How the BBC Shaped the World A Fascinating History of Cultural Giant

The BBC is one of the most influential and respected media organizations in the world, but how did it become what it is today? In his book, The BBC: A People’s History, David Hendy tells the story of the BBC from the perspective of the people who worked there, from the pioneers of radio to the stars of TV and online.

He reveals the triumphs and challenges, the controversies and scandals, the innovations and transformations that shaped the BBC and its impact on British and global culture. This is a captivating and enlightening book that will appeal to anyone interested in the history of broadcasting, journalism, and culture.

If you want to learn more about the BBC and its role in the world, you won’t want to miss this book. Read on to find out what I think of it and why you should read it too.

Genres

History, Biography, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Journalism, Politics, Sociology, Technology, Business, Entertainment.

The BBC: A People’s History is a book that covers the 100 years of the BBC’s existence, from its origins as a private company in 1922 to its current status as a public service broadcaster in 2022. The book is divided into four parts, each covering a different era of the BBC’s history: the early years (1922-1945), the golden age (1946-1979), the troubled times (1980-1999), and the digital age (2000-2022).

Each part consists of several chapters that focus on different aspects of the BBC’s work, such as news, drama, comedy, music, education, sport, religion, and international broadcasting. The book also explores the BBC’s relationship with the government, the public, the industry, and the world, as well as the internal dynamics, culture, and politics of the organization.

The book is based on extensive research and access to the BBC’s archives, as well as interviews with former and current staff, listeners, and viewers. The book is not a conventional top-down history, but rather a bottom-up one, that gives voice to the people who made the BBC what it is, from the engineers and technicians to the producers and presenters, from the writers and actors to the journalists and correspondents, from the managers and directors to the audiences and critics.

The book is full of anecdotes, insights, and opinions that reveal the human side of the BBC, as well as the professional and creative challenges, the ethical and moral dilemmas, the successes and failures, the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, and the dreams and realities of working for and with the BBC.

The book is not only a history of the BBC, but also a history of Britain and the world, as seen and heard through the BBC’s programmes and services. The book shows how the BBC reflected and influenced the social, cultural, political, and technological changes that occurred in the past century, and how it contributed to the education, information, and entertainment of millions of people across the globe.

The book also examines the BBC’s role and relevance in the present and the future, as it faces the challenges and opportunities of the digital era, the changing media landscape, the global competition, the public expectations, and the government regulations.

Review

I found this book to be very informative, engaging, and enjoyable. I learned a lot about the BBC’s history, achievements, and challenges, as well as the people who worked there and the programmes they made. I also gained a deeper appreciation of the BBC’s value and importance as a public service broadcaster, a cultural institution, and a global force.

I liked how the book was written in a clear, lively, and accessible style, with a good balance of facts, analysis, and stories. I also liked how the book was structured in a chronological and thematic way, with each chapter focusing on a specific topic or genre. I think this made the book easy to follow and interesting to read.

The book is not a hagiography or a whitewash of the BBC, but rather a balanced and honest account of its strengths and weaknesses, its achievements and failures, its virtues and vices, its controversies and scandals, its praises and criticisms.

The book does not shy away from addressing the difficult and sensitive issues that the BBC faced and still faces, such as the funding, the governance, the editorial independence, the accountability, the diversity, the quality, the innovation, the competition, the reputation, and the trust.

The book also does not hesitate to express the author’s own views and judgments on the BBC’s performance and prospects, as well as the views and judgments of others who have been involved or affected by the BBC.

The book is not a definitive or comprehensive history of the BBC, but rather a personal and selective one, that reflects the author’s interests, preferences, and perspectives, as well as the limitations of the sources and the space. The book is not a final or conclusive word on the BBC, but rather an invitation and a contribution to the ongoing debate and discussion about the BBC’s past, present, and future.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the BBC, in broadcasting, in journalism, in culture, or in history. I think this book is a valuable and enjoyable read that will inform, entertain, and inspire the readers.

I think this book is a fitting and timely tribute to the BBC, as it celebrates its 100th anniversary, and a reminder and a challenge to the BBC, as it faces its uncertain future. I think this book is a testament to the BBC’s motto: “Nation shall speak peace unto nation”.

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.

Take-Aways

• Wireless was the first electronic medium of communication thanks, at initially, to Morse Code.
• The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) first aired in November 1922.
• On January 1, 1927, the BBC became the British Broadcasting Corporation.
• The 1926 General Strike transformed the BBC into a news organization.
• The BBC experimented with television, but it canceled that effort in 1939 at the start of World War II.
• The BBC shifted into wartime mode.
• BBC radio created a War Reporting Unit to cover combat.
• BBC television expanded rapidly after the war.
• The 21st century has been turbulent for the BBC.

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.

“When hostilities finally erupted in August 1914, the focus on wireless’s strategic role quickly shifted from communication to propaganda.”

