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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 01/03/22, SPi
THIS IS TH E BBC
THIS
IS TH E BBC
e n t e rta i n i ng t h e
nat ion, s p e a k i ng f or
br i ta i n ? 1922 –2 022
SI MON J. POT T E R
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,

United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Simon J. Potter 2022
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2022
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021952087
ISBN 978-0-19-289852-4
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898524.001.0001
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Dedicated to the memory of my grandparents,Tom and Grace Wallis

and Vi and Les Potter, children of the radio age.
Preface
O ver the last hundred years the BBC has reflected and shaped
British life in innumerable ways. It has also had a much wider
global impact.This book is not intended as a celebration of that work.
Rather, it offers a critical, unofficial, and unauthorized analysis of the
BBC’s history. The chapters that follow draw out the patterns, con
tinuities, and transformations that have marked the BBC’s century. In
doing so, they seek to shed light on the challenges the Corporation
faces today from new digital media and from growing opposition to
the basic idea of public service broadcasting.
Programmes—what people listened to and watched when they
tuned in to the BBC—need to be at the centre of any history of the
Corporation. In this book, I have highlighted some of the key pro-
grammes that have acted as recognized milestones. Rather than list
them in an exhaustive, encyclopaedic fashion, I have tried to show
how they illuminate broader themes in the Corporation’s history and
in British society, culture, and politics more generally. I have also
attempted to give a flavour of the more unremarkable content served
up by the BBC on a daily basis throughout its century. These pro-
grammes were sometimes pedestrian and banal, but nevertheless
deserve consideration. They did, after all, become part of the lives of
everyone, in Britain and around the world, who has helped constitute
the BBC’s global audience.
The chapters that follow also explain how the BBC has changed
and developed as an institution, how it has been managed, and how it
relates to the British government and the wider state. If we want to
understand whose voice the BBC represents, who it puts on-air, and
Dictionary: NOSD
viii pr e face
who it excludes, these themes are crucial. They have shaped the
programmes made and commissioned by the BBC, the range of

services it has created over the years, and the news it has broadcast.
Nevertheless, we also need to understand that, as in any institution,
many of the people who have worked at the BBC have ignored what
their would-be political masters have told them and have instead gone
their own way. At key moments, programme makers and journalists
enjoyed unparalleled creative and investigative freedom. The policies
and aspirations of senior managers, government ministers, and civil
servants have thus sometimes made less of a difference than we might
assume. This makes it even more important to pay full attention to
programmes and the people who made them if we want to get a
proper handle on the BBC’s history.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Cathryn Steele at OUP for approaching
me with the idea for this book, and for seeing it through to comple-
tion, and to Joan and David Potter, Maria Scott, Robert Bickers, and
David Prosser for all their advice and support during the writing
process.Thanks are also definitely due to Tommy and Ciara Potter, not
least for introducing me to the joys of Doctor Who.
SJP
Backwell, North Somerset, January 2022
Contents
Introduction: The BBC’s century 1

1. The Company, 1922–1926 9
2. The Corporation, 1927–1939 35
3. Propaganda and war, 1939–1945 71
4. Losing control, 1945–1959 111
5. Transformation and stagnation, 1960–1979 147
6. On the market, 1980–1999 193
7. At risk, 2000–2022 235
Prospect: The BBC after broadcasting 277
Endnotes285
Further reading 291
Index293
Introduction
The BBC’s century
I wrote much of this book during the COVID-19 pandemic when,

like many other people, I spent a lot of time ‘locked down’ at home.
The everyday routines and social encounters I had taken for granted
all suddenly stopped. Radio, television, and the Internet became cru-
cial links with the world outside my home. More than any other
broadcaster, it was the BBC that I turned to during those strange days,
weeks, and months of social isolation. As a result, I witnessed the BBC
move into an operating mode that it is always ready, though seldom
required, to adopt: acting as the voice of the nation, and also of the
British state. I was not alone in this experience. On 23 March 2020,
28 million people turned to BBC One to watch the prime minister,
Boris Johnson, announce the imposition of lockdown. Almost two
months later, on 10 May, 18.8 million viewers watched BBC One
when Johnson explained plans for the easing of the initial restrictions.
Throughout the pandemic, the prime minister, alongside cabinet
ministers and civil servants, used the BBC to provide guidance, answer
questions, and address the nation.
During the pandemic, many people also turned to the BBC as a
source of trusted information, at a time when speculation and ‘fake
news’ were fuelling anxieties. On a national basis, BBC news reports,
on radio, television, and online, worked explicitly to illustrate the
consequences to individuals, communities, and the National Health
2 This is the BBC
Service of non- compliance with lockdown restrictions. On pro-

grammes like BBC One’s News at Ten, correspondents showed view-
ers the crisis developing in hospitals and interviewed doctors and
nurses, who warned what would happen if the healthcare system
became overwhelmed. BBC foreign correspondents explained how
other countries were dealing, or failing to deal, with the pandemic,
and detailed the human consequences.Yet journalists and editors also
tried to communicate a balanced view of the risks, avoiding scare-
mongering and quashing rumours. This approach may have helped
generate support for the UK’s COVID-19 vaccination programme,
muting the hesitancy and anti-vaxxer opposition that was expressed
much more forcefully in some comparable countries.
As lockdown eased at different rates and in varying ways across the
UK, the BBC’s formidable regional news operation played an import
ant role in explaining which restrictions were still in force locally. Few
other media outlets were able to work at this level, as many commer-
cial operators had already shut down unprofitable local news outlets.
And throughout the crisis, BBC newsreaders and journalists exhorted
the nation to come together and endure. Every week during lock-
down they devoted attention to the ‘Clap for Our Carers’, encouraging
viewers to participate by standing outside their homes to applaud all
those working to care for others.This was a feel-good story, but also a
way to help ease the anxiety and isolation that many were experiencing
during the pandemic. Crucially, it was also part of an overt drive to
build national unity, a role that has always been at the heart of the
BBC’s operations and remains central to its vision of public service
broadcasting.
The BBC’s digital offering also helped keep children occupied and
engaged during lockdown as schools closed for in-person teaching. As
many schools and parents struggled to provide adequate home learn-
ing, the BBC presented educational resources for children in a national
online initiative fronted by one of the stars of its family programming,
Jodie Whitaker of Doctor Who. Within seven days of the closure of
schools, the BBC’s Bitesize website was attracting around 4.8 million
unique weekly visitors, double its usual traffic. By June 2020, it had
I n t roduct ion: T h e BBC ’s ce n tu ry 3
provided 150 new online lessons a week, for fourteen weeks. From
January 2020, the BBC also offered an expanded daily broadcast edu-
cational offering on CBBC and BBC Two.
The vast resources and reach of the BBC’s Internet presence and its
on-demand streaming services, BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer, were
also brought to bear on the task of maintaining morale. Individuals
used the Corporation’s services to help curate their own bespoke
lockdown entertainment. Escapism gained new meaning and social
purpose. More subtly, the continuing supply of BBC radio and televi
sion programmes provided a sense of comforting normality, a glimpse
of a more familiar world. BBC newsreaders might be presenting tele
vision viewers with disturbing reports, but they were still there, occu-
pying the glass-walled newsroom in London’s Broadcasting House.
Familiar faces provided a sense that somehow, at some point in the
future, normal life would resume. Above all else, BBC television, and
perhaps especially radio (where many presenters and guests were able
to broadcast from their own homes), provided a sense of spontaneous,
everyday contact with other people. It carried comforting faces and
voices to those isolated by lockdown.
To be sure, other broadcasters and streaming services also played an
important role in getting people through lockdown. But no other
media provider offered such a range of services, or the combination
of national focus and international and local perspectives, supplied by
the BBC throughout the pandemic. This reflected the BBC’s unique
commitment, enshrined in its royal charter since before the Second
World War—to inform, educate, and entertain. It was also a function
of the BBC’s integral place within the British state and its complex
relationship with government.This book seeks to explain how the BBC
came into existence, and how it has transformed itself over the last
century to play the role it does today. It also draws out the origins of
the multiple challenges that the BBC faces as it enters its second century,
which threaten to diminish its role in British politics, culture, and society,
and even to eliminate it entirely from the UK and global media landscape.
The BBC was Britain’s first public service broadcaster. Arguably,
today it is Britain’s only genuine public service broadcaster. Despite
4 This is the BBC
the outsourcing and commercialization of many of its activities,

