UK Radio Ownership; WWII onwards ?

[Bazz4CQJ]

Does anyone have data regarding what percentage of UK homes owned radios from the WWII era onwards? I'm guessing that, by the end of the war, the figure was very high? I've taken a quick look on Google, but haven't found what I'm looking for.

Thanks

B

[Synchrodyne]

I’d imagine that the official statistics from the period at interest would provide you with both a household count and a broadcast receiving licence count. From those you could develop the percentage estimates you are seeking. The licence count would need to be grossed up to cover unlicensed use (I don’t know, but maybe by a factor of 1.2) and also for households with more than one receiver (perhaps a factor such as 1.1 or 1.2).

I am not sure where UK household statistics would be found. Here in NZ we’d likely look for historical NZ Year Book issues, although probably not so many libraries these days keep complete runs.

UK receiving licence numbers are also available from the pages of Wireless World; some random examples attached.


Cheers,

[G8KBG Tony]

Practical Wireless regularly gave the number of receiving licences issued during the past year. This issue on page 356 for example, September 1948.

Tony

[Bazz4CQJ]

Thanks for that info. I'm still trying to find some estimate of how many households were around, but that's proving hard. The UK population in 1951 was ~55M (1951 was the first census for some time). So, just as a start, if 55 million people were to equal 11 million homes (probably a low number), and taking the 1952 number of 12.5 million licences, then the number of households with radios in that general period looks like "almost all". Being more precise could be hard.

B

[Paul_RK]

This survey

http://www.lse.ac.uk/social-policy/A...amily-size.pdf

gives household figures derived from census returns (page 17) as:

1951 13,259,000
1961 14,724,000
1971 16,871,000
1981 no data
1991 20,213,000

So, yes, I expect by 1951 households without a radio would have been about as hard to find as ones without a TV or telephone today: less so perhaps in areas where mains electricity hadn't arrived.

Paul

[David G4EBT]

Originally Posted by Bazz4CQJ

Does anyone have data regarding what percentage of UK homes owned radios from the WWII era onwards? I'm guessing that, by the end of the war, the figure was very high? I've taken a quick look on Google, but haven't found what I'm looking for.

Thanks

B

We shouldn't confuse having a radio licence (or later a combined radio/TV licence) as a direct indication of how many households actually 'owned' a radio. Many radios and TVs that were in use from the 1930s onwards up to at least the mid 1980s were rented. That's why there are so many DAC90As around. I believe that Radio Rentals alone had 100,000 DAC90As out on rental at one point, until - as they aged and became less an less reliable - RR terminated the rental agreements and offered renters the opportunity to buy the set for ten shillings or to return it.

Neither my parents nor my wife's ever 'owned' a radio or TV for the same reason that many others didn't - too expensive to buy and maintain, and too unreliable. In addition to rentals, millions of UK homes in most UK towns had a wired distribution system, as often as not Rediffusion. The 'radio' was just a large Bakelite box with a speaker in it, and a multiway switch to select stations. We had one of those through the war years, when there were only two stations - 'Home' and 'Forces' and from 1948, Third programme.

In our case, that Rediffusion box went in 1948 and we had a rented DAC90A instead until in 1957, when it packed in (yet again), by which time Reddifusion was offering wired TV with preset radio stations, so we had a rented Rediffusion TV, which had no tuner or RF stage, and was served by twisted pairs of wires strung from one house to the next, to a wall mounted switch box. RR didn't want the DAC90A back and it was of no interest to me so it was put out for the binmen.

Renting of TVs continued well into the 1980s, spurred on by a range of events:

The 1953 Coronation boosted TV rentals and ownership on 'easy terms'.
The introduction of commercial TV channels (1955).
BBC2 (1964).
Colour TV (1969).

The rental companies also moved into renting VCRs - Radio Rentals from 1977. As with TVs, expensive to buy and maintain, unreliable new technology and in two formats (Betamax & VHS). By 1980 only 5% of UK homes had a VCR, whether bought or rented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Rentals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rediffusion

I don't want to make it sound as though no-one 'owned' a radio or TV - clearly millions did and in considerable variety too, with shows such as 'Radiolympia' drawing huge crowds. And certainly from the mid 1950s onwards, portable radios, car radios and extra sets in different rooms of the house (obviating the need for extension speakers) became commonplace.

Really, the onset of ICs & transistors heralded a much higher level of reliability at more affordable prices, coupled with increased prosperity was the death knell of the radio and TV rental market.

Despite there being no direct correlation between licences held and radios/TVs 'owned', until perhaps the 1980s, here are a few figures from 1925 onwards up to 1970 showing the number of radio licences, and from 1947, in brackets, the number of combined radio/TV licences:

1925: 1.35 mill
1930: 3 mill
1935: 7 mill.
1940: 8.9 mill
1945: 9.7 mill
1947: 10.75 mill (1,4560)
1950: 11.9 mill (343,882)
1953: 10.75 mill (2,142,452) The impact televising the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
1955: 9.477 mill (4,503,766)
1960: 4.5 mill (10.46 mill)
1965: 2.8 mill (13.25 mill)
1970: 2.3 mill (15.6 mill).

Source 'Radio Radio' Jonathan Hill.

Radios - including car radios - became exempt from needing a licence in 1971.

Currently, the UK has a wide range of free-to-air, free-to-view and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channels as well as on-demand content such as 'catch-up' and Netflix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televi...United_Kingdom

Hope these rather wordy notes are of interest to someone, in part if not on whole.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

I believe that Radio Rentals alone had 100,000 DAC90As out on rental at one point...

That sounds quite incredible to me, when total production of the model was around 230,000. I've never met a single DAC90A with any signs of its having belonged to a rental company, when rental sets even into the '50s seem generally to have been identified as such by branding and/or labels.

