PMH/BBC rock music programming on radio and television and the progressive rock audience, 1967–1973

A little more than forty years into its existence, the British Broadcasting Corporation replaced its original popular music radio show, the Light Programme, with its first popular music radio services, Radio One and Radio Two. The creation of two radio stations that broadcast popular music with no overt aim to educate the public’s taste appeared to be a major reversal of everything the BBC had stood for throughout its existence. Nevertheless, this accommodation of the public taste was received with opprobrium in some quarters, namely from the burgeoning ‘underground’ press and a small but very vocal and influential section of the audience whose tastes were defined by what they called ‘progressive’ rock music; music that they heard only in select and not very popular listening hours on Radio One. Criticism of the corporation’s broadcast and programming policies had rarely been so public, or so widespread.