ultimately it does not exist to generate a profit, but to serve the public.
It does this by providing content that other broadcasters cannot or
will not produce, including huge amounts of journalism, local cover-
age, and educational programming. It also seeks to provide a universal
service, offering something for everyone and serving a wide range of
different communities, as well as working to bring together and
address a common national audience. All these activities are funded in
part through the television licence. If we want to watch broadcast
television in the UK, on any channel, or even just stream content
using iPlayer, we must pay for a television licence or face prosecution.
Few other countries maintain such a system.The licence fee is viewed
by some as the necessary foundation for everything the BBC does.
Others argue that it is an unfair, regressive tax that has no legitimate
place in a world of digital media, in which information is simultan
eously ‘free’ and crucial to the profits generated by the global tech
industry.
One of the key arguments of this book is that there is nothing
inevitable about the BBC. Much of its history has been shaped by
haphazard experimentation and by decisions taken without any clear
understanding of their eventual, enduring consequences. The very
familiarity of the BBC, its pervasive presence in our lives, obscures just
how strange it is to have a vast, publicly run and publicly owned
media conglomerate at the heart of British political, social, and cul-
tural life.When the BBC was set up a hundred years ago, there was no
precedent for this. Most other countries did not establish a similar
system: the exceptions were generally set up in emulation of the BBC
model. If the creation of the BBC was neither natural nor inevitable,
then much the same can be said of the prospects for its continued
survival.
In studying the history of the BBC, this book argues that we should
not mistake endurance for continuity. To survive, and to expand and
consolidate its media empire, the BBC has subjected itself to wrench-
ing changes and profound transformations. Certainly, there are some
important enduring themes. For most of the last century the BBC has
constituted the single most important patron for many different
aspects of creative life in Britain. It has also provided crucial support
for artists and performers from around the world. It has strengthened
and broadened popular engagement with sport. It has also often dis-
played a bias towards the national and the international aspects of
broadcasting, seeking to promote national unity and to project Britain
overseas. Only at certain moments has it put significant emphasis on
building local or regional communities. While it has been a promoter
of Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish cultures and identities, it has
almost never worked to support separatist political nationalisms. This
is ultimately because the BBC is an integral part of the state, with an
enormous stake in the continued existence of the Union of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland. It has almost always enjoyed a measure
of day-to-day autonomy from politicians and civil servants. Yet its
independence has always been circumscribed, sometimes to the point
of meaninglessness.
For much of its history the BBC has also faced charges, from those
on both the right and left of politics, of bias. This has taken the form
of objections to specific programmes, stories, or staff appointments,
and of claims about the general political predilections of the institu-
tion and its staff. Since the 1950s, when the BBC became more com-
mitted to critical political coverage and the airing of controversial
issues, accusations of political bias have intensified. Sometimes they
have erupted into damaging scandals and clashes with the political
parties at Westminster, sweeping away staff and even the occasional
BBC director general. Most recently, critics have charged the BBC
with repeatedly failing to adhere to its own editorial policies, and of
pursuing politicized and controversial ‘woke’ agendas.Thinking about
the BBC’s history can put its current political difficulties into per-
spective, but the overall effect is certainly not to diminish them. Over
the last two decades, the BBC has been in a state of perpetual crisis,
and many believe it has been fatally wounded by the attacks of its
enemies and the failings of its senior executives.
6 This is the BBC
Over the last century, debates about how the BBC might be
reformed have generally come down to the question of how broad-
casting should be controlled and regulated by the state. If we skim off
the froth and drain the vitriol that often accompany these controver-
sies, we can see that two opposing currents of thought have continued
to flow largely unabated. On one hand, some believe it legitimate, and
indeed vital, that a large public body be empowered to shape British
culture, politics, and society, and to project Britain overseas. Conversely,
others argue that all this work can and should be the domain of
private enterprise, with the state playing only a very limited role. The
relative power of these two streams has ebbed and flowed over the last
century. Neither has entirely dominated nor disappeared at any point.
Today the ideal of a great public service broadcaster, promoting a
national culture and strengthening democracy, seems closer than ever
before to defeat.Yet it has still not been vanquished by the pervasive,
libertarian ideologies of free market competition.
These enduring theme and debates are important. Yet there have
also been very significant changes over the course of the BBC’s cen-
tury. The Corporation’s approach to making programmes, to its audi-
ences, and to organizing its many networks, channels, and platforms,
has been transformed beyond all recognition. Its policies about what
should be put on air, and what should be kept off, have also changed
dramatically. Less obviously for most viewers, listeners, and users, its
shape as an institution and its relationships with other elements of the
British state have also shifted radically. A creeping commercialization
has fundamentally altered how the BBC operates. It has increasingly
become a commissioner rather than a maker of content, with many of
its historic programme-making and other activities hived off into
commercial subsidiaries. The BBC has also shrunk over the last two
decades, both absolutely and in relation to powerful new global
competitors.
Most people in the UK probably assume that they are members of
the principal target audience for the BBC, and think of that audience
as a domestic, national one. They do not often consume or even
consider what the BBC produces for listeners, viewers, and users in
other countries. If they do, they probably assume that this overseas
work is largely a by-product of the BBC’s main, domestic role.Yet this
assumption is neither necessarily accurate nor very helpful. For much
of its century the BBC has been the key voice of Britain overseas and
the main way that the British state has sought to influence foreign
audiences. Its history is deeply rooted in themes of imperialism, war,
Cold War, and decolonization. Its protected position at home has
allowed it, and Britain, to exercise disproportionate cultural influence
on a global stage. Over the last century the BBC has probably been
the single most important institution generating British soft power
and overseas propaganda. The fact that the BBC also broadcasts to
domestic audiences has made that work easier, providing access to a
vast pool of professional broadcasting talent and programmes. BBC
staff and performers have worked as agents of British public diplo-
macy and persuasion, often without themselves knowing or thinking
much about it.The BBC’s domestic role and status also helps make its
presence more palatable to foreign audiences. It helps the BBC appear
to project Britain’s authentic voice, or more accurately Britain’s many
different voices, not just that of the British government.
Official histories of the BBC, and histories written by former BBC
employees, have played a crucial role in shaping our understanding of
the Corporation’s past. Unsurprisingly, such accounts tend to be
celebratory in tone, and sometimes insufficiently critical. Similarly
unremarkable is the fact that many independent academic historians
have tended to see the BBC as a good thing, a non-commercial and
sometimes radical presence in the British media landscape that has
promoted social democracy and empowered programme makers,
individually and collectively, to produce astonishingly creative work.
There is certainly much to be said for this perspective. However,
another less obvious thread running through historical writing about
the BBC emphasizes its role as a bastion of the British Establishment,
promoting and sustaining the traditional social, cultural, and political
order, and thus contributing to the unequal, hierarchical nature of
8 This is the BBC
modern Britain.This view also needs to be taken seriously. In presenting

a centenary history, the chapters that follow argue that we should
adopt a critical rather than a celebratory approach. It is only by
approaching the Corporation’s past in this way that historians can
help inform debates about its uncertain future.
1
The Company, 1922–1926
O n 14 November 1922, the British Broadcasting Company

