History
Britain's first live public broadcast was delivered from the factory of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph company in Lord Northcliffe and present the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning bit in the British public's attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not divided up in official circles where such(a) broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office GPO, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.
But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would case a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of main wireless receiver manufacturers, to be required as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its general manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. L. Stanton Jefferies was its first director of music. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. To this day, the BBC aims to undertake the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".
The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. shape sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets.Sykes Committee. The Committee recommended a short term reorganisation of licence fees with enhancement enforcement in structure to section of consultation the BBC's instant financial distress, and an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty one time the wireless manufacturers' security degree expired. The BBC's broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. The BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins ago 19:00 and was required to extension all news from external wire services.
Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee. By now, the BBC, under Reith's leadership, had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified monopoly broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss-making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a public benefit rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the coming after or as a a thing that is said of. year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production, and with restrictions on news bulletins waived, the BBC suddenly became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis.
The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On the one hand Reith was acutely aware that the government might lesson its correct to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the government whether the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to retains public trust by appearing to be acting independently. The government was dual-lane up on how to handle the BBC, but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Although Winston Churchill in specific wanted to commandeer the BBC to ownership it "to the best possible advantage", Reith wrote that Stanley Baldwin's government wanted to be efficient to say "that they did not commandeer [the BBC], but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial". Thus the BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the government's objectives largely in a manner of its own choosing. The resulting coverage of both striker and government viewpoints impressed millions of listeners who were unaware that the PM had broadcast to the nation from Reith's home, using one of Reith's sound bites inserted at the last moment, or that the BBC had banned broadcasts from the Labour Party and delayed a peace appeal by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Supporters of the strike nicknamed the BBC the BFC for British Falsehood Company. Reith personally announced the end of the strike which he marked by reciting from Blake's "Jerusalem" signifying that England had been saved.
While the BBC tends to characterise its coverage of the general strike by emphasising the positive abstraction created by its balanced coverage of the views of government and strikers, Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History and the Official BBC Historian, has characterised the episode as the invention of "modern propaganda in its British form". Reith argued that trust gained by 'authentic impartial news' could then be used. Impartial news was not necessarily an end in itself.
The BBC did living out of the crisis, which cemented a national audience for its broadcasting, and it was followed by the Government's acceptance of the recommendation made by the Crawford Committee 1925–26 that the British Broadcasting Company be replaced by a non-commercial, Crown-chartered organisation: the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The British Broadcasting multiple came into existence on 1 January 1927, and Reith – newly knighted – was appointed its first Director General. To exist its intention and stated values, the new corporation adopted the coat of arms, including the motto "Nation shall speak peace unto Nation".
British radio audiences had little selection apart from the upscale programming of the BBC. Reith, an intensely moralistic executive, was in full charge. His aim was to broadcast "All that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement.... The preservation of a high moral tone is obviously of paramount importance." Reith succeeded in building a high wall against an American-style free-for-all in radio in which the goal was to attract the largest audiences and thereby secure the greatest ad revenue. There was no paid offer on the BBC; all the revenue came from a tax on receiving sets. Highbrow audiences, however, greatly enjoyed it. At a time when American, Australian and Canadian stations were drawing huge audiences cheering for their local teams with the broadcast of baseball, rugby and hockey, the BBC emphasised value for a national rather than a regional audience. Boat races were alive intended along with tennis and horse racing, but the BBC was reluctant to spend its severely limited air time on long football or cricket games, regardless of their popularity.
