‘The BBC has always done more than just reflect current affairs’
David Hendy, author BBC: A People’s History (Profile, 2022)
TeaWriting the history of the BBC is, as Asa Briggs once said, ‘writing the history of everything else’. He suggested that this relationship is more than background and foreground. Radio and television are like corridors through which the whole of life passes. If we have witnessed the dramas of history – wars, natural disasters, sporting spectacles – it has usually been through the media. Yet the BBC has always done more than simply reflect current affairs. Since 1922 it has been one of the most influential forces shaping it.
The founder of the BBC, John Reith, laid out the real purpose of broadcasting. In the wake of devastating global conflict, he believed that it was radio that could bring out ‘the best of everything in every department of human knowledge, endeavor and achievement’. Crucial to this venture was Reith’s certainty that supply can shape demand: ‘The more one gets, the more one wants.’ Over time, those involved will be led to appreciate more – and better – things. The aim was not to describe the present but to enrich it.
The BBC’s determination to bring into millions of British homes not only that famous trio of ‘information, education and entertainment’, but also what one insider described as ‘the unfamiliar on a tide of the familiar’, enabled it to change the boundaries and texture of national life. The BBC’s commitment to a regular dose of classical music in the 1920s and 1930s had a transformative effect on the recent ‘land of no music’. A steady supply of distracting entertainment and reliable news played an important role in maintaining morale during World War II. Even later, a generation of documentarians and playwrights raised public awareness of poverty, homelessness, and racism. While all this was going on, BBC schedules shaped and characterized domestic life, shaped mealtimes and established the rhythm of our days and weeks and years. When was I put to bed when I was a child archer Has arrived. Now, I cook my evening meal with it.
The continued centrality of the corporation in British life has taken on some further national significance; This has made possible a series of shared moments and helped keep the sense of collectivity alive.
‘The BBC was at the forefront of shaping the experience of West Indians in Britain’
Darrell Newton, author Paving the Empire Road: BBC Television and Black Britons (Manchester University Press, 2011)
heyn 21 June 1948 Empire Windrush Reached Tilbury Docks in Essex with about 500 West Indians. This event, which ushered in the era of mass immigration, was covered by the BBC. television newsreelBritain’s first regular news programme. Given that there were fewer than 50,000 combined radio and television licenses in 1948, only a small percentage of the UK population saw the coverage; But in the years that followed, the BBC would remain at the forefront of shaping the experience of West Indians in Britain, for both better and worse.
BBC in 1939 calling the west indies West Indian soldiers were shown reading letters to their families in the islands. Later the program became caribbean soundsshowcasing West Indian writers, but it was not until the post-war era that the corporation began to focus on the thorny issues associated with race relations. In we see britain And West Indian Diary (1949), West Indians discuss their experiences of Britain for the benefit of those considering immigration. The British press regularly associated West Indians with crime and unemployment and the BBC was no exception. in 1955 television service Ran a story on ‘Our Jamaican Problem’.
The BBC commissioned programs examining the impact of immigration on ‘traditional’ Englishness. in 1952 Race and Color: A Scientific Introduction to the Problem of Race Relations Attempting to educate viewers on the science of race, it was the first television program of its kind. Audience surveys yielded disappointing results; The audience was more concerned with the social impact of immigration.
In response, producer Anthony de Lotbinière created Is there a color bar in Britain? Broadcast in 1955, it focused on West Indians in Birmingham. This was followed in 1956 a man from the sunOne of the first plays to deal with the harsh realities of the immigrant experience from a West Indian perspective (although it was written by a white Englishman, John Eliot). It received mixed reviews from West Indian audiences: ultimately, portraying the West Indian experience in Britain was best left to West Indians themselves, such as the 1992 programme. in black and white Exhibited.
‘During the war, most Indians used radio for news hostile to Britain’
Dia Gupta, Lecturer in Public History at City, University of London
TeaThe BBC’s Eastern Service began wartime broadcasts to India from May 1940. Initially broadcasting for ten minutes a day, it expanded rapidly with programs in Hindustani, English, Bengali, Marathi, Sinhala and Tamil. The English-language programs were intellectual, not targeted at mass Indian audiences or British officers stationed in India, but rather at university students and the English-speaking elite. Contributors included George Orwell, EM Forster and TS Eliot as well as leftist Indian intellectuals and writers, including RK Narayan, Ahmed Ali, MJ Tambimuthu, GV Desani and Attia Hossain. Meanwhile, All India Radio (known as Akashvani since 1957) was established, with the BBC’s Lionel Fieldon placed in charge.
The onset of World War II and the declaration of India as a belligerent by Viceroy Lord Linlithgow without consulting the Indian National Congress changed the importance of radio listening in the country. Apart from BBC, Axis Radio stations were also included in this. Following the Japanese occupation of Singapore in February 1942, Orwell said: ‘India became for some time the center of the war, one might say the center of the world.’ In 1940s India, the interrelationship between political positions and ’causes’ generated a changing landscape of motivation, making it difficult to impose a single identity on the Indian people; Were they nationalists, anti-colonialists, anti-fascists, communists or imperialists? The BBC played an important role in broadcasting anti-fascist messages, but said little about what would happen to India in the post-war years, or indeed about its colonial subjugation during the war. Topics like the man-made, war-induced 1943 Bengal famine could not be discussed on air.
The first audience research conducted by All India Radio in 1940 in five Indian cities surveyed 13,507 listeners. This revealed that most Indians were using radio for news hostile to Britain. During the war, German broadcasts in English and Hindustani were widely heard (though not always believed). Then, the BBC was not the only player in this field, but studying its wartime broadcasts in India shows how much competition there was over the airwaves for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Indian people.
‘Changing attitudes towards power and the end of the era of respect were evident in BBC programmes’
Jamie Medhurst, author Early years of television and the BBC (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)
FFor much of the better half of the 20th century the BBC was the sole national broadcaster, first on radio and then on television, until the corporation’s monopoly was broken by the arrival of competition in the form of Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. With the growing popularity of streaming services, ‘content’ replacing ‘programmes’ and increasingly fragmented audiences, it is a good time to consider the BBC’s significance and relationship with the corporation’s centenary history.
If it does not exactly mirror society, BBC television has certainly resonated with the social, cultural and political changes that took place within Britain during the 20th century. Taking the 1950s and 1960s as an example, the 1955 documentary Is there a color bar in Britain? – commissioned as part of special inquiry The series – was broadcast with this comment in Radio Times:’The recent immigration of thousands of West Indians has focused attention on the problems of our colored citizens. Do we have jobs for them – or homes? Do we give them a fair deal?’ Changing attitudes towards authority and the end of the era of respectability in post-war Britain were evident in programs such as the satire that was the week thatFirst broadcast in 1962, it criticized British politics, including the Profumo affair. Changes in cultural and social norms are often debated and highlighted through the BBC. wednesday game And play for today Pseudo-documentary of the Strands and Peter Watkins war games The government’s policy on nuclear weapons and civilian protection was criticized to the extent that it was banned (for reasons that are still debated). Built in 1966, it was not shown until July 1985, to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
The BBC has mediated British society for 100 years. Attempts by the current government to weaken its role as a major public service broadcaster with a mission of information, education and entertainment – a mission that remains relevant and essential – jeopardizes its future. We can still live to regret it.