transmitted its first radio programme. At 6 p.m. and again at
9 p.m. that evening, Arthur Burrows read out ‘news messages of about
1,000 words’, along with a weather report.This was neither a national
nor a sophisticated service. Burrows, who had been involved in some
of the earliest experimental broadcasts in the UK, spoke into an ordinary
telephone receiver. His words were broadcast from the Marconi
Company’s 2LO station, using a low-power transmitter, and would
have reached only a small number of people living in and around
London who had purchased or (more likely) built their own receiving
sets. Broadcasting was still in its infancy. Burrows noted that ‘a new
sense will have to be acquired by those listening to news by ear’, but
nevertheless asked listeners to send him their feedback so that the
fledgling service could be improved.1 The following night he broadcast
the first results of the 1922 general election.
During the interwar years, the BBC became a pervasive presence in
the everyday lives of millions of people, in Britain and overseas.
Locally, nationally, and internationally, it subtly influenced and
reshaped culture, politics, and society.Those who created it were aware
of the revolutionary potential of broadcasting. However, they could
not foresee exactly how new technologies and applications would
develop in detail, and they therefore had to speculate about how
the medium would evolve over the coming years. Early decisions
10 T h is is t h e BBC
had hugely important but unanticipated long- term consequences

that would shape British broadcasting for at least a century. Some
contemporaries hoped that broadcasting would educate a new
democracy and encourage social change and international under-
standing. Others sought to use it to promote national unity, respect for
established authority and social hierarchy, and pride in empire.
However, in 1922, this was all in the future. Those who created the
BBC had more limited ambitions, at least in the short term.They saw
the Company as a means to control and discipline the new medium,
to ensure that everyone could access radio, but also to prevent com-
petition with existing forms of mass communication and with a range
of private commercial interests.The Company would be highly regu-
lated by the state and would not be run to generate direct profits. In
the early years, its managers were overwhelmingly occupied with the
task of making broadcasting work and thus ensuring that the BBC
survived. In many ways, they interpreted this as a technical challenge,
making radio available to as many people as possible using the scare
resources and limited equipment available to them. Engineers thus
played a crucial role in the Company’s early history.
As the Company became established, managers in its London head-
quarters sought to exert increasing control over national operations.
Nevertheless, much continued to be done by individual station staff
in cities around the country, operating largely autonomously. Listeners
heard different programmes depending on where they lived.
Programme makers meanwhile had to improvise and be inventive as
they worked out what radio could do. With the BBC holding a
monopoly over all broadcasting in Britain, they had to provide some-
thing for everybody, and avoid causing offence. Otherwise, criticism
of the Company’s position might prove fatal. Programme makers
repurposed old genres in their attempts to inform and entertain lis-
teners. They also popularized broadcasting with startlingly ambitious
‘stunts’ and started to find entirely new ways to exploit the unique
qualities of radio as a medium of mass communication. By the end of
1926, when the Company was re-established as the British Broadcasting
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 11
Corporation, it had already shaped broadcasting in ways that would

endure for decades to come.
Origins
During the late nineteenth century, scientists discovered that radio

waves could be used to transmit messages. The British-based Italian
inventor Guglielmo Marconi was perhaps the most famous pioneer of
this new form of communication. Radio was revolutionary because it
offered near-instantaneous, ‘wireless’ transmission. It dispensed with
the cumbersome infrastructure of telegraph wires and cables that had
been built by the Victorians. Initially, radio was used for ‘point-to-
point’ communication, especially with and among ships at sea. Further
military applications were developed during the First World War, and
some demobilized British servicemen returned home with a basic
understanding of how wireless communication worked. Amateur
radio hobbyists built ‘stations’ in their sheds, attics, or basements and
began to ‘broadcast’ from them. Manufacturers of radio equipment,
notably the Marconi Company, also set up their own experimental
stations. The word ‘broadcasting’ came from agriculture, referring to
the sowing of seed, thrown across a wide area, to germinate wherever
it fell. Wireless broadcasters did not seek to transmit a message to a
single recipient, but rather to reach as many people as were able and
willing to listen.
Civil servants at the General Post Office (GPO) were given respon-
sibility for regulating broadcasting. Worried about conflicts between
the various civil and military uses of wireless, initially they imposed
tight restrictions on broadcasting and shut down experimental stations.
Broadcasting grew more rapidly in other countries where regulation was
lighter, most notably in the US, but the GPO thought that developments
overseas confirmed the need for caution. The American broadcasting
free-for-all seemed to have produced huge numbers of short-lived,
amateurish stations, all attempting to broadcast on the same frequencies
at the same time, and effectively jamming each other’s signals. As well
as this problem of ‘interference’, many were concerned that some US
stations were trying to fund their operations by accepting on-air
commercial advertising. This seemed a poor use of scarce airtime, and
not necessarily a reliable way to finance stations. The GPO believed,
incorrectly, that sponsored broadcasting would soon be banned in
America.
British civil servants concluded that broadcasting needed to be
firmly controlled if it were to deliver a reliable and satisfactory service
to listeners. The GPO thus proposed to license only eight stations in
the UK, each in a major population centre. Only the companies that
manufactured radio equipment would be allowed to apply for licences:
the GPO hoped they would be willing to finance broadcasting as a
means to stimulate sales of their products. However, at a crucial meet-
ing with the GPO on 18 May 1922, the manufacturers rejected this
plan. No company wanted to run just one local station: they all hoped
to sell their wares nationally.The Marconi Company instead proposed
that all eight stations should be run by a single broadcasting company,
in which all the manufacturers would be shareholders. One of the
industry representatives present at the meeting noted that this new
company would be able to run broadcasting as a ‘co-ordinated public
service’: a key term thus entered the lexicon of British broadcasting.
It was also suggested that the eight stations could be linked together
using telephone landlines, allowing them to share programmes and
provide all listeners with ‘the very best the country could produce’.
This was a significant early statement about the importance of ‘stand-
ards’ in programming and of creating a national network to secure
those standards.2
The new broadcaster, formed on 18 October 1922, was called the
British Broadcasting Company. It was licensed by the GPO to operate
for two years in the first instance and was to be funded by royalties
paid on sales of radio receiving sets, and by a 10-shilling annual listener
licence fee to be paid by all households possessing a receiver.The GPO
would collect the licence fees and retain a significant portion of the
revenue for the Exchequer. On-air advertising was banned. To help
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 13
make the system work, and to protect the infant British wireless
manufacturing industry, the GPO also initially banned imports of
foreign receiving sets.
The BBC was thus established on an essentially non-commercial
basis and rested on a series of monopolistic and highly restrictive
practices. Relatively few civil servants or politicians were involved in
these decisions, knew much about the new technology, or were
especially interested in it.Those who were, however, hoped that these
measures would control and channel the economic, cultural, and
political impact of a highly unpredictable new medium.The press and
the music and entertainment industries also supported this tightly
regulated approach. They feared a new source of ‘unfair’ competition,
and successfully lobbied for further, strict limitations to be placed on
the amount of news and recorded music that could be broadcast.
Crucially, broadcasting was not treated as a medium of political mass
communication, through which diverse views would be allowed to
compete for attention and support in an open market. Ideas about
press freedom, which underpinned the newspaper industry, were not
deemed applicable to broadcasting. If there was to be only one
broadcaster, then it seemed best to prevent it from engaging with the
world of politics.The GPO thus banned broadcasting of ‘controversial’
material.
Getting started
The BBC’s London headquarters were initially located in the General

Electric Company’s brand- new Magnet House building, on the
Kingsway. They soon moved to nearby Savoy Hill House, in premises
rented from the Institution of Electrical Engineers.This central location
was close to the head offices of the BBC’s shareholders and to the
entertainment venues of London’s West End. The Company mean-
while took over existing experimental broadcasting stations from the
radio manufacturers and established entirely new ones in key urban
centres: BBC stations were soon operating in London, Birmingham,
Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, and Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1923, the

