The British Broadcasting Company was set up by a group of executives
from radio manufacturers in December 1922. John
Reith became
general manager of the organization.
In
1927 the government decided to establish the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC) as a broadcasting monopoly operated by a board of
governors and director general. The BBC was funded by a licence fee
at a rate set by parliament. The fee was paid by all owners of radio
sets. The BBC therefore became the world's first public-service broadcasting
organization. Unlike in the United States, advertising
on radio was banned.
John
Reith was
appointed director-general of the BBC. Reith had a mission to educate
and improve the audience and under his leadership the BBC developed
a reputation for serious programmes. Reith also insisted that all
radio announcers wore dinner jackets while they were on the air. In
the 1930s the BBC began to introduce more sport and light entertainment
on the radio.
The
BBC began the world's first regular television service in 1936. This
service was halted during the Second World War
and all BBC's efforts were concentrated on radio broadcasting. In
1940 John Reith was
appointed as Minister of Information
Writers
such as J.
B. Priestley, George
Orwell,
T.
S. Eliot,
William
Empson,
and Charlotte
Haldane
were recruited by the BBC and radio was used for internal and external
propaganda. This included broadcasting radio programmes to countries
under the control of Nazi Germany.
These radio programmes went out in 40 different languages
The
BBC television service was resumed in 1946 and by the early 1950s
it became the dominant part of its activities. Its broadcasting monopoly
came to an end with the introduction of commercial television under
the Independent Television Authority in 1954. This was followed by
the introduction of commercial radio stations in 1972.
It
has been claimed that BBC is the most universally recognizable set
of initials in the world. For example, by the end of the 20th century
an estimated 150 million people were listening to BBC World Service
radio.
In
2000 the BBC was awarded an annual increase in the licence fee of
1.5% above inflation. This extra money has allowed the BBC to expand
into the field of digital television and online education.
The
BBC license fee is currently £109 per TV-owning household. This
provides 96% of the BBC's annual income of £3.16 billion
(1)
J.
B. Priestley,
Postscripts, BBC radio broadcast (5th June, 1940)
I
wonder how many of you feel as I do about this great Battle and
evacuation of Dunkirk. The news of it came as a series of surprises
and shocks, followed by equally astonishing new waves of hope. What
strikes me about it is how typically English it is. Nothing, I feel,
could be more English both in its beginning and its end, its folly
and its grandeur. We have gone sadly wrong like this before, and here
and now we must resolve never, never to do it again. What began as
a miserable blunder, a catalogue of misfortunes ended as an epic of
gallantry. We have a queer habit - and you can see it running through
our history - of conjuring up such transformations. And to my mind
what was most characteristically English about it was the part played
not by the warships but by the little pleasure-steamers. We've known
them and laughed at them, these fussy little steamers, all our lives.
These 'Brighton Belles' and 'Brighton Queens' left that innocent foolish
world of theirs to sail into the inferno, to defy bombs, shells, magnetic
mines, torpedoes, machine-gun fire - to rescue our soldiers.
(2)
J.
B. Priestley,
Postscripts, BBC radio broadcast (21st July, 1940)
We
cannot go forward and build up this new world order, and this is
our war aim, unless we begin to think differently one must stop thinking
in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community
and creation. Take the change from property to community. Property
is the old-fashioned way of thinking of a country as a thing, and
a collection of things in that thing, all owned by
certain people and constituting property; instead of thinking of a
country as the home
of a living society with the community itself as the
first test.
(3)
Graham Greene, The
Spectator (13th
December 1940)
Priestley
became in the months after Dunkirk a leader second only in importance
to Mr Churchill. And he gave us what our other leaders have always
failed to give us - an ideology.
(4)
George
Orwell,
BBC radio broadcast (20th
December 1941)
The
Japanese successes are still very serious for us. At present the pressure
of Japanese troops has died down in Malaya, where heavy casualties
have been inflicted upon them. Large Indian reinforcements have been
landed in Rangoon. The Governor of Hong Kong states that heavy fighting
is in progress, on the island itself.