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 1922.

The Marconi Company (led in part by a future co-founder of the BBC, Arthur Burrows) initially sold wireless telegraphy equipment. In 1919, it opened a new transmitter and began broadcasting two half-hour segments daily, a news show and a music show. In 1922, the British Post Office permitted the company to open an additional station.

“By the middle of 1922, events had started to take on a momentum of their own. What had begun as a series of transmissions ostensibly designed to test and improve the technical capacities of wireless telegraphy was evolving into a form of wireless ‘radiating’ entertainment for its own sake.”

Burrows led the first BBC Radio broadcast on November 14, 1922. He and the BBC’s other founders, Cecil Lewis and John Reith, had a postwar sense of an existential crisis. They wanted to change British society. In 1923, they moved the British Broadcasting Company into its legendary first headquarters, No. 2 Savoy Hill in London.

On January 1, 1927, the BBC became the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The BBC’s early days were improvised and experimental – a radio “democracy of young pioneers.” Their principal ethos was excellence in whatever they did. Throughout the 1920s, the BBC’s staff and audience grew. Under Reith, a strict managing director, it became a respectable institution.

“Rather than recycling the works of the theater or the concert hall, they would turn radio into a bold new art.”

Early on, the BBC ran wildly experimental programs, such as Lewis’s sound exploration of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim in 1927 and Larry Sieveking’s autobiographical “fantasy” Kaleidoscope in 1928. The BBC’s founding philosophy called for building universal appeal, attracting both the working class and the elite. Its mission was to create a “shared public life.”

Under Reith, the BBC sought to become an independent public organization, as cost-free as possible for users and not under the control of either business or government interests. On January 1, 1927, its status changed from “company” to “corporation,” with a license and a 10-year Royal Charter requiring it to cultivate programming in Britain’s national interest.

The 1926 General Strike transformed the BBC into a news organization.

Early on, the BBC did little that resembled today’s journalism. In 1922, newspapers restricted the new BBC from broadcasting news before 7 pm. Since it had no staff journalists, its narrators read texts from the Reuters news service. In 1923, the Postmaster-General told the government that, on the pain of losing its license, the BBC should avoid dealing with controversial topics. Reith objected to this policy because it reduced the BBC’s vitality and relevance, but the policy held until 1928.

“For most of the BBC’s history, changes in both programs and policy were the result of evolution rather than revolution. But its emergence as a ‘loyal’ purveyor of news had been transformed dramatically and decisively by a single event back in May 1926: the General Strike.”

The coal industry’s General Strike began in 1925 when collier owners threatened a dramatic reduction in coal miners’ wages. The government first proposed subsidies to avoid a strike, but when it withdrew that proposal, the Trade Unions Congress called for a general strike. British industry ground to a halt as more than a million transport and factory workers supported the miners. With most of the press corps also joining in, the Post Office withdrew its restrictions on BBC news coverage during the strike.

Some conservative politicians accused the Trade Unions Congress of starting a civil war or a revolution, so whether to support the strike became a complex crisis. Throughout, the BBC provided relatively balanced coverage, although the government still intervened to tamp down coverage of multiple points of view. When the strike ended, the Post Office reinstated limits on the BBC’s news coverage even though the company had set a precedent for greater freedom and complexity in its reporting of the news.

The BBC experimented with television, but it canceled that effort in 1939 at the start of World War II.

In the mid-1920s, inventors and entrepreneurs began researching ways to commercialize a fresh novelty: television. In 1924, Scottish engineer John Logie Baird transmitted moving images through a crude, mechanical device. With the help of investors, he improved the quality of the images. The first television set went on sale in 1926, but there weren’t yet any programs to watch. By 1929, the BBC let Baird use one of its transmitters to experiment with TV broadcasting.

Television programming began slowly. The BBC aired its first broadcast of a play, Lance Sieveking’s production of Luigi Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, in 1930.

By 1934, the advent of electric cathode ray technology compromised the BBC’s relationship with Baird. A 1935 government commission told the BBC to create a permanent TV service using Baird’s system and cathode rays, which produced clearer images. The new BBC television service opened its headquarters in Alexandra Palace in north London.

“Television’s experimental phase was coming to an end. Alexandra Palace now fell into a routine; the weekly schedule printed in the Radio Times soon became as reassuringly familiar to the public as that of the BBC’s National or Regional Programmes.”

Early on, BBC television broadcast entertainment, some of it sophisticated, as well as news. In its first few years, the BBC aired more than 300 plays, including T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. In 1937, BBC radio and television covered the coronation of King George VI. By 1939, many believed TV was on the ascent; people were buying more sets.

In August 1939, Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich entered a nonaggression agreement with Stalin’s Soviet Union, portending war in Europe. With the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, BBC television abruptly closed for the duration of the war, and BBC radio stepped up.

