Johnny Beerling

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Johnny Beerling (born 1937), is a veteran radio producer and station controller. He began his radio career during his national service when he ran a radio station for the Royal Air Force in Aden, acting as its station manager, studio engineer and morning DJ.

In 1957 he joined the BBC and was one of the few employees of the BBC Light Programme in the mid-1960s to regard the model of offshore pirate radio as one for the BBC to follow.

As a result, when the offshore stations were outlawed in 1967, Beerling was appointed to the newly-formed station BBC Radio 1 which was created as a legal alternative. This began a long association which culminated in his eight years as controller of the station from 1985 to 1993. He produced the first ever show on Radio 1 - Tony Blackburn's breakfast show on 30 September 1967 - worked his way up through the ranks, creating jingles, recruiting most of the station's DJs and along the way launched the long-running and successful annual Radio 1 Roadshow events in 1973.

He was popular with the DJs at Radio 1 - affectionately known as "Johnny Bee-leg" by some - and his departure from the station in October 1993 has come to be regarded as the end of an era. Many of the station's veteran DJs either resigned or were sacked when Matthew Bannister succeeded him as controller, and the network's ethos, music policy and target audience would change dramatically. Beerling publicly criticised the new regime at the BBC, specifically in the person of director-general John (now Lord) Birt.

After his departure from Radio 1, Beerling went to work alongside Noel Edmonds, with his production company Unique Productions.

In 1992 Beerling was the first non-broadcaster to receive the Ferguson Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Music Radio from The Radio Academy and in 1993 he was elected President of the Television and Radio Industry Club of Great Britain.

The BBC re-hired Beerling in May 1995, and he organised the "Music Live '95" event in Birmingham which was broadcast across all the (then) three BBC music stations, including Radio 1. He has recently been working on an autobiography.