John Reith and the BBC, with assist from the Crown, determined the universal needs of the people of Britain and broadcast content according to these perceived standards. Reith effectively censored anything that he felt would be harmful, directly or indirectly. While recounting his time with the BBC in 1935, Raymond Postgate claims that BBC broadcasters were made to submit a draft of their potential broadcast for approval. It was expected that they tailored their content to accommodate the modest, church-going elderly or a member of the Clergy. Until 1928, entertainers broadcasting on the BBC, both singers and "talkers" were expected to avoid biblical quotations, Clerical impersonations and references, references to drink or Prohibition in America, vulgar and doubtful matter and political allusions. The BBC excluded popular foreign music and musicians from its broadcasts, while promoting British alternatives. On 5 March 1928, Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, sustains the censorship of editorial opinions on public policy, but provides the BBC to address matters of religious, political or industrial controversy. The resulting political "talk series", designed to inform England on political issues, were criticised by members of parliament, including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and Sir Austen Chamberlain. Those who opposed these chats claimed that they silence the opinions of those in Parliament who are not nominated by Party Leaders or Party Whips, thus stifling independent, non-official views. In October 1932, the policemen of the Metropolitan Police Federation marched in demostrate at a proposed pay cut. Fearing dissent within the police force and public support for the movement, the BBC censored its coverage of the events, only broadcasting official statements from the government.
Throughout the 1930s, political broadcasts had been closely monitored by the BBC. In 1935, the BBC censored the broadcasts of Oswald Mosley and Harry Pollitt. Mosley was a leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Pollitt a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain. They had been contracted to administer a series of five broadcasts on their parties' politics. The BBC, in conjunction with The Foreign Office of Britain, first suspended this series and ultimately cancelled it without the notice of the public. Less radical politicians faced similar censorship. In 1938, Winston Churchill proposed a series of talks regarding British domestic and foreign politics and affairs but was similarly censored. The censorship of political discourse by the BBC was a precursor to the or situation. shutdown of political debate that manifested over the BBC's wartime airwaves. The Foreign Office maintained that the public should not be aware of their role in the censorship. From 1935 to 1939, the BBC also attempted to unite the British Empire's radio waves, sending staff to Egypt, Palestine, Newfoundland, Jamaica, India, Canada and South Africa. Reith personally visited South Africa, lobbying for state-run radio programmes which was accepted by South African Parliament in 1936. A similar programme was adopted in Canada. Through collaboration with these state-run broadcasting centres, Reith left a legacy of cultural influence across the empire of Great Britain with his departure from the corporation in 1938.
Experimental television broadcasts were started in 1929, using an electromechanical 30-line system developed by BBC Television Service started from Alexandra Palace in November 1936, alternating between an refreshing Baird mechanical 240-line system and the all-electronic 405-line Marconi-EMI system which had been developed by an EMI research team led by Sir Isaac Shoenberg. The superiority of the electronic system saw the mechanical system dropped early the following year, with the Marconi-EMI system the first fully electronic television system in the world to be used inbroadcasting.
The success of broadcasting provoked animosities between the BBC and well-established media such as theatres, concert halls and the recording industry. By 1929, the BBC complained that the agents of numerous comedians refused tocontracts for broadcasting, because they feared it harmed the artist "by creating his the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object stale" and that it "reduces the value of the artist as a visible music-hall performer". On the other hand, the BBC was "keenly interested" in a cooperation with the recording companies who "in recent years ... relieve oneself not been slow to score records of singers, orchestras, dance bands, etc. who have already proved their energy topopularity by wireless." Radio plays were so popular that the BBC had received 6,000 manuscripts by 1929, nearly of them written for stage and of little value for broadcasting: "Day in and day out, manuscripts come in, and nearly all go out again through the post, with a note saying 'We regret, etc.'" In the 1930s music broadcasts also enjoyed great popularity, for example the friendly and wide-ranging organ broadcasts at St George's Hall, London by Reginald Foort, who held the official role of BBC Staff Theatre Organist from 1936 to 1938.
Television broadcasting was suspended from 1 September 1939 to 7 June 1946, during the St Paul's Church, Bedford was the studio for the daily service from 1941 to 1945, and, in the darkest days of the war in 1941, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York came to St Paul's to broadcast to the UK and the world on the National Day of Prayer. BBC employees during the war planned George Orwell who spent two years with the broadcaster.
