Editor I worked with demanded (and got) a bears head photoshopped onto a city businessman in a suit for a cover. A designer would be foolish to refuse an editor their request/order with a deadline looming.

Thanks for this lively, colourful, nostalgic but at times slightly bitter debate. I agree with both Mike and Shem's points but the media must surely reflect the times we live in no? In which case we do indeed have the perfect mirror.

[Gary Day-Ellison]

An interesting post. And an interesting debate but a little diluted when it got personal.

I do think picking out the nuggets of design & art direction is important. And certainly too valuable to be dismissed as just nostagia for the illusive Golden Era.

But the point about deregulation of listings is important. As is the effect of a couple of generations of Mr Jobs' shiny machines.

But it seems to me that there is one thing that was key in the past, now, and into the future. That is the dynamic relationship between Editor and Art Director. Get that Gestalt right and magic happens.

[Miles Raymond]

I find it amazing that Art Directors can still trot our George Lois covers and say, without question, that they are The Best Thing Ever. They're very good, of course they are: groundbreaking, striking, memorable. But they are absolutely of their time.

I know that The Beatles were good at pop music, but when I were a lad, they weren't in the charts and so I bought records by the Pet Shop Boys and Def Leppard. Then when I got older, I realised the importance and impact of The Beatles, but that didn't lead me to conclude that all music after them was automatically worse.

(Lois was an adman, let's not forget, who was trying to make images that would sell the magazine. He was brought in for that express purpose. They got him from Madison Avenue. Why? Because his advertising design was commercially successful. It looked amazing, but if it wasn't getting the money in for his agency and its clients, he would have been out of a job. Say what you want, but as Mr Cowles points out, the point of a magazine cover is to sell the magazine to purchasers of magazines. Nothing more, nothing less.)

So to say that people now are somehow worse or less good than Lois and his ilk, or that Radio Times now looks worse than Radio Times did Back In The Day, is pointless. it *has* to look different now.

Ah, you all cry, but what about Bloomberg Businessweek? It is doing striking covers with just one idea on it. No sh*t, Sherlocks - it's competing with something called The Economist, which, if memory serves, also does the one-idea thing.

I also personally think it's easier to make a good-looking cover than it is to make a good-looking cover that will sell, or just a cover that will sell. But maybe that's because I'm a words man...

I must also agree with several of the above commenters that this debate is super, and the fact that people care about design is vital and wonderful and important. But anyone shaking his rolled-up newspaper at what the youngsters are doing today, while telling everyone how standards are slipping, has not realised that if you wind the clock back to when you were young, the generation before you was doing *exactly* the same thing, too.

[Sd]

Go and do it then!!

[Geoff Waring]

Here, here, Miles Raymond, you summed the debate up perfectly... I can go back to work now, but it is a shame that those of us designing the more 'commercial' end get looked down on by some of our peers... you hit the nail on the head when you said its easier to design a good looking cover than a good looking cover that sells... that is the crux of what we attempt to do day in day out... and why perhaps we win so few awards from our peers

[Bridget Morley]

Mike, I completely support your last sentence.

Enough excuses already! Having worked in publishing all my life, I know that sales and publicity depts have always tried to homogenise design – they look backwards at past successes, not forwards – so they are always behind the game.

Good design is, and mostly always has been, both exiting and innovative, and has therefore always been produced in an unending battle with those who control the pursestrings.

On a different point, I would like to applaud the 'editorial' art director, of which D D is such a striking example. This kind of designer makes an enormous contribution to content not just styling, and this very often goes unacknowledged.

[Geoffrey Cannon]

Hello, this is Geoffrey Cannon, RT editor from 1968-1979. Thank you Mike and yes, there are lots of splendid posts here. Makes me feel that design and art direction matters as much as football! Flickering through I see somebody celebrated the David Driver days when the editor didn't 'give a monkeys' what went into RT. Tut! And even if I personally did not care, as editor I was regularly denounced by the heaviest hitting BBCtv executives who hated our non-prime channel/ time coverage, and was also roasted by national newspapers who saw (for instance) our putting a sprinter from the USSR on an Olympic cover as final evidence that the Commies had taken over the BBC. (He got the gold, phew!) Some respect please, esteemed toilers in the field! It is of course true that everything changed when after my time the BBC lost its claim to own copyright in its programmes as compiled, and RT became a joint programme journal in competition with others. But! This need not have happened. My line was that it was only by featuring radio, music, science and the arts, and indeed BBC2 on the cover, as well as comedy, sport and popular drama, and using illustration as well as photography, that the BBC deserved to keep its copyright. History has absolved me. But the line that after the freeing of copyright Radio Times was doomed to become yet another middle of the road populist mag, which it did and which it is, however nicely it may be designed, is not valid. For over half a century (with a sag in the 1960s) Radio Times was a magazine of choice and quality. It should and could have stayed that way, albeit with commercial broadcasting details, more channels, and transformed printing. It didn't, and I am in a position to say why. Here is what happened. David and I, left, and so had others on the art side like Dennis Curran, Derek Ungless and Bob Priest. Also and crucially, on the features and planning side Russell Twisk, Sally Beauman, Deirdre Lyndon, Ruth Rosenthal, Jane Wellesley, Victoria Hainworth, Peter Gillman, Vicki Woods, Henry Fenwick and many others (this is an off-the-top list) had also left, and with them we gradually lost most of our carefully cultivated best writers, photographers and illustrators. We also lost the goodwill and advance knowledge of the most interesting programmes. Then, the BBC top directors who always had wanted the journal to be mere puffery, descended like vultures and instructed the destruction of its quality. Not in so many words, of course (vide George Orwell) That's what happened. It was in effect the stupid and self-defeating revenge of the then Board and Directors, and if you want to know who they were, go google. It had nothing to do with the decisions of successive editors or art editors. Nor am I criticising the editorial staff who came after David and me, That's not the point. The decisions were political. The irony is that the trivialisation of Radio Times and worse, its transformation into puffery, was and not only a mirror of the dumbing down of the BBC. Radio Times as it became and has become, suggests that the BBC is even more trivial than it actually is. Does this affect the BBC's negotiations concerning the licence fee, or its creeping privatisation? You better believe it! (No, I don't look at every issue of Radio Times here in Brazil, so anybody who wants to say that the magazine contains lots of wonderful stuff is free to roast me, but with examples please). A number of posts here have asked that we all get real. Indeed so. As from the early 1980s Radio Times became just another commercial weekly, and that's what it is. The tragedy is that this need not have happened.