Company opened additional stations at Aberdeen and Bournemouth,
and another at Belfast the following year. Each station operated a
single low-power transmitter, capable of serving only a relatively small
surrounding area of about thirty miles in radius. Early broadcasting
was thus essentially local, and coverage of the country was far from
complete: even important cities like Edinburgh lacked stations.
Savoy Hill exerted limited influence over the stations outside
London. Each produced its own programme, starting broadcasting
around 5 p.m. and finishing around 10 p.m. each evening.‘Programme’
was a term taken from the world of theatre and music, and initially
referred to a series of different items presented over an evening, rather
than a single production. Musical ‘concerts’ were a staple of early
broadcasts, and an agreement with the major news agencies meant
that each station was supplied daily with the text of a single identical
news bulletin, to be read out on-air each evening. The agencies per-
mitted no deviation from the supplied text, and stations were only
allowed to broadcast the bulletin after 7 p.m., to minimize any impact
on sales of evening newspapers. Live coverage of public events was
also tightly restricted, again to protect the press from competition.
Early, rudimentary programmes were soon replaced by more ambi-
tious offerings. By early December 1922, the Manchester station was
broadcasting dance and classical music (including piano performances
and violin sonatas with historical background notes), banjo solos and
duets, stories for children (in a session later called Kiddies Corner),
plays, a performance by an ‘entertainer’, and short lectures. By January
1923, the London station was broadcasting opera from Covent Garden:
a performance of The Magic Flute provided the occasion for the BBC’s
first ‘outside broadcast’, with microphones deployed outside the stu-
dio and linked to the transmitter by landlines. The stations generally
focused on entertainment and local talent, with plenty of music of all
types: each station formed its own orchestras and bands to play live in
its studios. Stations also began to produce an increasing amount of
drama, as well as ‘vaudeville’ or ‘variety’ performances based on the
Music Hall routines of the popular stage. Stations sought to build up
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 15
a direct relationship with local listeners, and encouraged audience

participation through competitions, charity appeals, phone-ins, and
request programmes. Almost all broadcasts were live. Recording
technologies were rudimentary and gramophone record companies
restricted the use of their products on-air. It was anyway believed that
much of the appeal of broadcasting lay in the immediacy and
authenticity of live performances.
By later standards, the work of the early stations seemed experi-
mental and amateurish, but novelty proved a powerful attraction, as
did the appeal of broadcasts to local pride and identity. An increasing
number of families decided it was worth investing in a ‘wireless’ set:
6,000 households applied for listener licences in December 1922, and
more than double that the following month. Early listeners hunched
over rudimentary home-made receivers, with headphones clamped
over their ears, and tried to pick up faint signals. Better and more
easily operated receivers soon became available, which could be used
with loudspeakers. This allowed families to gather at the fireside and
listen together. The BBC became a part of the everyday lives of more
and more people. Broadcasting hours increased, and by spring 1923
some stations were offering music at lunchtime in addition to evening
programmes.
That September the BBC launched a weekly publication, the Radio
Times, to provide a printed guide to programmes.This allowed listeners
to plan and deepen their engagement with broadcasts and to strengthen
their sense of connection with the Company. The early Radio Times
created a forum for BBC staff members to address the growing com-
munity of wireless subscribers, with articles purposely adopting a
friendly and informal tone. Senior officers wrote regularly, explaining
the work of the Company and encouraging listeners to identify with
it. The Radio Times also provided a means for listeners to speak back:
readers’ letters were published each week and voiced criticisms as well
as praise. Counter-intuitively, a new medium relied for its success
upon an old one.The Radio Times was an immediate triumph: this was
not surprising, given that it had a monopoly over the publication of
weekly radio schedules. Some 250,000 copies of the first issue were
sold, and in 1924 weekly circulation exceeded 600,000.The magazine

also printed advertisements and provided the BBC with an important
source of additional revenue. Periodical publishers were angered by
this incursion into their territory and accused the Company of using
its monopoly for commercial advantage, and thus of engaging in
unfair competition.
By September 1924, 900,000 UK homes were equipped with radio
receivers, representing an estimated audience of three million listeners
every evening. Listeners were concentrated in the areas immediately
surrounding the nine BBC stations. Few elsewhere could pick up a
signal. Each station continued to produce its own full and ambitious
daily broadcast schedules, but also took some programming from London
via landlines.The BBC’s visionary chief engineer, Peter Eckersley, was
convinced that this form of ‘simultaneous broadcasting’—national
networking—was crucial to the success of the service. The smaller
stations obtained most of their peak evening programming in this way,
starting each evening at 7 p.m. with a live feed of the chimes of Big
Ben from the Clock Tower of London’s Palace of Westminster. Big
Ben quickly became part of the signature sound of the BBC, an echo
of its increasingly national reach and ambition. The Company mean-
while grew along with its audience: by 1924 it employed a staff of
around 150 at Savoy Hill, with up to twenty more at each station.
With its national network broadcasts the BBC pushed against the
limits of technical possibilities, with ‘stunts’ designed to popularize
wireless listening. On the evening of 2 September 1924, for instance,
all stations broadcast a live feed from an aeroplane flying over London.
On board, one of the BBC’s newly discovered radio personalities, the
comedian John Henry (Norman Clapham, who assumed the on-air
persona of a gloomy Yorkshireman), provided a running commentary
on what he could see. A month later, all stations similarly broadcast a
feed of a ‘wireless concert’ from London Zoo, involving ‘humorous
items’ contributed by three laughing jackasses and a hyena, a ‘sea-song’
sung by a ‘senior sea-lion’, and the bellow of a fifteen-month-old
walrus called Old Bill which sounded like ‘an agitated cow having a
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 17
tooth out under gas’. To capture these performances a ‘wireless pram’,

housing a microphone and portable transmitter, was wheeled around
the zoo. The tone was light-hearted, but the broadcast also aimed to
bring those listeners who had never been able to visit a zoo the sounds
of animals they had not heard before.3 Wireless was new, modern,
exciting, fun, and educational, and more and more people decided to
tune in.
A public utility
Despite these early successes, the restrictive practices upon which the
Company was founded remained open to criticism. If the monopoly
was to endure, the BBC had to justify its work and promote its
achievements. The man with ultimate responsibility for ensuring this
was John Reith, who in December 1922, at the age of thirty-three, was
appointed the first general manager (later managing director) of the
BBC. Reith was neither a businessman nor an impresario from the
world of theatre or music. He was an engineer, and a dour and imposing
presence at six feet six inches tall, with a piercing gaze and a prominent
scar across his left cheek (he had been shot in the head while serving
on the Western Front). When he applied for the job he did not know
what broadcasting was. This was unsurprising. Wireless was still a
novelty for most people, and staff had to experiment and improvise in
almost all aspects of their work.
Reith quickly decided that the problem confronting the BBC was
an essentially technical and organizational one: how to provide wireless
as a service to all, in the most efficient way. The priority would be to
reach as much of the country as possible, including rural areas. Reith
saw the provision of a universal service as crucial to defending the
BBC’s monopoly. This approach was endorsed in 1923 by a parlia-
mentary committee, chaired by the MP Major-General Sir Frederick
Sykes, which met to review BBC operations.The Sykes report argued
that broadcasting should be operated as a ‘public utility’. Wireless was,
it implied, comparable to electricity, gas, or water: a ‘mode of distribution

of music and entertainment’ that needed to be organized on an
efficient and affordable basis to make these essentials available to
everyone, no matter where they lived or how much they earned.4
The GPO subsequently extended the BBC’s operating licence to
the end of 1926 and confirmed that a more strictly enforced listener
licence fee would provide its main source of funding. This paved the
way for the further expansion of the Company’s transmitter infra-
structure, overseen by Eckersley as chief engineer. Eleven medium-
wave ‘relay’ stations were built to supplement the existing ‘main’
stations. The relay stations operated at low power so they did not
interfere with other transmitters. They were cheap to run as they did
not make their own programmes: instead, they broadcast landline
feeds of programmes taken largely from the London station, which
used the official call-sign 2LO to identify itself to listeners. To econo-
mize further, and to raise the standard of what was broadcast, the BBC
also strengthened national networking by feeding more material from
2LO to the other main stations. From July 1925, 2LO was also relayed
by 5XX, a new high-power station at Daventry, Northamptonshire,
which could reach remote listeners who could not pick up any other
BBC service. Once 5XX opened, around 80 per cent of UK listeners
could pick up at least one BBC station, as could many ‘eavesdroppers’
across and beyond Europe. The BBC thus began to develop an inter-
national as well as a national audience and reputation.
There were many arguments in favour of putting 2LO at the centre
of the UK’s emerging national broadcasting network. The station had
access to the cream of London’s cultural resources, including many of
the nation’s most famous speakers and performers. It could also pro-
vide coverage of great national events and ceremonies, as part of a
more uniform and avowedly national service. A proud Aberdonian
who combined a mild Scottish cultural nationalism with a strong
commitment to the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
Reith believed that broadcasting should help bind the component
parts of the UK together. The Company could help create a more
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 19
genuinely shared British culture and a sense of participation in

national life. Strengthening London’s dominance over the rest of the
organization also appealed to Reith’s centralizing approach to
management and his desire more closely to control what was broad-
cast by the BBC’s stations. One disgruntled former employee described
the first decade of BBC administration as ‘a gigantic experiment in
paternalism . . . everything was centralised upon a single person’.5 The
days of largely autonomous local broadcasting were numbered.
Reithian broadcasting
Although wireless might have been regarded as a public utility in the