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

Neither my parents nor my wife's ever 'owned' a radio or TV for the same reason that many others didn't - too expensive to buy and maintain, and too unreliable.

Social attitudes do seem to have been ever so variable, with geographical location perhaps playing quite a part. My parents were by no means well-to-do, but to them rental and "easy terms" were alike devices to exploit feckless folk who had to have the latest items before they could afford them and would nearly always wind up paying more.

Paul

[ms660]

When I was in the R&TV servicing trade the largest number input to the workshop in the following order were rental contract repairs, maintenance contract repairs, chargeable repairs, almost all of the first two catagories were TV's

Lawrence.

[dave walsh]

A thought provoking question from Bazz but statistics aside, "Radio" itself was the great unifying War Time communications medium highly valued by government and afterwards to increase productivity [Music While You Work etc] and to provide entertainment/education, especially before a Television Service was established! I suspect that there would only be one radio per household perhaps but subjective recall is not always very accurate. For example, we might suppose that everyone who could afford it would have a "Wireless" but maybe not that many could? There is documentary footage from as late as the mid sixties showing levels of absolute poverty in very many areas of the UK [Nottingham for example] that is a shocking contrast to the general perception of a "Swinging 60's" when "We'd never had it so good" according to a certain Prime Minister!

Dave W

[Richard_FM]

I did wonder when Radio Rentals stopped actually renting out radios, my Grandparents rented a radio in the 1950s, & was knocked off a shelf by my Aunt, writing it off.

Considering the amount of radios rented out at one time & I presume the support network for them, datas sheets for RR sets are supposedly very hard to come by. Did Radio Rentals dispose

Though many of the RR branded sets can have the chassis removed with just the removal of a few screws, which makes restoring them a bit easier.

I remember reading that Michael Caine's parents rented a radio for years until he bought them a set when he started to get steady money from acting.

[broadgage]

I suspect that ACCESS to a radio was almost universal, though as has already been said many were rented rather than owned.

The better types of rented furnished accommodation often included a radio, as did many hotel rooms.

Before TV became affordable to the masses, and long before the internet, radio was the only up to date source of news.
Cinema newsreels had the merit of moving pictures but were generally at least 12 to 24 hours out of date when watched.
Newspapers had the merits of zero capital cost and could be read on the bus or in the pub, but were often similarly out of date to newsreels.

[David G4EBT]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I did wonder when Radio Rentals stopped actually renting out radios, my Grandparents rented a radio in the 1950s, & was knocked off a shelf by my Aunt, writing it off.

Considering the amount of radios rented out at one time & I presume the support network for them, datas sheets for RR sets are supposedly very hard to come by.

Radio Rentals were not the only rental group - in Nottingham, where I grew up, well into the 1960s Rediffusion vans were a very common sight. At its peak, Radio Rentals claimed to have more than 2 million customers, over 500 shops, employed 3,600 technicians, 2,700 skilled installers plus a large ancillary staff. They had sales and service locations across the UK and the RR logo was a common sight on many High Streets.

The urge to rent rather than buy declined as domestic electronics became cheaper and more reliable. In common with other well known rental brands, it couldn't sustain a viable business model - it's time had passed andit ceased to trade, merging with Granada Limited's rental arm to form Boxclever.

Incidentally, according to Wiki, the company still trades as Radio Rentals in Australia.

Thorn operates over 90 Radio Rentals stores within Australia, and 28 stores in New Zealand under the name DTR. Radio Rentals stores in South Australia trade under the name 'RR Rentlo Reinvented' due to an independent business trading as Radio Rentals. An independently owned chain operates 19 stores within South Australia; however is not in any way related to Radio Rentals owned by Thorn Australia Pty Ltd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Rentals

One design aspect which came into being in the post-war era, when households could often only afford one radio, was that more compact radios came onto the market, lighter in weight and with ferrite rod or frame aerials, so were styled and marketed as 'transportable', meaning they could be taken from room to room - even taken to bed. I find such sets quite appealing, as well as the social history that attaches to them. Sets such as the Stella ST105U, and the KB toaster, several of which I've rescued and restored when they've been dropped and scrapped.

I find it intriguing that just as today, we take a laptop from room to room, in a bygone era a radio would be taken from the kitchen, into the living room, and maybe to bed, before it made and appearance in the kitchen at breakfast time next morning. Not every such radio of course, but transportability was their key selling point.

Back then, few could have imagined that for millions of people today, the only radio that they listen to is in the car, often on long commutes.

[G6Tanuki]

I think that by the late-1950s/early-1960s the 'radio' market had split two ways.

1] the Transistor Portable. OC4x/17x-series for the signal-frequency stages, the likes of OC71/72 for 'personal' portables, a pair of OC81 or later AC127/128 for higher-powered sets. Luxembourg, and the 1960s pop-pirates fuelled a spectacular demand!

2] HiFi - either transistor- or valve-based. Radiograms, or 'unit audio' separate tuners, preamps and power-amps - Stereo and FM being the big sales-points here. In the 60s and 70s upper-working-class/middle-class people had money left in their pockets after paying for the mortgage/their new Ford Corsair/a week's holiday-in-the-sun every year so the 'hifi' market expanded.

The need for separate car-radio licences was abolished sometime in 1971 - which led to "radio-fitted-as-standard" becoming a sales-feature for loads of cars back then - even in the likes of Minis, BL 1100/1300s and Ford Escorts.

[AC/HL]

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

I find it intriguing that just as today, we take a laptop from room to room, in a bygone era a radio would be taken from the kitchen, into the living room, and maybe to bed, before it made and appearance in the kitchen at breakfast time next morning. Not every such radio of course, but transportability was their key selling point.

Most radios had extension speaker sockets, and the speakers themselves still turn up. A fixed second location may have been common.