1946 – The Beeb is Back
The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, affectionately known as the Beeb, was incorporated on 1 January 1927. The first Director General was Sir John Reith, and its coat of arms proclaimed, ‘Nation shall speak peace unto Nation” . John Reith was a Scottish Calvinist, determined that the BBC would set a high standard in its programming. Radio broadcasting was not new, but even as the radio service was established by the BBC, work began on exploring television. By 1935, the Beeb was ready. Staff had been recruited, and two studios operational at Alexandra Palace, the ‘peoples’ palace’, a centre for education and recreation. On Wednesday 26 August 1936, the first broadcast of television programs still in development was transmitted to the Radiolympia Exhibition, the UK’s annual trade show for radio equipment. Just over two months later, on 2 November, BBC Television commenced public broadcasts. It was the world’s first high definition service, watched that day by an estimated 400 people. Furthermore, in its early months, broadcasts were limited to two hours, 3-4 pm and 9-10 pm, a break deemed necessary to reduce eye strain! [i] Unsurprisingly, the service and the audience grew quickly.
On 1 September 1939, the schedule for the day was packed, running from 11 am to 10.30 pm. Highlights included a live broadcast from Radiolympia, Come and Be Televised, at the start of the day’s transmission. The rest of the program comprised Cabaret, (music, comedians and tap dancing), News, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, various variety and short film segments, ending with late night News, an ‘Interest’ Film, West of Inverness, and Pas Seul, with actress Wilma Vanne and coloratura soprano Dorothy Lillian Ward. However, after the hour from Olympia and quite unexpectedly, a Mickey Mouse cartoon followed, Mickey’s Gala Premiere. Then, without any on-air announcement, transmission ceased. [ii] The government feared the strong signal from Alexandra Palace would act as a beacon for enemy aircraft. What were now 20,000 owners of television sets were left confused as to what had happened. All this was at the same time as the BBC’s radio services, national and regional, were consolidated into one, the BBC Home Service.
BBC Television resumed on 7 June 1946. The first session was for one hour at 3 pm. Television announcer Jasmine Bligh was first to speak: “Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh …?” [iii] That hour included Mickey’s Gala Premiere, the same cartoon that had ended broadcasts seven years earlier. Also in the reopening celebration, Margo Fonteyn performed a solo dance; one of George Bernard Shaw’s poems was read; cartoonist David Low drew and talked; there was a party with Mantovani and his Orchestra; and the session ended with a visit to The Mall to see preparations for the next day’s Victory parade. Following a break, service resumed at 8.30 pm for another two hours, with Geraldo and his Orchestra, a short play, a 15 minute piano concert, and the news. So British: highbrow to the core, the Beeb was definitely back, to be seen on what was still a relatively small number of screens.
However, the growth from that moment was rapid. Just four years later, when I was six years old, people on our suburban street had televisions. To be precise, I knew one family did. Pauline, who lived just up the road, and went to the same school as I did, was known to have a television. I was constantly trying to find some excuse to go and see her. On the few occasions I did, at least half the time the television was off. It had doors, and being unable to see the screen added to the allure. We didn’t have a television until 1953. We didn’t buy one, but my dad, a physics teacher in a local grammar [high] school constructed one himself. I can’t recall much, except that the screen was a green cathode ray tube, in my imagination no more than six inches across, but it must have been a little more than that. After fits and starts, dad had it working in time for the coronation of Elizabeth II, in June 1953. Mum, dad and I sat staring at the tiny image. It wasn’t easy to see what was happening, but it was an historic moment in the UK. George VI had died when Elizabeth was 25, but her accession to the throne was delayed until after the mourning period. Even at 27, and insofar as we could see her, she looked very young.
The Beeb was broadcast free to air, but you had to have a licence for a receiver. The licence was introduced in 1946, at a charge of £2 (equivalent to roughly £80 today). When colour television broadcasts began in 1967, it was decided to add a colour supplement from the beginning of 1968. This doubled the current black and white licence fee of £5 to £10, (equivalent to £170 today). The licence today costs £154.50. There was a radio licence, but it was dropped in 1971.