1920s, it was clearly not quite the same thing as water, gas, or electri
city. Built into the content that transmitters and receivers delivered to
listeners were complex political, social, and cultural meanings. A
strong signal reaching across the UK could not in itself justify the
BBC’s monopoly: it mattered what that signal carried into the homes
of listeners.
In the wake of the Sykes report, the BBC set out to provide a more
professional and, to some extent, a more serious-minded service, and
to impose from Savoy Hill more uniform programme policies on the
local stations. It was clear from an early stage that broadcasting could
become a battleground for conflicts over issues of public taste and
decency. Senior managers sought to avoid controversy by imposing a
degree of self-censorship. Reith emphasized that the BBC should
never set out to offend listeners: restrictions on what could be broad-
cast were put in place, and even mildly objectionable jokes (about
drink, politics, clergymen, Scotsmen, or the Welsh, but, intriguingly,
not the Irish) were henceforth to be avoided. Avoiding offence was
deemed particularly important because, in theory, anyone could listen
to the wireless and, because of the BBC monopoly, they had little
choice about what to listen to. In practice, due to the expense of buy-
ing and operating a wireless set, most early listeners were middle- or
lower-middle class, and the perceived tastes of this group set the tone
for programming.
Reith also argued that the avoidance of harm was not a sufficient
justification of the BBC’s monopoly. The Company also needed to
have a constructive social and cultural impact on British life. As well
as entertaining listeners, it should improve and educate them and
‘carry into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is
best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and
achievement’.6 It could do this by mixing different types of material
into its programmes each evening, giving listeners not only what they
thought they wanted but also what programme makers knew (or
thought they knew) was needed. Serendipitously, listeners would
encounter a range of new and unexpected things. Over time, it was
envisaged, they would grow to like and appreciate even the most
difficult ‘modern’ classical music and learn about a whole range of
different topics. Radio would not just be fun. It would provide rational
recreation that would benefit both the individual and society more
generally.
The ‘Reithian’ philosophy of broadcasting was not in fact the inven-
tion of one man. Reith drew together existing ideas about what
broadcasting should be, from a range of sources. He also made a virtue
of necessity. With most listeners only able to pick up a single BBC
station, and with the BBC retaining a monopoly of all British broad-
casting, the Company had little choice but to provide mixed sched-
ules that would hopefully contain something for everyone. It also had
to convince listeners, critics, and regulators that it was fulfilling its
duty to deliver a public service of the highest quality. The Reithian
approach was a product of the broadcasting system that had already
been established in Britain, not a cause of it.The fact that broadcasting
was run very differently in other countries indicated that there was
nothing inevitable about the approach adopted by the BBC, but Reith
set out to convince people that it was the best one. Indeed, increas-
ingly he argued that it was a model for broadcasters in other countries
to follow.
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 21
Some thought that the Reithian approach was patronizing and

illiberal. What gave the BBC the right to determine what listeners
should hear and what should be kept off-air? Why should its programme
makers be allowed to decide cultural standards, which were surely
subjective and thus debatable? Why not simply give listeners what
they seemed to want—plenty of music and light entertainment—as
American commercial broadcasters seemed willing and able to do?
Yet there was a democratic aspect to Reithian broadcasting. In the US,
broadcasters were primarily motivated by the desire to make money
and seemed to have little interest in anything else. The BBC had a
much more socially responsible, and potentially progressive, vision of
what broadcasting could be. It promised to treat all its listeners as
equals. It refused to underestimate what they were capable of learning
and enjoying. In 1918, the UK franchise had been extended to all men
over the age of twenty- one, and to most women over thirty.
Broadcasting could, Reith argued, help turn this expanded electorate
into a politically and culturally engaged and empowered public. BBC
managers pressed the GPO to allow more broadcast coverage of pol
itics and current affairs.
However, there was always a tension between this democratic, lib-
eral, and potentially radical mission, to which many BBC employees
were deeply committed, and the Company’s role in strengthening the
established political and cultural order and its attendant hierarchies,
which other BBC officers held just as dear. The Company was rarely
an obviously radical voice. Announcers, and most speakers appearing
in ‘serious’ programmes, were expected to talk in cultured accents and
to adopt a formal manner. ‘BBC English’ pronunciation evoked the
upper-middle classes and Oxbridge: often it did not seem to corres
pond with how anyone anywhere else in the country spoke. From
autumn 1925, announcers were required to wear dinner jackets while
they were on duty, to ensure that no speakers or performers arriving
in similar attire might feel overdressed.
Indeed, BBC programmes often worked to reflect and strengthen
the dominant ideologies of the time, including loyalty to the monarchy,
respect for organized Christian worship, support for the Union of

Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and pride in British imperial
supremacy. George V broadcast for the first time at the opening of the
Wembley Empire Exhibition on 23 April 1924. Communal listening
and relaying to broadcasters overseas meant that an estimated ten
million people heard his speech. Royal ‘media events’ subsequently
provided key moments for fulfilling the BBC’s nation- and empire-
building functions. Support for the Christian churches was similarly
overt. Christian religious services were broadcast on Sundays from
the end of 1923 and daily from the beginning of 1928. Although
these broadcasts were supposedly non- denominational, Anglican
ceremonies dominated.
Programme content did not have to be explicitly or aggressively
nationalistic for the BBC to play a nation-building role. The use of
sound symbolically to link the remotest parts of the country with
London, the capital of the nation and of the British empire, worked
more subtly to promote national unity and imperial pride. This was
made possible by national networking, seen by the Company’s eng in
eers as a key goal from a very early stage.The desire to bind the nation
together reflected implicit and explicit fears about the weakness of the
Union and of Britain’s wider position in the world. The BBC was
established in the immediate aftermath of the most significant blow to
the Union for more than a century, the Anglo-Irish War and the sub-
sequent foundation of the Irish Free State. However, ironically these
events allowed it to focus on promoting a Britishness uncomplicated
by the Irish separatist nationalism that had divided the UK politically
for decades. In Northern Ireland, which remained an integral part of
the Union, the BBC quickly became part of the Protestant-dominated
establishment, at the expense of Catholic speakers, performers, and
audiences. More generally, during the 1920s and 1930s programmes
often celebrated the diversity of the UK’s regional and national
cultures, presenting them as an authentic set of traditions that fed
into and strengthened the country’s overarching sense of identity.
Separatist, political forms of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh nationalism
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 23
were consistently downplayed, even as distinctive folk cultures were

