BBC Radio Mersyside’s The Popular Music Show will cease broadcasting on May 19.
The show’s demise will bring to an end 46 years of alternative music on BBC Radio Merseyside, presented by a team which Roger Hill, Karen Timms, George Maund, Andrew Hunt and Rory Ballantyne.
Hill, who began hosting the show in 1982, said on Friday’s programme: “This evening will be the last regular “PMS” show and it will be followed by a series of “specials”, to manage a decent retrospect for listeners, including programmes dedicated to world music, local music, music sessions, interviews with musical eminences from our time on-air, and climaxing in a whole evening of on-air celebration including another of our live relays.
“It’s worth remembering that we will end as the longest-running alternative music show on UK radio, and that we have always been a pioneering and adventurous programme.”
Notable benchmarks for the show include what is believed to be the first on-air live mixing on the BBC in November 1992 and the broadcast a remix of one show, remixed in Berlin, while the programme was still broadcasting.
Hill added: “We were the regional rock show back when regional was first a ‘thing.’ We recently broadcast a live relay from Estonia with Tallinn band Shelton San, only the second time in history that an Estonian band has had a session with the BBC, and we have kept faith with the local creative underground where the real genius of the city and region is to be found.
“PMS will continue to exist with our regular shows on local digital station Melodic Distraction, and we may even in the future go back to being weekly if it suits us.”
You can keep up to date with the show’s swansong over the next few weeks on BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Sounds.
