The history of the BBC

History :

Following the closure of numerous amateur stations, the BBC starts its first daily radio service in London. News is supplied by an agency, and music drama and « talks » fill the airwaves for only a few hours a day. The first broadcast is on November 14th 1922 .

In 1927, the BBC became a public corporation under a royal charter to act « as a trustee for the national interest ». The royal charter established the BBC’s mission : « Inform, educate, entertain ».

The same year, the BBC became the first radio station to comment a football match. The producer (Lance Sieveking) devises a paper plan of the pitch divided into eight numbered squares, which is published in the Radio Times to help listeners follow the game.

A decade after the BBC launched the world’s first regularly scheduled TV service. Programmes we expect to see today such as drama, sport, cartoons all feature. But the outbreak of the war in 1939 brings programmes to a sudden halt. Six months after, the BBC takes its live cameras on location to their first major outdoor event for the Coronation of King George VI.

But the progress doesn’t stop here, a year later in 1938, Announcer Ahmad Kamal Sourour Effendi is recruited from Egyptian radio as the voice of the BBC’s first service to be heard in Arabic.

During WW2, the BBC became a major source of information diffusing broadcast such as De Gaulle’s broascast to France on 18 June 1940. Wiston Churchill’s famour two-fingered « V for Victory » sign begins life at the BBC. Victor de Lavelaye, BBC Belgian Service programme organiser, ses the letter v as a unifying symbol for both the Flemish and French speakers in his Nazi-occupied homeland. V stands for vrijheid (freedom) in Flemish, and victoire. The V sign was painted across Nazi occupied territory to defy the regime. On 6 June 1944, the first official announcement of the Normandy beach landings are broadcast on the BBC. A year later on the 8 may, King George VI speaks to the nation marking the end of the war.

Since then the BBC innovates every year : 1948 marks the beginning of the Reith Lectures the Olympics of 1948 are the first games to be televises, a year later, the Weather forecasts is on television, in 1955 the BBC launched a programm for deaf children. In 1997, the BBC goes online thanks to Lord Birt, then the Director General of the BBC. He is quick to regonise its real potential for public service broadcasting.

Today, the World Service broadcats in 40+ languages, reaching hundreds of millions listeners worldwide.