promoted. This approach generally worked in the interwar years,
though it attracted criticism from a vocal minority and would later
seem intensely problematic.
Promoting British and Irish folk cultures was also part of the BBC’s
self-conscious attempts to resist ‘Americanization’ and the incursion
of US-dominated commercial popular culture. During the 1920s,
Hollywood was already beginning to dominate Britain’s cinema screens,
at the expense of the UK’s own film industry. A strong monopoly
broadcaster could help ensure that the same did not happen to radio.
Indeed, the BBC might help Britain punch above its weight, culturally,
in the emerging global broadcasting arena. Senior officers actively
sought to develop the Company’s international role as a further means
to justify and secure its domestic monopoly. From as early as December
1923, BBC stations relayed material broadcast from the US and
Europe, and enthusiastically took part in select programme exchanges
with foreign broadcasters. Foreign content was to be welcomed, but
also carefully curated and controlled. Inward flows were to be coun-
terbalanced by sending British programmes overseas. The Company
would act as a cultural gatekeeper, ensuring that only what it regarded
as the best programming was exchanged. Such arrangements could
elevate the reputation of Britain and of the BBC abroad. More ideal-
istically, some hoped that programme exchange would contribute to
mutual understanding and peace, repairing some of the damage done
to the international order by the First World War.
Making programmes
One question lurked in the background as the BBC devised its early
programme policies: how could the ‘best’ programming be identified
and delivered? Programme makers certainly sought external guidance,
studying letters from listeners and scrutinizing reviews and critiques
of broadcasts published in the press. Ultimately, however, they generally
trusted their own judgement and vigorously defended their own

decisions and views about cultural standards. This confidence in their
own convictions was less a function of any familiarity with the work
of making programmes: all staff were of necessity newcomers, more or
less, to the infant world of wireless. Rather, their self-assurance was in
part a reflection of the privileged and highly educated background of
most programme makers, and of their shared social and cultural world.
One pioneer, Lionel Fielden, later fondly recalled the atmosphere at
Savoy Hill as ‘one-third boarding school, one-third Chelsea party,
one-third crusade’.7 This description captured not only the experi-
mental and idealistic nature of the early BBC but also the elite origins
of many of its early programme makers. The organization was
dominated by men from upper-middle-class, Oxbridge-educated
backgrounds who would have been equally at home in the upper
echelons of the home civil service or the Foreign Office. Many had
served in the armed forces as officers during the First World War, and
personnel were generally referred to as ‘officers’ throughout this period.
Some continued to use their wartime military rank.
From the outset, the BBC was committed to broadcasting plenty of
classical music, paying full attention to the acknowledged great
composers of the past, while also promoting wider appreciation of
challenging ‘modern’ compositions.When listeners complained about
the excessive amount or difficult nature of the classical music that was
broadcast, this was often taken by programme schedulers and makers
as a sign that audiences were being appropriately challenged and
uplifted. During the 1920s, the BBC became one of the most import
ant patrons of opera, symphony, and chamber music in Britain, paying
fees for the right to broadcast performances from public venues, and
establishing orchestras of its own to perform live in BBC studios.This
sustained performers by providing regular income and widened cul-
tural access across the country: the only permanent full-time orchestra
based in Northern Ireland at this time was the BBC Wireless Orchestra.
Yet the Company clearly also reinforced the cultural dominance of
London over the rest of the country. At peak listening hours local
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 25
stations increasingly took feeds from London of concerts from the

capital’s most prestigious venues.
Programming also reflected the Company’s commitment to edu-
cating its listeners more generally and, in 1924, J. C. Stobart, a
Cambridge lecturer, was appointed as its first director of education.
Wireless became a more explicit tool of adult education. That
November, 2LO broadcast numerous ‘talks’, including the well-
known popularizer of natural history, E. Kay Robinson, on ‘Winter
and the Butterflies’, Stewart Dick talking about art history in ‘The
Nation’s Pictures—The Beginning of the Fifteenth Century’, and Sir
Martin Conway on ‘The Imperial War Museum’. Those tuning into
Glasgow might have caught a talk by Dr Pio del Frate on ‘Italian
Literature’; Aberdeen offered a lecture by Professor Alexander Souter
on ‘Ancient Roman People’. In the early afternoon, London, and
some other stations (including Cardiff ), also broadcast educational
programmes for children, designed to be used in classrooms. By 1927,
three thousand schools were using wireless as a teaching tool. At 6
p.m. on weekday evenings, some stations also broadcast their own
‘Teens’ Corner’ or ‘Scholars’ Half Hour’, with local experts giving
educational talks on a wide range of topics aimed at older schoolchil-
dren, supplementing and supporting their formal education.
Yet broadcasting probably accomplished its most important educa-
tional work in a more subtle fashion, through a range of pathways.
Material aimed at children, for example, had to be fun but could
simultaneously be educational: talks, storytelling, music, and pro-
grammes about real or imaginary animals were quickly adopted as key
means to do both. Children listening to 2LO’s ‘Children’s Corner’
session on 12 November 1924, for instance, would have heard a talk
by ‘Uncle Jeff ’ about ‘How Music is Built’ and another about Galileo
in a series called Lives of Famous Men, and would have also been treated
to one of ‘Auntie Marie’s Stories of France’ and a story about ‘A Fairy
Umbrella’ by the children’s author Joan Kennedy. The next day, they
would have heard one of the series of ‘Zoo Stories’ told by ‘L. G. M. of
the Daily Mail’ (Leslie G. Mainland), and ‘Sunshine Music’ played on
the piano by ‘the Cloud Lady’, Jessie Cormack, a regular performer in

BBC children’s and music programming.
Storytelling was not just for children. One of the most popular
broadcasters on the early BBC was the serving military intelligence
officer and former magician Leslie Harrison Lambert, who broadcast
pseudonymously as ‘A. J. Alan’. To keep his act fresh, Lambert only
broadcast around five times a year. He recognized that voice was
important on radio, so he abstained from alcohol and tobacco for a
week before each of his performances, and adopted an intimate, con-
fiding tone, addressing the listener as an individual and a friend. Each
talk started off in a low-key fashion, building on a strange event or
coincidence that Lambert had supposedly experienced: he then built
up the tension before finishing with an unexpected twist. The mys-
tery surrounding the true identity of ‘A. J. Alan’ added to the intrigue
and appeal.
Other popular early radio performers meanwhile used talks to
combine entertainment with information. The composer and con-
ductor Sir Walford Davies, director of music at the University of Wales,
developed this technique in his talks for schools and in programmes
for adults such as ‘Melodies and How to Make Them’ and ‘Music and
Human Nature’, broadcast from Cardiff and illustrated with live
music. Another key pioneer was the gardening writer Marion Cran,
whose friendly, conversational, and sometimes ungrammatical
‘gardening chats’ were, from 1923, a regular feature in 2LO’s ‘Women’s
Hour’ slot. Cran was the first BBC gardening broadcaster, establishing
what would become a perennial genre for radio and, later, television.
Other stations similarly produced their own programmes specific
ally for women, in regular slots with titles like ‘Women’s Hour’,
‘Women’s Half Hour’, ‘Feminine Topics’, or ‘Afternoon Topics’. The
focus was generally domestic, covering subjects like shopping, cook-
ing, gardening, and health. However, although limited in scope, such
programmes did create space for programmes made by, presented by,
and aimed at women. Indeed, some moved well beyond the domestic
sphere, offering information and advice on careers and a range of
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 27
general interest topics. Programmes for women were typically broadcast

in the late afternoon, before sessions for children: during the 1920s,
the daytime broadcasting hours that would later provide key slots for
women’s programming were strictly limited.
BBC stations did most of their broadcasting in the evening, when
they aimed to provide programmes that would appeal to the entire
family. The prevailing tone of programming was undoubtedly mascu-
line, and as an institution the BBC was clearly male dominated.
Although it was seen as a progressive employer in terms of its attitude
to women, this was only relative to contemporary norms. Female
employees continued to experience significant levels of official and
unofficial discrimination. They were employed in numerous adminis-
trative and behind-the-scenes roles, but from the outset were signifi-
cantly under- represented in senior positions. Similarly, although
women regularly appeared as performers in music and drama pro-
grammes and in sessions for children, they were less frequently asked
to give talks. Male musical and comedy stars were often promoted
more prominently than their female counterparts. All announcers
were men. Some women would rise to occupy significant manage-
ment positions during the later 1920s and the 1930s, but they remained
a tiny minority.
The Company also made drama a key element in its broadcast
schedules. Adaptations of the classics were regularly broadcast includ-
ing, unsurprisingly, readings and productions of scenes from
Shakespeare’s plays. In October 1923, the Cardiff station broadcast the
first of a series of locally produced ‘Shakespeare Nights’ that included
drama, talks, and music, while at the same time 2LO organized its own
‘Shakespeare Evening’. Drama also drew on national and local iden
tities and cultural resources. That October the Glasgow station pro-
duced a lavish musical adaptation of the period drama Rob Roy (set
during the Jacobite rising), involving the choir of the city’s Lyric
Club, the Military Band of the 1st Royal Scots Fusiliers (including
pipers), and the station’s own orchestra.The performance was not just
for local enjoyment: it was relayed to all stations across the country.
The BBC also broadcast new dramatic material written specially