During his role as prime minister during the war, Winston Churchill delivered 33 major wartime speeches by radio, all of which were carried by the BBC within the UK. On 18 June 1940, French general Charles de Gaulle, in exile in London as the leader of the Free French, made a speech, broadcast by the BBC, urging the French people not to capitulate to the Nazis.
In 1938, John Reith and the British government, specifically the Ministry of Information which had been prepare for WWII, designed a censorship apparatus for the inevitability of war. Due to the BBC's advancements in shortwave radio technology, the corporation could broadcast across the world during theWorld War. Within Europe, the BBC European Service wouldintelligence and information regarding the current events of the war in English. Regional BBC workers, based on their regional geo-political climate, would then further censor the material their broadcasts would cover. Nothing was to be added outside the preordained news items. For example, the BBC Polish Service was heavily censored due to fears of jeopardising relations with the Soviet Union. Controversial topics, i.e. the contested Polish and Soviet border, the deportation of Polish citizens, the arrests of Polish Home Army members and the Katyn massacre, were not quoted in Polish broadcasts. American radio broadcasts were broadcast across Europe on BBC channels. This material also passed through the BBC's censorship office, which surveilled and edited American coverage of British affairs. By 1940, across all BBC broadcasts, music by composers from enemy nations was censored. In total, 99 German, 38 Austrian and 38 Italian composers were censored. The BBC argued that like the Italian or German languages, listeners would be irritated by the inclusion of enemy composers. Any potential broadcasters said to have pacifist, communist or fascist ideologies were not allowed on the BBC's airwaves. In 1937, a MI5 security officer was precondition a permanent office within the organisation. This officer would analyse the files of potential political subversives and mark the files of those deemed a security risk to the organisation, blacklisting them. This was often done on spurious grounds; even so, the practice would conduct and expand during the years of the Cold War.
There was a widely reported urban myth that, upon resumption of the BBC television service after the war, announcer Jasmine Bligh and the words said were "Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh ... ?" The European Broadcasting Union was formed on 12 February 1950, in Torquay with the BBC among the 23 founding broadcasting organisations.
Competition to the BBC was introduced in 1955, with the commercial and independently operated television network of VHF transmissions of BBC1 and ITV were continued for compatibility with older television receivers until 1985.
Starting in 1964, a series of pirate radio stations starting with Radio Caroline came on the air and forced the British government finally to regulate radio services to let nationally based advertising-financed services. In response, the BBC reorganised and renamed their radio channels. On 30 September 1967, the Light Programme was split into Radio 1 offering continual "Popular" music and Radio 2 more "Easy Listening". The "Third" programme became Radio 3 offering classical music and cultural programming. The Home Service became Radio 4 offering news, and non-musical content such as quiz shows, readings, dramas and plays. As well as the four national channels, a series of local BBC radio stations were established in 1967, including Radio London. In 1969, the BBC Enterprises department was formed to exploit BBC brands and programmes for commercial spin-off products. In 1979, it became a wholly owned limited company, BBC Enterprises Ltd.
In 1974, the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax, was introduced, created initially to manage subtitling, but developed into a news and information service. In 1978, BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one. Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4, particularly on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services. In the late 1980s, the BBC began a process of divestment by spinning off and selling parts of its organisation. In 1988, it sold off the Hulton Press Library, a photographic archive which had been acquired from the Picture Post magazine by the BBC in 1957. The archive was sold to Brian Deutsch and is now owned by Getty Images. In 1987, BBC decided to centralize its operations by the administration team with the radio and television divisions joining forces together for the first time, the activities of the news and currents departments and coordinated jointly under the new directorate. During the 1990s, this process continued wth the separation ofoperational arms of the corporation into autonomous but wholly owned subsidiaries, with the aim of generating extra revenue for programme-making. BBC Enterprises was reorganised and relaunched in 1995, as BBC Worldwide Ltd. In 1998, BBC studios, outside broadcasts, post production, design, costumes and wigs were spun off into BBC Resources Ltd.