Up on The Hour

Up on The Hour (originally known as Up to The Hour) is a Euroish magazine show that is broadcast each morning at 9.00am on EBC Radio 1.

The programme originally started out as two half-hour programmes interspersed between AM at 7.30am and 8.30am but was later separated into a full hour-long programme in it's own right.

History
Up to The Hour was created as part of the launch schedule of EBC Radio 1, which was to take over from Radio National and oversaw by Laurie Galway, who became infamous for his "ruthless" style of controlling the station, with many cuts made to some of the mainstays of Radio National, including AM, which would be cut into two half-hour programmes at 7am and 8am on the day of the relaunch, with the 7.30am and 8.30am slots given over to the new programme.

The remit of Up to The Hour was to provide a lighter alternative to AM - which was reformatted as a hard news programme, with a mix of celebrity chat, sports, culture and lifestyle features. It was also to include a new soap, Citizens, which aimed to be more populist in tone than the rural Greenside. The programme's inital presenter was Brian Holland, joining from AM, which he had helmed to great success for 15 years.

The programme launched on Monday 12th October 1970, on the same morning Radio 1 began transmission on the former frequencies of Radio National. The new programme intially gained a cold reception from within the EBC, who were not fond of the programme's scheduling between AM, and were also unimpressed with the idea of slotting a soap dealing with dark and important themes for 7 minutes per edition within a light and breezy magazine show, arguing it would work better as a programme in it's own right.

Laurie Galway was shuffled along to Radio 4 by EBC chiefs in October 1971, replaced by Neil Wilson, who was quick to shift the schedules around. AM was re-instated as a two-hour programme, and whilst Up to The Hour was retained, it was shuffled to a new time slot, now transmitting at 9.00am. As a result, the programme's name would be amended as Up on The Hour. Citizens was spun off into a 15 minute programme in it's own right.