for radio. On 15 January 1924, an ‘evening of plays’ on 2LO broadcast
included four short performances lasting an hour and three-quarters
in total. The pieces included an adaptation of a classic, the proposal
scene from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but also a specially com-
missioned play by the young and relatively unknown writer Richard
Hughes, A Comedy of Danger, generally regarded as the first drama
written specially for radio. This was a pioneering attempt to exploit
the dramatic possibilities of radio as a medium. The story revolved
around the plight of a group of visitors trapped in a flooding Welsh
coal mine, which was plunged into total darkness: listeners were
invited to turn off all the lights in their room, while sound effects
simulated the noise of rushing water, pickaxes, and explosions.
Plays like A Comedy of Danger were proof that not everything the
Company did was ‘highbrow’. Indeed, a great deal of broadcast time
on all stations was taken up with programming primarily designed to
entertain listeners. ‘Light’ music—melodic compositions performed
by orchestras and military bands—offered easy listening and was
hugely popular with audiences. It also provided stations with a cheap
and readily available means to fill up much of their airtime. Dance
music also had many devotees, and most evenings studio performances
by BBC bands and outside broadcasts of other acts encouraged listen-
ers across the country to ‘roll back the carpet’ and dance to the syn-
copated rhythms of jazz and swing. This did not delight everyone:
some complained that these musical styles were an unwanted
American import. Critics also denounced, sometimes in openly racist
terms, the prominent role played by Black performers in shaping
modern dance music. Some listeners, critics, and BBC officers wanted
popular music broadcasts to be British and white.
Nevertheless, white British bands and performers regularly played
jazz music on BBC stations, and by the end of 1923 the Aberdeen,
Newcastle, and Bournemouth stations all had their own Jazz
Orchestras. ‘Negro Spirituals’ performed by white singers were also a
recurring feature of broadcast schedules, as were blackface ‘minstrel’
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 29
routines with their atavistic and offensive radial stereotypes. Stations

also broadcast a significant number of performances by Black artists,
although generally people of colour were only able to find work on
radio as entertainers, in music and comedy acts, and seldom in any
other genre of programming. In the spring and summer of 1925, 2LO
brought the African American singer C. C. Rosemond to the micro-
phone: he also appeared in its schedules as part of The Southern Trio,
performing ‘Negro Melodies’ alongside the African American singer
John C. Payne and the Black British singer Evelyn Dove. All three had
been members of the influential Southern Syncopated Orchestra,
which had toured Britain between 1919 and 1921 and introduced jazz
music to many listeners for the first time. In October 1925, the African
American singer Paul Robeson (then at the very beginning of his
career but soon to become a star of radio and cinema in the US and
Britain) gave recitals of ‘Negro Songs’ on 2LO and also offered listen-
ers explanatory talks about his performances. Two months later the
station broadcast a selection of ‘Negro Spirituals and Lighter Numbers’
performed live by the African- American group The Four
Harmony Kings.
BBC stations provided new employment opportunities for popular
musicians across the country. Network broadcasts allowed some per-
formers, particularly those based in London, to establish national and
international audiences and reputations: as one BBC listener in
Scandinavia reported, ‘We all know the Savoy Orpheans, the Savoy
Tango Band, Jay Whidden, and their fascinating music.’8 The music
industry also sought to take advantage of the opportunities radio
offered to promote its products, and used broadcast performances
indirectly to advertise and promote sales of new sheet music and
gramophone records. The BBC tried to prevent ‘plugging’ but this
could endanger its relationship with music publishers and star per-
formers, and it had to tread carefully. Commercial interests could
never be excluded entirely from the public service.
The BBC also mixed music with comedy in ‘variety’ or ‘vaudeville’
programmes. Early wireless comedy performers did not typically have
their own shows. Instead, they starred in mixed programmes, reflecting

the world of Music Hall and Victorian popular theatre from which
most of them had come. One early success on-air was the comedian
Willie Rouse, who reinvented himself as ‘Wireless Willie’. Others who
made the leap from Music Hall to broadcasting included ‘Wee
Georgie’ Wood, whose sentimental comedy act involved him imper-
sonating a small boy;Will Hay, who transferred his schoolmaster com-
edy routine to radio and then to film; Robb Wilton, who adapted his
dry, gentle, monologues from the Northern Music Hall circuit to
radio; Ronald Frankau, telling risqué jokes in a pronounced upper-
class accent; and Tommy Handley, who, in the 1940s, went on to
become the BBC’s biggest star.
Other comedy performers, many of them women, sought to escape
Music Hall traditions even though they still had to broadcast in the
setting of mixed variety programmes. They used the more intimate
appeal of wireless to pioneer new forms of character-driven comedy.
Helena Millais was the first performer to develop a character specially
for British radio, offering jokes, observational humour, and catch-
phrases in the Cockney persona of ‘Our Lizzie’. Another amateur
performer spotted and promoted by the BBC was John Henry, whose
routine with his on-air wife ‘Blossom’ (played by Gladys Horridge)
anticipated later radio and television situation comedy, complete with
its stereotypes about henpecked husbands and loud, domineering
wives. Mabel Constanduros was meanwhile among the first to under-
stand the full comic potential of radio as a non-visual medium. From
1925, she brought the ‘Buggins’ family to the BBC, playing up to
seven different characters in each broadcast sketch, usually including
the matriarch ‘Mrs Buggins’.
One of the other attractions to the BBC of bringing these new acts
to the microphone was the fact that they were not entangled with
Music Hall promoters who, fearing a new source of competition,
often sought to impose tough restrictions on the use of ‘their’ talent
on-air. Private commercial interests coexisted uneasily with Britain’s
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 31
public service broadcasting monopoly and remained quick to complain

about anything that seemed like unfair competition.
By 1926, programme makers and performers were beginning to see
ways to use radio to make new forms of programming and to reach
new listeners, appealing to local interests and tastes but also addressing
the public as a single, great, national audience. Nevertheless, many
programmes continued to rely on long-established traditions adopted
from other genres. ‘Serious’ music was generally presented in the trad
itional setting of the concert.Talks were essentially lectures, as delivered
at universities or on public occasions. Broadcasts for schools were on-
air lessons, relying on the novelty of wireless and the change from
classroom routine to engage students. Religious broadcasts adopted
the familiar forms of the church service and sermon. Light entertain-
ment relied heavily on Music Hall traditions and routines, existing
genres of popular music, and revue-style concert parties.
‘Outside broadcasts’, when microphones were taken out of the stu-
dio to provide live on-location coverage, meanwhile offered a means
to present established public events to wider audiences. Outside
broadcasts were not just used for musical performances: the BBC also
made a point of broadcasting official speeches given at opening cere
monies of public buildings, formal dinners to celebrate events like
Burns Night, and commemorations such as Armistice Day. Such
events offered another means to use radio to build a sense of local or
national community. Broadcasting similarly had the potential to cap
italize on long-established popular interest in local and national sport-
ing events. From an early stage, sport was a popular topic for talks. In
October 1923, for example, the director of Arsenal football club spoke
on 2LO about ‘The Humours of Football’, in a broadcast that was
relayed across the BBC’s national network. Talks about lawn tennis,
including tips on how to improve your game, were also put on by
many individual stations. On Saturday evenings, the BBC broadcast
summaries of the day’s key sporting events, including the results of
soccer and rugby matches. BBC officers were well aware of the
enormous possibilities offered by sports for outside broadcast work,

