"1957-1958 radio 2 ballads were were seriously good"

Can someone explain what this means? The radio ballads were broadcast between 1958 and 1964 and went out on the Home Service, not Radio 2,which hadn't been invented in those days.

Regarding Owen's second posting, there are indeed only 26 chapters in the first edition, and I can't see any mention of an editor. If there were thirty in the original manuscript one wonders why the other four were deleted and by whom and what was in them. Could it be that MacColl wrote about his wartime experiences after all and that section was excised for some reason?