The BBC shifted into wartime mode.

The BBC summoned its staff from outposts such as Dublin to come to London to plan its war coverage. It had made contingency plans for war in the early 1930s, considering such eventualities as possible air raids on London. Eventually, the BBC moved entire divisions to provincial outposts.

“Dozens of BBC staff were being squeezed into cars and buses: Variety, Children’s Hour and Religion were heading to Bristol; others, including Drama, Music and Features, were going to Wood Norton Hall, a country house that stood in leafy grounds outside the Worcestershire town of Evesham.”

The BBC’s producers and editors identified broadcasters with the tone and voices that spoke in the way the British people wanted and needed. Its wartime role became bringing people together after the 1940 Dunkirk calamity. Winston Churchill, the new prime minister, gave a stirring speech on the BBC about Britain’s steadfastness, endurance, sacrifice and ultimate glory.

Writer J. B. Priestly spoke about the common virtues of the ordinary, working-class British man. The BBC tried to calm people by playing music and comedy that reflected popular taste. But once the Blitz began, BBC employees were no longer merely wartime observers – they were targets, especially those still stationed in London’s tall Broadcasting House, the familiar home of the BBC’s transmitters.

The Nazi Blitz aimed to destroy Britain’s infrastructure, including transportation, arms manufacturers, and fuel and food resources. As the network broadcast around the clock, it tried to protect its employees. People kept watch from the roof of the Broadcasting House, coordinating with the Observer Corps, which identified incoming German planes. As they neared, BBC employees rushed into shelters. In October 1940, bombs hit Broadcasting House, killing six people. The building stood, but the attack rendered three floors of studios useless for a year.

BBC Radio created a War Reporting Unit to cover combat.

With the British victory in the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, Britons anticipated the opening of “the second front” to push back Germany’s occupation of Western Europe. The BBC needed to prepare, though the attack didn’t begin until D-Day in 1944.

In 1940, the BBC started the Radio Newsreel to cover battles in North Africa. It built the Radio Commando Unit, staffing it with enough war correspondents to cover the war on land, sea and air. The BBC tested its capability by covering a “mock-military exercise” along the Thames. The success of that effort led to the creation of the War Reporting Unit. By 1944, the BBC had developed a small, portable disc recorder for field reporters.

“In March 1944, members of the War Reporting Unit were given ‘commando’ style training in reconnaissance techniques, weapons, signals, map reading, and airplane and tank recognition; they learned how to live rough and cook in the field; they were even issued with army uniforms.”

By the time a BBC announcer confirmed the D-Day invasion at 9:30 in the morning of June 6, 1944, many in the War Reporting Unit were already in Normandy. Some had flown over the channel in bombers, while others were on ships and landing craft. One parachuted in, and another crossed the channel in a glider. Broadcasting from Normandy was difficult until the BBC installed transmitters there. The BBC broadcast the first eyewitness accounts of D-Day on D-Day itself. A correspondent on a bomber recounted seeing British soldiers scrambling onto the beaches. A reporter on a landing craft described the horror of seeing Allied boats hitting German mines.

BBC television expanded rapidly after the war.

The BBC’s television service returned in June 1946. One of its first broadcasts showed the Victory Parade featuring troops, military vehicles and marching bands.

Television’s expansive possibilities were obvious, but postwar austerity limited it from becoming truly mass entertainment and prevented Alexandra Palace from obtaining the latest equipment. When the BBC television service elegantly covered the 1948 London Olympics, people acknowledged the value of high-quality TV reporting.

On June 2, 1953, the BBC covered the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. Sales of TV sets grew from nearly 750,000 in 1951 to 1.5 million in 1952, and then to more than two million in 1953. The BBC remained significant. Throughout the 1960s and 197os, it introduced more controversial forms of popular culture.

The 21st century has been turbulent for the BBC.

The 21st century brought periods of crisis and scandal to the BBC. In 2003, it experienced a bitter falling out with Tony Blair’s Labour government. Defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan asserted on BBC Radio 4 that in order to draw Britain into the Iraq war, Blair had lied to the public about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The government denied the allegations. A subsequent government inquiry directed by the former Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Brian Hutton, concluded that Gilligan’s claims were groundless and irresponsible.

After the death of decades-long BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, the public learned that he’d been a serial pedophile who’d sexually abused children and teenagers throughout his career. People at the BBC had always had their suspicions, and the public wondered how much they’d known.

“In public service broadcasting, it is the word ‘public’ that matters most. For the BBC, it is not an inert ‘mass’ or some nameless ‘target demographic,’ but something dynamic. It involves treating viewers and listeners as living beings.”

Today, the BBC remains the world’s largest news-gathering organization. BBC Radio still commissions more original plays than any other institution. The network has maintained its original purpose, in a far more expanded form: to enable shared public knowledge, experience and culture.

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.