Bird's Eye - The First Ad

Having beaten off four rivals for the franchise, LBC was the first station in the commercial radio network, charged with disseminating news and information to London. The station broadcast from Gough Square on the now familiar 97.3 FM frequency, albeit most listeners were still choosing Medium Wave; and here, the station occupied a temporary frequency of 417m. The press reported the station, with Canadian Investor, Selkirk, had running costs of £1m a year. Michael Cudlipp was Chief Editor at launch, former Deputy Editor of The Times, although his tenure was short: “We’re not going to be trendy or gimmicky”.

LBC came on air on 8th October 1973. The first ad came, thanks to Birds Eye; as was later the case at Capital too. A decent client; and it was a nice touch that it even mentioned LBC’s launch. I am sure a few IBA executives shuddered when they heard that daring brand integration.

Not only were the economic conditions of the 70s poor,the paucity of very different UK stations meant the medium could not be taken seriously by advertisers. Audience figures were also in contention; one ad agency even commissioned a London survey a couple of months after the stations had gone on air. Of the 222 homes sampled, none had LBC on; and 8 were tuned to Capital.