In all this we must remember
that the Japanese power, though great, can only aim at a rapid outright
victory. The three Axis powers together can produce 60 million tons
of steel every year, whereas the USA alone can produce about 88 million.
This in itself is not a striking difference.
But Japan cannot send help to Germany, and Germany cannot
send help to Japan. For the Japanese only produce 7 million tons
of steel a year. For steel, as for many other things, they must depend
on the stores they have ready.
If the Japanese seem to
be making a wild attempt, we must remember
that many of them think it their duty to their Emperor, who is
their God, to conquer the whole world. This is not a new idea in Japan.
Hideyoshi when he died in 1598 was trying to conquer the whole
world known to him, and he knew about India and Persia. It was
because he failed that Japan closed the country to all foreigners.
In January of this year,
to take a recent example, a manifesto appeared in the Japanese press
signed by Japanese Admirals and Generals stating that it was Japan's
mission to set Burma and India free. Japan was of course to do this
by conquering them. What it would be like to be free under the heel
of Japan the Chinese can tell us, and the Koreans.
(5)
George
Orwell,
BBC radio broadcast (6th
June 1942)
On two days of this week,
two air raids, far greater in scale than anything yet seen in the
history of the world, have been made on Germany. On the night of the
30th May over a thousand planes raided Cologne, and on the night of
the 1st June, over a thousand planes raided Essen, in the Ruhr district.
These have since been followed up by two further raids, also on a
big scale, though not quite so big as the first two. To realise the
significance of these figures, one has got to remember the scale of
the air raids made hitherto. During the autumn and winter of 1940,
Britain suffered a long series of raids which at that time were quite
unprecedented. Tremendous havoc was worked on London, Coventry, Bristol
and various other English cities. Nevertheless, there is no reason
to think that in even the biggest of these raids more than 500 planes
took part. In addition, the big bombers now being used by the RAF
carry a far heavier load of bombs than anything that could be managed
two years ago. In sum, the amount of bombs dropped on either Cologne
or Essen would be quite three times as much as the Germans ever dropped
in any one of their heaviest raids on Britain. (Censored: We in this
country know what destruction those raids accomplished and have therefore
some picture of what has happened in Germany.) Two days after the
Cologne raid, the British reconnaissance planes were sent over as
usual to take photographs of the damage which the bombers had done,
but even after that period, were unable to get any photographs because
of the pall of smoke which still hung over the city. It should be
noticed that these 1000-plane raids were carried out solely by the
RAF with planes manufactured in Britain. Later in the year, when the
American airforce begins to take a hand, it is believed that it will
be possible to carry out raids with as many as 2,000 planes at a time.
One German city after another will be attacked in this manner. These
attacks, however, are not wanton and are not delivered against the
civilian population, although non-combatants are inevitably killed
in them.
Cologne was attacked because
it is a great railway junction in which the main German railroads
cross each other and also an important manufacturing centre. Essen
was attacked because it is the centre of the German armaments industry
and contains the huge factories of Krupp, supposed to be the largest
armaments works in the world. In 1940, when the Germans were bombing
Britain, they did not expect retaliation on a very heavy scale, and
therefore were not afraid to boast in their propaganda about the slaughter
of civilians which they were bringing about and the terror which their
raids aroused. Now, when the tables are turned, they are beginning
to cry out against the whole business of aerial bombing, which they
declare to be both cruel and useless. The people of this country are
not revengeful, but they remember what happened to themselves two
years ago, and they remember how the Germans talked when they thought
themselves safe from retaliation. That they did think themselves safe
there can be little doubt. Here, for example, are some extracts from
the speeches of Marshal Goering, the Chief of the German Air Force.
"I have personally looked into the air-raid defences of the Ruhr.
No bombing planes could get there. Not as much as a single bomb could
be dropped from an enemy plane', August 9th, 1939. "No hostile
aircraft can penetrate the defences of the German air force",
September 7th, 1939. Many similar statements by the German leaders
could be quoted.
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