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On the other side of the microphone were the listeners. The cumulative impact of the daily programmes on the ever-growing audience of the BBC in its initial period is studied here. The Radio Times sold a million copies for the first time during Christmas 1927 and had a million-plus circulation almost throughout the next decade. Various changes were introduced in the programme schedule with the passage of time: an extra hour of light music from London was included in 1927; morning religious service was added in 1928; morning talks started on 5XX in 1929 and the programme from Daventry 5XX became known as the National programme in 1930. With the opening of a new transmitter at Droitwich in 1934 listeners had the option of alternative programmes from Monday to Friday from 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from 6.30 p.m. until 11.15 p.m.

The chapter is concerned with the development of the BBC as a public corporation. The first Director-General of the BBC, Sir John Reith, told staff that ‘there is more in the BBC than just broadcasting’. It was made clear to them that public service in a public corporation was something very different from public service in the Civil Service. The BBC as an organization made its goal to be free of politics and, as far as possible, to be free of red tape. It needed a spirit of enterprise as well as a sense of duty coupled with the qualities of individualism and enterprise. The organizational set-up of the BBC became so successful that it was adopted by other organizations also in other countries.

The chapter provides a brief history of television and its growth in its earliest phases. Television Limited was formed in June 1925 before the BBC. John Logie Baird was its first sponsor. His first televisor was composed of an old tea chest forming a base to carry the motor which rotated a circular cardboard disc. The disc was cut out of an old hat box, and a darning needle served as a spindle and an empty biscuit box housed the projection lamp. The necessary bull's eye lenses were bought from a bicycle shop. Baird teamed up with Captain Oliver George Hutchinson and this boosted the business prospect of television. Information regarding Baird's interactions with various people in connection with television is also dealt in this chapter.

This chapter discusses the transition of the British Broadcasting Company into the British Broadcasting Corporation—a move that shifted the network giant from being a private enterprise into a public firm. The BBC’s role in reconciling the national interests of the public with the interests of the national government is also tackled in this chapter. The company’s monopoly of public media was somehow salvaged by the BBC’s promotion of public interest via public service. The beginnings and the struggles of the British Documentary Movement is also discussed in this chapter.

The period between 1965 and 1975 is considered to be the golden age of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s television drama. The 1960s and the 1970s marked the shift in values and culture of British television. During these times, the established traditions were questioned and rewritten and the tastefulness of TV programs altered. The boundaries of creativity were also transgressed in this era of British television. This chapter highlights several television dramas and a number of plays which tested the boundaries of British programming and contributed to its eventual development.

In January 1927 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) assumed the responsibilities of the four-year-old British Broadcasting Company. This chapter discusses the personalities and their performance and the official policies of the BBC in its initial period. Sir John Reith as the first Director-General of the BBC played an important role in its success. The wireless was adopted as a crucial component of the institutional apparatus of the BBC. The BBC created a niche image for itself during the 1930s as a great British institution. The chapter also briefly covers wireless and television sets of this contemporaneous time. Moreover, it also provides an introduction to the other chapters in the book.

This chapter provides information regarding the BBC during the time leading up to the Second World War. The first Director-General, Sir John Reith, left the BBC in June 1938 and the Ullswater Committee recommended in its report, which shortly followed this, full governmental control over the organization in times of crisis. Questions relating to the BBC's policies in time of war, behind the scene politics, censorship arrangements, and security concerns are also discussed. The Memorandum on Protection Against Air Attack stated that the BBC should continue its broadcasting services even in any future emergency due to its impact on public opinion. In July 1938 the technical subcommittee accepted the BBC's modified plan to limit home broadcasting to two groups of medium-wave transmitters.

