Needletime / Nightride

[ken garner]

A few quick points.

1. Peel had so many sessions before 1988, and repeated them at least 
once, sometimes 2 or 3 times, because of needletime, the backdoor 
deal by which the record companies in alliance with the musicians' 
union restricted the amount of minutes per day each BBC Radio network 
could play from commercial records. Peel's 3-hour original Top Gear 
show would feature up to 6 sessions and had just 60 minutes of 
needletime allocated ("regarded as very generous!" Bernie Andrews 
told me). Imports, white labels, etc were cunning ways round this to 
an extent.

2. Nightride was made by a production department (called Recorded 
Programmes Service or RPS I seem to recall) specifically set up to 
exploit non-needletime recordings (eg world music, speech, imports), 
so it had no needletime at all

3. ...er, but actually, according to my analysis of the Nightride 
PasBs, (I could be wrong) there was actually only ever one session 
repeated in Peel's run / wednesday nights, and that was... well, 
would you believe it, the one 1st TX in the very first show on 
6/3/68, by the Incredible String Band! (rpt on 26/6/68). Why did he 
do that? Probably because - and this answers a query made to me off 
list by another ISB fan - on finding and checking the 26/6 PasB 
tonight (at the bottom of one of my boxes) I find that there were 
indeed 2 tracks aired that night that there had not been time for on 
1/3, 'Goodnight', and 'Won't You Come See Me', so it was in effect a 
double session recorded back on 4/3/68, well worth a repeat! Don't 
know how I missed those 14 years ago

4. If I keep answering these wee questions - more fool me - I am 
never going to finish the book. Can I do a deal with listers? I'll 
try and come on once a week and answer one or two titbits if I can, 
while striving not to give away so much such that nobody wants to buy 
the book; and in return, more of those of you who can, have a check 
through your diaries and tapes to see if you can answer any of 
those 'blanks' or 'imcomplete data' dates in the chronology? (my list 
is posted here under files, on the left there) Many thanks to the 
half dozen or so who have already sent me such answers by e-mailing 
off list, and thereby already got themselves an acknowledgement in 
the book,

cheers

ken

PS, before any Pink Floyd fans charge in, yes of course I know a 
later Night Ride session by them was repeated on Top Gear, but that 
was the exception (different departments, you see, jealously guarded 
tapes)