with radio potentially allowing major events to be brought live to listen-
ers around the country in their own homes. However, the newspaper
industry continued to resist the Company’s appeals for a relaxation of
restrictions on wireless coverage of live events. Live sports broadcast-
ing was something for the future.
Conclusions
Similarly, politics and current affairs were largely absent from the
Company’s broadcast schedules. Throughout its existence, it was
obliged by the GPO to restrict the amount of news it broadcast and
to avoid talks on controversial subjects. This reflected pressure from
the newspaper industry to head off potential competition, but also
fears about the consequences of allowing a monopoly broadcaster to
offer political coverage and comment. How could all sides be satisfied
that their views were being equitably and satisfactorily treated, in the
absence of the sort of (notionally) free market for opinion offered by
the press? How could the BBC determine who should be allowed to
speak on-air, and who should not, and what gave it the right to do so?
The simplest solution was to prevent the BBC becoming a medium
for political expression and debate: as the Postmaster General put it, ‘If
once you let broadcasting into politics, you will never be able to keep
politics out of broadcasting.’9 Many BBC officers thought this a hope-
lessly short-sighted approach, and were eager for wireless to realize its
potential to bring national politics to a wider public.
Change finally came during the General Strike of May 1926, a
nationwide labour dispute that badly disrupted newspaper produc-
tion. The BBC was not significantly unionized and became a crucial
alternative means to disseminate political information and comment.
Some argued that, in the context of this national emergency, the BBC
should be taken under direct government control to ensure it helped
maintain public order and supported the authority of the British state.
T h e Com pa n y, 1922–1926 33
Although this did not happen, the Company’s compliance was

encouraged by the threat that it might. Reith argued that the General
Strike was illegal, that the government was acting on behalf of the
people, and that by implication the strikers were not.The BBC should
thus, he maintained, provide ministers with full access to its services as
a means of public communication. It duly carried copious details of
their speeches and statements, while trade unionists and Labour poli-
ticians were kept off-air. Reith even delayed broadcasting an appeal
for peace from the Archbishop of Canterbury, fearing it would pre-
cipitate a government takeover of the Company.
During the Strike, the BBC did cover current events, in a way it
had never previously attempted. Yet no effort was made to venture
into the field of independent journalism. Five news bulletins were
broadcast daily, based on material provided by news agencies and
civil servants. A daily news ‘editorial’ was produced within the BBC
and vetted by a senior government official before it was broadcast.
The Company posed as an impartial, moderating influence during
a time of national turmoil, yet it clearly backed the state against the
strikers. The BBC survived the crisis, and Reith received a
knighthood.
As the Company’s licence from the GPO neared its expiration at
the end of 1926, it was clear that the BBC had made great progress in
achieving the task that had been set for it. Broadcasting had been both
popularized and controlled. Over two million UK households had
purchased listener licences, representing a receiving set in between a
third and a quarter of homes. Geographically, transmitters covered
almost four- fifths of the population of Great Britain (coverage
remained less satisfactory in Northern Ireland) with signals strong
enough to be picked up using a simple crystal set. Transmitters were
linked together into a national network, although they still provided
plenty of locally produced material. Programme makers had adapted
a range of genres to provide material to fill schedules and had started
to experiment with new and original types of programming, increas-
ing the appeal of radio to its audiences.
Broadcasting had already begun to reshape how people spent their

leisure time. Under its influence ‘the average young man resumed the
good habit of coming home promptly of an evening’, and households
drew together to listen, and chat, around the radio set in a way that
helped break down older, hierarchical views of what family life should
be. As one observer put it, ‘in the sharing of a mutual joy . . . brothers
have become more brotherly. Sisters more sisterly. Mothers and fathers
less parental.’10 The BBC had also started to give new form to the
family Christmas: on Christmas Eve, 1926, 2LO offered listeners one
of A. J. Alan’s stories, festive programmes for children, and a Christmas
special featuring Mabel Constanduros in Mrs Buggins Gives a Christmas
Party. The other stations took feeds of some of these programmes
from 2LO but also broadcast their own Christmas concerts and carol
services: Birmingham put on an adaptation of a scene from Dickens’
Scrooge, while Liverpool offered listeners ‘A Christmas Fairy Play’.
Across the stations, Christmas Day had meanwhile largely become a
time for religious services, children’s programmes, and light music to
aid digestion of the Christmas dinner.
In these and other subtle ways, the BBC and broadcasting contrib-
uted to the reordering of social and cultural life in Britain after the
First World War.The General Strike of 1926 had shown how broadcast-
ing could also function as a medium of political mass communication.
However, the Strike had simultaneously demonstrated that the BBC
ultimately remained at the service of the state and on the side of the
established order. As they contemplated what form broadcasting
should take after the Company’s operating licence expired at the end
of that year, politicians, civil servants, and BBC officers were well
aware of this fact.
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(Download PDF) This Is The BBC Entertaining The Nation Speaking For Britain 1922 2022 Simon J Potter Full Chapter PDF

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This is the BBC: Entertaining the

Nation, Speaking for Britain, 1922-2022

Northern Ireland, the BBC, and Censorship in Thatcher's

The Wireless World: Global Histories Of International

Radio Fun and the BBC Variety Department, 1922—67:

Is This Ok?: One Woman's Search for Connection Online

This is Not a Leadership Book: 20 Rules for Success

This Book Is Gay Juno Dawson

This Much Is True (Marshall Family Series) Adriana

This is How We End Things 1st Edition R.J. Jacobs

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,

Dedicated to the memory of my grandparents,Tom and Grace Wallis

Introduction: The BBC’s century 1

I wrote much of this book during the COVID-­19 pandemic when,

2 This is the BBC

Service of non-­ compliance with lockdown restrictions. On pro-

I n t roduct ion: T h e BBC ’s ce n tu ry 3

4 This is the BBC

the outsourcing and commercialization of many of its activities,

I n t roduct ion: T h e BBC ’s ce n tu ry 5

6 This is the BBC

I n t roduct ion: T h e BBC ’s ce n tu ry 7

8 This is the BBC

modern Britain.This view also needs to be taken seriously. In presenting

O n 14 November 1922, the British Broadcasting Company

had hugely important but unanticipated long-­ term consequences

Corporation, it had already shaped broadcasting in ways that would

During the late nineteenth century, scientists discovered that radio

The BBC’s London headquarters were initially located in the General

Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, and Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1923, the

a direct relationship with local listeners, and encouraged audience

sold, and in 1924 weekly circulation exceeded 600,000.The magazine

tooth out under gas’. To capture these performances a ‘wireless pram’,

it implied, comparable to electricity, gas, or water: a ‘mode of distribution

genuinely shared British culture and a sense of participation in

Although wireless might have been regarded as a public utility in the

Some thought that the Reithian approach was patronizing and

respect for organized Christian worship, support for the Union of

were consistently downplayed, even as distinctive folk cultures were

trusted their own judgement and vigorously defended their own

stations increasingly took feeds from London of concerts from the

the piano by ‘the Cloud Lady’, Jessie Cormack, a regular performer in

general interest topics. Programmes for women were typically broadcast

The BBC also broadcast new dramatic material written specially

routines with their atavistic and offensive radial stereotypes. Stations

their own shows. Instead, they starred in mixed programmes, reflecting

public service broadcasting monopoly and remained quick to complain

enormous possibilities offered by sports for outside broadcast work,

Although this did not happen, the Company’s compliance was

Broadcasting had already begun to reshape how people spent their

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES -

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

Section 3. Information about the Project

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500

Section 4. Information about Donations to

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot

Introduction: The BBC’s century 1

I wrote much of this book during the COVID-19 pandemic when,

2 This is the BBC

Service of non- compliance with lockdown restrictions. On pro-

4 This is the BBC

6 This is the BBC

8 This is the BBC

had hugely important but unanticipated long- term consequences