THE ORIGINAL
The Battle of the Bands launched in 1980 via the biggest live theatre venues in towns and cities across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern and Southern Ireland.
In 1982 The Battle of the Bands held the competition in local club venues and in 1983 ran the competition via Universities across the country.
In 1983 Bernie Cochrane arranged television broadcast and the event went out on BBC I Television early Saturday evening. At the request of BBC Television it went out as The Battle of the Pop Bands.
So long before the X Factor and the likes, The Battle of the Bands was the ‘forerunner’ of Live Music Competitions achieving a phenomenal amount of Press, Radio and Television coverage. In 1983 and relatively new in the UK, TDK became sponsors and the event helped in product launch
In 1984 BBC broadcast The International Battle of the Bands.
In 1984 Bernie Cochrane left the event to be involved in The World Disco Dancing Championships where he was responsible for setting up television coverage with the then just launched Channel 4 and arranging sponsorship with the then relatively new product Malibu where this event was used to help in product launch.
In 1985 Bernie Cochrane moved onto to be involved in other television programming and artist management and following his departure the BBC did not do any further broadcast of THE BOTB
FOR MORE INFO PLAY KEYS