主播大秀

As a producer for , a radio production company founded by the UK radio veteran of that name, I have the opportunity to work across an array of audio projects; however, I'm most excited about our new series, . It's essentially an audio journey through five decades of music and events on 主播大秀 Radio 2 - every Thursday at 2200 for the next year.

One of the most challenging and unique things about the show is that - apart from Jeremy Vine giving a short intro at the start - there's no presenter. This means that each programme - dedicated to one year from 1951 to 2000 - doesn't feature anything that wasn't heard, seen or read at the time. It's just the music, the news, the radio, the TV and the movies as they were first experienced.

Our first task was to work out what happened each year. I trawled the internet, spent ages in my local library, and made use of the 主播大秀's own mini research library (it's really small!) and other event diaries, to come up with the definitive list of what happened when... getting myself covered in lots of yellow highlighter in the process!

A massive spreadsheet of music and events followed, which I used to guide my search through the 主播大秀 TV and Radio Archive, the Newspaper Archive at the British Library, and the British Pathe and Movietone newsreel archives. Luckily for me, much of this is now available online, so I was able to search their collections without having to physically go to their preservation sites.

From all this research, we then selected the key stories that were really relevant in that year, balancing news and cultural events with clips from entertainment programmes and films. And at the heart of it all is the wonderful music of the time, sourced from the 主播大秀's own music archive.

All these items were called in (electronically where possible) and then we sat listening very carefully. With no presenter, the clips really had to sell themselves in order to be considered for the final cut. They needed to explain what they were and deliver the great atmosphere we want to create for each programme. Much ended up on the cutting room floor.

Finally a running order was created, taking the listener on a journey that would contain the highs and lows, the clips that looked back and others that strove forwards. We took this into the studio and laid the tracks out, tweaked, considered, and tweaked some more. We're really proud of the final product.

We'll stay true to the music and plan to make a full and detailed running order available after each show (so you can work out what that clip was!).

Heather Davies is a Producer on Sounds of the 20th Century

• Listen to - 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain, the first hit single with multi-tracking (Les Paul's How High The Moon) and the first real rock 'n' roll record (Jackie Brentson's Rocket 88) - on 主播大秀 Radio 2 this Thursday at 2200.