[Geoffrey Cannon]

Geoffrey Cannon again. PS

Oops, sorry about the paragraphing (lack of)

Mike I now see you say that when I took the job of editor Radio Times had 3 million readers. No. It had a circulation of around 3.5 million, and around 9 million readers. At its height in my time it peaked at 4 million circulation with 10 million readers. It was the biggest circulation magazine in Europe and, with local radio added, the most complex, with an editorial staff rising to 70. This discussion so far has not mentioned the programme page team led by Hilary Cope Morgan and I should have done this in my previous post.

David Driver will I think agree with me that it's also worth mentioning that we progressed in three stages. The second was as from 1972, when we become more self-confidently international in scope.

The second was from 1974, when as policy we commissioned the best writers as well as the best photographers and illustrators, in effect to complement (note the e) BBCtv and Radio. This meant insisting on editorial budgets for contributors fees and expenses that were fixed at above those of the Sunday Times Magazine.

I recall Alasdair Milne, then BBCtv managing director, in a meeting that included various senior minions, demanding that I justify the spending of stacks of money flying journalists round the world. This was none of his his business, but he enjoyed making colleagues squirm. 'Why Alasdair' I said 'how else to do justice to the quality of your programmes?' I always had the feeling with Alasdair that his hobby as a boy must have been pulling the wings off insects but, to be fair, his response was 'fifteen-all' and the full OHC treatment(opening of the hospitality cabinet) and Glenmorangies all round.

Cheers!

[Mike Dempsey]

Geoffrey - Thank you for that fulsome comment. I am glad that you name checked all those on the Radio Times staff during the glory days, when the magazine was so special. And I am grateful to you for filling in the historic context. To have had both the editor and art director add to this - rather steamy -debate has made it very special and I am so pleased that I wrote it in the first place.

[Tony Currie]

Forgive a late intrusion from a non graphics man, but as someone who shuffles off to bed every night with a small bundle of crumbling newsprint under his arm, I think I may have studied "Radio Times" in more detail than any mortal ought.

It's over simplistic to suggest that there was a 'Golden' era for RT and that anything later than that period is inferior. For a start, Mike's implication that the paper has been a home for exquisite graphic art since 1923 is demonstrably untrue. Between 1923 and 1931 there were practically no illustrations at all.

RT is an ephemeral product. It has always been produced for the purpose of providing information about forthcoming broadcasts, and has never been edited with an eye to the intellectual/artistic analysis of decades ahead.

The users of the magazine know exactly what it is. That's why they but it, stick it near the telly and then bin it on Saturday morning. It has fulfilled its purpose, as it always has done.

It would be really easy for me to pick any decade from the 1920s to the 2000s and produce examples of rubbish artwork and rotten prose. Reading copies now can be buttock-clenchingly embarrasing, especially features written in the 1950s and early 60s. Not because of bad journalism but because society and its attitudes and interests has changed since then, as it will always continue to do.

Equally, I could select many back issues and stick them on a 2012 news-stand in the certain knowledge that they would not sell a single issue. Grey newsprint photographs and spot colour mastheads are just not where its at anymore. There were many utterly dreadful covers but since Radio Times wasn't in competition with anyone else (You had to buy both it and the local ITV magazine to see the whole picture)it never had to try too hard. Removing the monopoly on listings was one of many changes that cannot be reversed. Radio Times has never had the option of standing still, and evolves on a weekly basis.

The examples that Mike has used to illustrate his blog are interesting (even more so because I rather think they are all taken from my book!) because some are flawed from the start. Take the BBC Local radio cover. It appeared on the front of all the editions, including Scottish, Wales and Northern Ireland, even though none of these Nations has ever had BBC Local Radio. Not exactly a sales tool!

David is right to credit the many exceptional talents who made up the Radio Times in his days. Hilary's programme pages were simply brilliant, but would simply not work today. (Imagine that much detail for all the channels that are regularly viewed/listened to by RT readers? You would need bodybuilding exercises just to pick the paper up!)

In my book, I draw attention to a specific week in the 1970s when Radio Times had a photograph of a church on its cover and TV Times had the torso of a beautiful girl covered in flags of the Nations. I know which of these would sell today!

I still believe that Radio Times is the best listings magazine in the UK and that it looks the best on news-stands. But then I'm a biased historian. (Is there such a thing as an unboased historian? I suspect not!)

Tony Currie
Author "The Radio Times Story"