This is a list of events in British radio during 1980.
Quick Facts List of years in British radio (table) ...
Close
January
- 2 January – BBC Radio 3 launches a new, extended teatime programme Mainly for Pleasure. The two-hour long programme replaces the much shorter Homeward Bound.[1]
- 13 January – Forces request programme Family Favourites is broadcast on BBC Radio 2 for the final time.
February
- BBC Radio Wales launches the first of two permanent community opt-out stations, Radio Deeside, after successful community radio experiments in 1978. The reopening is in response to the closure of the Shotton steelworks.
March
- 19–20 March – MV Mi Amigo, the ship from which the pirate radio station Radio Caroline is broadcast, runs aground and sinks off the Thames Estuary.
- 31 March – BBC Radio 1's broadcast hours are cut back. The station starts broadcasting on weekdays an hour later and Saturday evening programming ends. The station simulcasts BBC Radio 2 during this additional downtime although by the end of the year Radio 1 has stopped broadcasting Radio 2 through the night.
April
- 11 April – CBC in Cardiff becomes the first of the second tranche of Independent Local Radio stations to start broadcasting. It is the first new ILR station since 1976.
September
- September – Due to the continued expansion of BBC Local Radio, the regional news bulletins, broadcast in England four times a day Monday to Saturday on BBC Radio 4, end, apart from in the south west which is the sole part of England which still does not have any BBC local service.
| This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (March 2013) |
- 9 February – Renée Houston, actress (The Clitheroe Kid) (born 1902)[4]
- 26 April – Dame Cicely Courtneidge, actress (Discord in Three Flats) (born 1893)
- 23 June – John Laurie, actor (The Man Born to Be King) (born 1897)
- 24 July – Peter Sellers, actor, comedian and radio personality (born 1925)
- 22 August – Norman Shelley, actor (born 1903)
- 6 October – Hattie Jacques, actress (Educating Archie, Hancock's Half Hour) (born 1922)[5]
- 19 October – D. G. Bridson, radio producer and author (born 1910)[6]
- 20 October – Isobel Barnett, broadcasting personality (born 1918; suicide)
- 8 December – Charles Parker, documentary producer (born 1919)
The Listener. British Broadcasting Corporation. July 1980. p. 615.