Mere mention of licence fees leaves to one side the drama of licence evasion. Most of that centred around detector vans. In the 1950s, when they first appeared, they were easily identified, as the van had a large horizontal aerial system on the roof. As soon as a van appeared in an area, the grapevine got to work, and several sets were immediately switched off. How do I know about this? My father-in-law at that time refused to buy a licence for his set. My wife’s family lived on a public housing estate in West London. Once a van entered the estate, phone calls started, and few, if any, evaders were detected. The BBC claimed the vans were as much a deterrent as a source of fines; to stop evaders they kept their detection technology confidential.
The system became far more sophisticated in successive years. LASSY, the Licence Administration and Support System, maintained a list of around 30m addresses in the UK (for a population of around 67m), and against those addresses they recorded where a licence had been purchased, where no licence was required (homes without a television, or with an exemption, the main reason for which being the television was only used to watch pre-recorded material, and no broadcasts were received), and those not covered by these two cases. This allowed more targetted detection, either using the vans or, in time, handheld devices.
There were other issues than mere evasion. Viewers argued that receiving commercial television was different from viewing BBC programming. This was based on the fact that most of the licence fee income was (and is) provided to the BBC: 66% for television, 17% for national and local radio, 6% for online services, and 11% for transmission and fee collection and detection costs. Commercial broadcasters receive none of the revenue. The standard objection is “why should I have to pay if I don’t watch the Beeb?” Since commercial television broadcasting commenced in 1955, when ITV (Independent Television) was allowed to begin its service, this form of objection has a long history. Over the years the ‘highbrow’ character of the BBC’s television programs has become less evident, with more sitcoms and soaps deliberately aimed at winning share from commercial stations. Given this, many viewers argued a mandatory licence fee should be dropped and the BBC should earn its own way. Today, as the BBC engages in considerable sponsored programming, this view has garnered even more support.
Following the appearance of commercial television, it took another 18 years before commercial radio broadcasting was allowed, although this had been preceded by some years of illegal or ‘pirate’ broadcasting, some from abandoned oil platforms in the North Sea! While commercial radio has developed in the past 45 years, with a proliferation of stations and market audiences, BBC Radio has held its place as relatively factual, unaligned, and ‘middle class’, despite an ongoing element of criticism. The story has been rather different for BBC television.
In terms of quality over the years, it is not surprising that the BBC has had the edge. Funded without having to rely on advertising revenue (and hence not needing to be overly concerned about viewing figures), it has an enviable record of great programs. The British Film Institute assessed the top 100 television programs up to 2000, and the BBC had produced 70 on the list, commercial stations the remainder. [iv] To pick some highlights, just four make the list from the 1950s, the children’s program Blue Peter at # 6 (started in 1958), the irrepressible Hancock’s Half Hour (24), and two great films, Nineteen Eight-Four (#73) and Quatermass and the Pit (#75). In the 1960s, Doctor Who began in 1963 and is at #3 on the list, together with Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Dad’s Army, Till Death Us Do Part, popular music on Top of the Pops, commentary on That Was the Week that Was, and the beginning of the many police series with Z Cars. Over time ITV built up a strong showing, with University Challenge (at # 34), and the never ending saga Coronation Street, which appeared in 1960 (at #40), as well as The Avengers (yes, even though that wandered between the BBC and ITV!!), and Thunderbirds.
I could keep going, as almost every item demonstrates UK TV quality. How about Yes Minister/Yes, Prime Minister at #9, Absolutely Fabulous at #17, The Singing Detective, House of Cards, and many more from the BBC. From the commercial stations, I can’t go past Brideshead Revisited (#10), the Up series (7 Up, 14 Up, etc.) at #26, alongside the first and soon to be dreaded game shows with Who Wants to be a Millionaire (#23), as well as such classics as Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect. Yes, I know, I should keep my preferences to myself.
