[laumars]

I'm guessing where you live radio stations / TV shows didn't air the data noise of BASIC code like they sometimes did in the UK?

You could record it straight onto your audio cassette (like you would record any song on the radio) then play that on your BBC Micro.

It was cheap, accessible and effectively the analogue equivolent of downloading.

[bluGill]

I never heard of that until much latter. There wasn't a dominate computer platform: as a kid I knew people with Apple II, C64, Atari, or TI. They were not compatible in general, so it doesn't really make sense to air such things. Even assuming the recording would work, my memory of cassette systems is they rarely worked. I typically saved everything to 3 different tapes to have a hope of reading back correctly eventually.

[laumars]

There wasn't a dominant platform in the UK either. We had multiple machines from Acorn (inc BBC Micro), Sinclair, Dragon and Amstrad plus the Commedores and Atari's you had too.

I don't think Apple really came to Europe until much later.