"When Derek Chinnery was offered the role of controller of BBC Radio 1 in 1978, it was in typically understated fashion. “We can’t think of anyone else,” Aubrey Singer, the managing director of BBC Radio, told him. A decade on from its launch in 1967 as the BBC’s answer to the pirates, the national pop station had grown too big to be overseen by the same executive as Radio 2, the middle-of-the-road network which had evolved out of the Light Programme, even if they shared some programming. Chinnery followed Robin Scott, the pioneer behind Radio 1’s launch, his successor Douglas Muggeridge, and the last joint controller, Charles McLelland, who focused solely on Radio 2 from 1978. A lifelong BBC man remembered for his horn-rimmed glasses and always wearing a suit and tie, Chinnery proved a safe pair of hands, the ideal appointment to helm what he considered a “personality station” and handle the big egos of presenters such as Simon Bates, Noel Edmonds and Dave Lee Travis. “If the general public out there enjoy having a background of popular music presented by friendly voices, not remote figures like the traditional broadcasters, I think that’s a form of public service the BBC can be proud of,” he said. He could be sniffy about Radio 1’s target audience but understood the need to remain distinctive and serve different needs at different times, from the mainstream-friendly breakfast show hosted by Mike Read to John Peel’s alternative approach in the evening. His tenure coincided with the high watermarks when more than 10m listeners tuned into “the nation’s favourite” on a daily basis and thousands flocked to the Radio 1 Roadshow, a concept developed by Johnny Beerling, the producer who replaced him as Controller when he retired in 1985. Sixteen when he joined the BBC straight from school in 1941, Chinnery returned after serving in the RAF between 1943-47, and retained the demeanour of an officer. His vocabulary – he used “gramophone records” when referring to vinyl during playlist meetings – belied his training and steady rise from engineer via producer to Chief Light Programme Producer. He worked with presenters Keith Fordyce, Alan “Fluff’ Freeman and David Jacobs on Pop In and Pick Of The Pops, programmes whose formats could be translated wholesale or adapted from the Light Programme to the “exciting new sound of Radio 1”, as Blackburn had put it when launching the new network." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/derek-chinnery-controller-of-radio-1-who-nurtured-talented-djs-but-later-regretted-not-investigating-jimmy-savile-more-forcefully-10274459.html