Of course, all that is about scheduled programs, and actual numbers watching specific episodes of serials are fascinating, one-off events revealing a little more. The BBC had 24.4m watching an episode of Only Fools and Horses on 29 December 1996, closely followed by To the Manor Born, with a tad under 24m on 11 November 1979. [v] Close behind these two are episodes of Dallas and Coronation Street, and The Royal Variety Performance. Just to complete this swag of numbers, the top ten events on television give another perspective. The most watched ever was the 1966 England World Cup Soccer Final against West Germany with 32.3m viewers, and there were only 54.5m living in the UK at the time! Sport is always big, and the 1970 FA Cup final replay drew in 28.5m (Chelsea vs Leeds United), and the 2012 London Olympic Games Opening and Closing Ceremonies had just over 24m watchers. ‘Princess’ Diana’s funeral had 32.1m in 1997, more than her wedding in 1984 with 28.4m. Hang on, what’s this. Boris had 27.1m for an appearance on 23 March 2020, and he’s neither royal family nor a sporting event! [vi] Still getting my head around that one: ah, the drawcard wasn’t Boris, it was about the Covid-19 pandemic.
Generally speaking, British television has a deserved reputation for quality, often thought provoking, sometimes cutting edge, and almost always entertaining. Still seen as relatively highbrow, who would have anticipated a few years after the Beeb had returned there would be trouble, increasingly so since the turn of the century, with real threats to the Corporation? This is more than just the cost of licence fees. What else had gone wrong?
It sometimes gets attention from morality crusaders, but that’s quickly forgotten. However, for more than fifty years, the BBC has been criticised for bias. From the time Margaret Thatcher was appointed leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, until her resignation in 1990 (after 11 years as Prime Minister), she and the Conservatives were constant critics of the BBC and what they saw as biased and irresponsible coverage. Thatcher wanted to ‘knock it down to size’, and sought to have the Corporation receive at least part of its funding through paid-for advertising. [vii] From her time onwards, criticism of the BBC has been a political pastime.
Criticism from both sides is perhaps the best indicator that whatever bias the Beeb shows, it is far from extreme. In July 2019, a media fact checker concluded: “Overall, we rate the BBC Left-Center biased based on story selection that slightly favors the left, and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information”. [viii]Claimed to reach 75% of the population, the UK’s independent communications regulator Ofcom observed, “large majorities of audiences in the UK value public service media providers like the BBC very highly for providing trustworthy news programmes that help people understand what is going on in the world. Though the BBC is slightly less trusted by people who identify with the political right than by people in the centre and on the left, it is still as trusted on the right as major conservative newspapers.” [ix]
This was made clear in the light of close attention, and criticism, during the Brexit debate and the 2019 General Election. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, at the University of Oxford, offered a positive assessment of the BBC and its news reporting, although late in the election, a veteran BBC presenter, Andrew Neil turned to the camera and broke the unwritten rules of avoiding partisan comment. He asked why Boris Johnson was refusing to do what every other leader of a major political party had done for years by submitting himself to the time honoured tradition for all would-be Prime Ministers, and coming in for 30-minute ‘grilling’. “The prime minister of our nation will at times have to stand up to President Trump, President Putin, President Xi of China. So, we’re surely not expecting too much that he spend half an hour standing up to me.” Still refusing, Boris Johnson snapped back: “The system of funding [the BBC] out of effectively a general tax bears reflection. How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of TV and radio channels?”
Seventy-four years ago, the BBC returned to screens in the UK with a Mickey Mouse cartoon. In retrospect it seems an odd inclusion alongside Dame Margot Fonteyn and George Bernard Shaw. Today, like Australia’s national broadcaster, it finds itself in a nasty, politically driven fight over funding. Are cuts and controls for broadcasters yet another threat to democracy? Hopefully, neither the ABC nor the BBC will prove to be Mickey Mouse in their responses.
[i] The BBC has an excellent history: https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/birth-of-tv
[ii] There is some uncertainty as to whether service stopped then, or later that day. It did stop without warning
[iii] An urban myth has announcer Leslie Mitchell saying “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted”
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFI_TV_100
[v] https://www.heart.co.uk/showbiz/tv-movies/tv-80-years-most-watched-programmes-british/
[vi] https://www.theweek.co.uk/106346/most-watched-uk-tv-broadcasts-ever-from-boris-s-lockdown-address-to-princess-diana-s-wedding
[vii] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/11313380/Margaret-Thatcher-conducted-covert-war-against-BBC.html
[viii] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/
[ix] https://www.politico.eu/article/bbc-uk-election-criticism-analysis/