Journalism in both Britain and America after 1945 attained a greater measure of independence toward government than it had before the Second World War. Even the state-controlled British Broadcasting Corporation became less deferential toward government leaders. Editors and broadcast news producers enjoyed considerable control over what they presented; for several decades, they enjoyed relatively captive markets. Newspaper reading remained widespread. A finite number of broadcast services in each nation meant that news programs did not have to overattend to viewer preferences. This model began to break down in 1980s. Public policy in both countries encouraged competition from cable and satellite relay services, as well as the diffusion of personal computers and, in the 1990s, the World Wide Web. Audiences began to divide by interest and generation. Newspaper circulation plummeted while broadcast news producers labored to make their programs more engaging.

This chapter examines how BBC radio and its practices created possibilities for the recognition of African-Caribbean voices, as they discussed life in England years before the arrival of Windrush, and just before television re-emerged as a cultural force. It also examines how programmes created for West Indian audiences changed foci, and began to offer varied, personal perspectives on life for African-Caribbean immigrants. It outlines the influence of radio upon the BBC Television Service, management directives and pre-war programming. Beginning in 1939, the programme Calling the West Indies featured West Indians troops on active service reading letters on air to their families back home in the Islands. The programme later became Caribbean Voices (1943–58) and highlighted West Indian writers who read and discussed literary works on the World Service. These programmes offered rare opportunities for West Indians to discuss their perspectives on life among white Britons and subsequent social issues.

This chapter explores a multitude of publications on British television history that have both hailed and deconstructed the policies and influences of the BBC. Since 1922, the organisation has attempted to serve audiences with an intention to inform and acculturate them on every subject deemed acceptable. Within its development, a public service agenda was an essential part of programming practices, influenced greatly by Sir John Reith, who, despite his extreme dislike for both politicians and television, later served as the Director-General of the organisation during its first sixteen years of service. Prior to his departure in 1938, the first public demonstration of the Baird Television System took place and audiences had a choice of musical variety programmes, and a host of dramatic teleplays and informational talks, each demonstrating the ability of television to hopefully do what BBC radio had done for nearly fifteen years: entertain and inform a variety of publics on current, global and national events.

This chapter discusses how Britain came to dominate the world news system in the nineteenth century and to develop covert and overt propaganda and information management techniques in two world wars. World War II saw many of the same British propaganda techniques in neutral countries, especially the USA in 1939–41. The British government was deeply committed to maintaining Britain's great power status after the war, and a large-scale media influence was almost as essential as military power in achieving that goal. The British Broadcasting Corporation emerged from World War II with a greatly expanded audience and a good reputation for objectivity and truth-telling. British journalists were conditioned after World War II. They were less likely to accept the staff of propagandists, and public information officers that stayed on after the war as government public relations became institutionalised through such offices as the Central Office of Information.

This chapter examines the key role of the BBC in fostering a culture of imperialism from the 1920s to the eve of the Second World War. The broadcast of The Four Feathers revealed several aspects of the BBC's relationship to empire and imperialism during the period from its inception in the early 1920s to the Second World War. The reach and potential influence of the BBC suggests that the empire remained important to British national identity in the 1950s, even after the first wave of decolonization. The extent and range of programmes that had empire as their subject matter were considerable such as Empire Vaudeville and Radio Times. From its inception, the BBC acted as an agent to promote the empire among its audience. When war came in 1939, the empire figured prominently in the BBC's programming. As the war progressed the BBC devoted a remarkable amount of time in its schedules to promoting the empire.

This chapter highlights the fact that the BBC's representation of empire during the Second World War is both challenging and revealing. Consistent with its policies from the 1930s, the BBC broadcasted a considerable number of empire programmes. But during the war, the empire and Commonwealth had to be constructed with even greater deliberation and precision. The BBC continued to employ the empire as a symbol of British unity and common effort. The themes of the benevolence of British rule and imperial unity, well established in the programmes of the 1930s, continued during the war. Three aspects of the BBC's projection of empire during the period 1939–53 are that, first, empire programmes during and after the war emphasized the full equality of the Commonwealth, second, the BBC promoted an image of empire that could accommodate itself to declared war aims and third, progressive themes such as the Commonwealth ideal of brotherhood and the ‘professional empire’ continued after war, but the mid-1940s also saw a revival, in broadcasting, of rousing and racist juvenile imperial fiction.

Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for his broadcasts and reviews, and above all for his books on Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Indeed, his passing leaves a huge gap in the field of opera studies. Budden was born in Hoylake, near Liverpool, on April 9, 1924, the only child of Lionel Budden and Maud Budden. In 1951 he started at the BBC, where he remained for his entire working life. Budden's first post was as a clerk and script editor; he then rose through the ranks to become a producer, Chief Producer of Opera, and finally External Services Music Organizer. Two aspects of Budden's background were likely to have been fundamental to his scholarly achievement: his exposure to Classics at Oxford University and his career in BBC Radio.

This chapter establishes whether the different forms of British white propaganda were consistent. The print and broadcast treatment of a series of key events ranging from the British attack upon the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir to the D-Day landings in Normandy are compared. The internal planning by Department Electra House, Special Operations Executive propaganda section, Political Warfare Executive and the British Broadcasting Corporation is also evaluated. The propagandists divided the French into three: the apathetic, the anti-British and the pro-British. Adolf Hitler's invasion of the USSR caused pro-Soviet feeling to sweep through Great Britain. Leaflets continued to be dropped after D-Day, but their role was limited. The British propaganda organisations overcame the issues that they encountered, whether these came from objectives bringing them into conflict with other bodies prosecuting the war effort or arose from problems encountered in what propaganda had to report.

The purpose of this chapter is to explain, in the context of telecommunications law and regulation, the regulation by EU and UK law of audiovisual and radio media services. Overarching principles are found in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which takes an approach described as technologically neutral, but established two top-level categories of regulation, for television (or linear) services and on-demand (or non-linear) services. In the case of television services, a wide range of standalone works and comprehensive Sections or chapters on the regulation of broadcasting are available. As such, the focus here (with a view to the interests of readers) is on licensing of content and multiplex services by Ofcom and the handling of complaints about those services, with a bias towards the standard licences for services on cable, satellite, internet, and digital terrestrial platforms, and the regulation of DTT multiplexes and of on-demand services, as opposed to detailed description of the BBC and the commercial public service broadcasters. Indeed, the European Court of Human Rights has regularly found that the regulation of communications infrastructure can have a real impact on the receiving and imparting of information.

During the 1930s, in fulfilment of its adult education obligations as a public service monopoly organisation, the fledgling British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired more than a hundred domestic radio programmes which addressed the relations of science and society. This chapter examines governance challenges confronting the Corporation in these ambitious programmes, with a focus on three controversial science-related topics of particular salience to this turbulent decade: religion, eugenics and war. Having elected to disseminate the diverse, contentious, and often conflicting views held by the scientific community on these crucial issues, the BBC encountered a succession of difficulties arising from varied political stances amongst its speakers, other scientists, and its own staff alike. Nonetheless, through an array of effective governance mechanisms, the BBC helped to sustain modern science’s widely-accepted high stature, and uphold scientists’ reputation as leading contributors to Britain’s public good.

This chapter highlights the BBC under Director-General Greg Dyke, a leader thought to represent the best chance for diversity within the corporation. Dyke's first meeting with the BBC Black Forum (BBF) organisation, a group of Black and Asian employees seeking diversity within the corporation, highlighted this dilemma as the Director-General attempted to effect change, but with unexpected results. Following Dyke's sudden departure was what one African-Caribbean manager at the BBC called ‘the Great Redundancy’, as many efforts at placing African-Caribbeans before and behind the camera were lost in a wave of budget-related terminations. This chapter also includes recent perspectives on BBC programming that attempt to highlight African-Caribbean issues (with actor/director Treva Etienne, and recent BBC managers Jan Oliver and Cyril Husbands).