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The BBC

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The BBC

A People's History

Profile Books,

15 min read
9 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Three visionaries with new technology and a desire to change the world launched the BBC in 1922.

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Editorial Rating

9

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  • Comprehensive
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  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

In November 1922, three young, restless and ambitious World War I veterans – Cecil Lewis, John Reith and Arthur Burrows – launched an idealistic project that evolved into the British Broadcasting Corporation. With the war’s devastation still fresh, they didn’t want to offer a mere diversion. They wanted to reach all classes of British people, educate them and create a national culture. From small beginnings, the BBC invented radio news and adapted to TV as it covered World War II and the United Kingdom’s postwar cultural changes. “The Beeb’s” journey has been turbulent, as academician David Hendy details in this compelling portrait of the development of broadcast journalism, but it became the first medium that reached millions of people simultaneously.

Summary

Wireless was the first electronic medium of communication thanks, initially, to Morse Code.

Electronic communication began in the late 19th century with telegraph operators sending the dots and dashes of Morse Code over worldwide wires. Then, in the late 1880s, German physicist Heinrich Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves, enabling operators to send Morse Code without wires. Italian entrepreneur Guglielmo Marconi, founder of the Marconi Company, began trying to exploit this new technology commercially. Eventually, people were using wireless to communicate across countries and continents.

Germany used high-intensity transmitters to broadcast news around the world as part of its propaganda campaign. Wireless could spread both information and disinformation, both malignant messages and “peace and enlightenment.” But wireless had to move beyond Morse Code. Reaching the public required transmitting the human voice. By the end of World War I, wireless could broadcast voices and music. The big question was whether anyone but “hobbyists” would listen.

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) first aired in November ...

About the Author

David Hendy is emeritus professor of media and cultural history at the University of Sussex. He also wrote Life on Air: A History of Radio Four.

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