Radio Times

RADIO TIMES



It was founded on 28 September 1923, and originally carried details of BBC radio programmes in response to a newspaper boycott of radio listings. It was at one time the magazine with the largest circulation in the UK. Until deregulation of television listings in 1991, the Radio Times carried only listings for BBC channels, while the ITV-published magazine, the TV Times, carried only ITV and (from 1982) Channel Four listings. Today both publications carry listings for all major terrestrial (analogue and digital), cable and satellite television channels in the United Kingdom. A number of similar magazines, from independent publishers, also exist. However, the Radio Times still lives up to its name by being the most comprehensive source of UK radio listings in print, and also since the 22 May 2007 edition has carried two extra pages of TV listings per day as part of a slight tweak in the publication's format, bringing it up to 10 pages of listings for TV a day in total.

Radio Times is published on Tuesdays and carries listings for the following Saturday through to Friday (this began in 1960, before which issues ran Sunday to Saturday; the changeover meant that Saturday 8 October 1960 was listed twice). A special, often double, issue is published each Christmas (a tradition since 1969), in common with most other listing magazines. This usually features a generic festive artwork, atypical for the magazine which since the 1970s has almost exclusively used photographic covers.

There are several regional editions, which each contain different listings for regional programming. All editions carry variations for adjoining regions and local radio listings. There are now fewer regional editions than there once were because fewer variations in the schedules have led to merging of several editions. The most recent of these is when the Midlands and London/Anglia versions merged into one in August 2007. The exception to this process of merging is Wales, which used to be part of a larger Wales/West (of England) version, mirroring the HTV region.

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