Press: British Broadcasting

Like National Broadcasting Co. in the U. S., England’s British Broadcasting Corp. was started by radio manufacturers to give set owners something to listen to. B. B. C. founders in 1922 were the “wireless” firms of Marconi, Radio Communication Co., Metropolitan Vickers, British Thomson-Houston Co., General Electric and Western Electric. Four years later this private monopoly was given a ten-year royal charter, made a public institution somewhere between a Government Department and a commercial undertaking, independent in its daily doings but under the ultimate control of His Majesty’s Government.

Though it gets no air advertising revenue, B. B. C. has not fared badly. On its share of license fees paid by set owners it has erected its own building, entered the publishing business with three profitable weekly papers. Last week, with its charter essentially unchanged and renewed for another ten years, B. B. C. entered its second decade, a British institution apparently as solidly established as Big Ben, whose booming it uses for a broadcast time signal.

Head of this rich, state-protected bureaucracy since its inception has been a shambling, pugnacious, 6-ft. 4-in. Scot named John Charles Walsham Reith. Knighted in 1927, Sir John is monarch of all he surveys in Broadcasting House, the big white B. B. C. building which dominates Portland Place and, in the interests of acoustics, is sealed like a tomb and ventilated like a submarine. So obnoxious to many of B. B. C.’s 3,000 employes was the “Army” atmosphere of Broadcasting House (e. g., B. B. C.-ers were fired when they got divorced), that the Government stepped in and mildly recommended in renewing the charter that “the staff should be free from any control by the Corporation over their private lives.” Another standing complaint against B. B. C. is the dullness of its Sunday fare. At the Government’s suggestion, Sir John promised to seek “a better balance and a more attractive layout of the Sunday programs.”

To U. S. listeners, most of B. B. C.’s offerings seem dull stuff even on weekdays. Music, mostly classical, predominates in its schedule. The Corporation pays ordinary performers poorly but will go as high as $2,500 for a broadcast by someone like Maurice Chevalier. Best thing done by B. B. C. is the production of radio drama. News bulletins are supplied by Reuter, Exchange Telegraph Co., Press Association and Central News. When B. B. C. got a scoop on the announcement of the Duke of Gloucester’s engagement (TIME, Nov. 11). the Press yowled so loudly that everyone concerned agreed that such a thing should never happen again.

British radio fanmail is not encouraged to approach U. S. proportions, but B. B. C. discovers a great deal about listeners’ ideas from discussion in its weekly publications. Biggest, Radio Times, reaches 3,000,000 fans, sells for 2d. (4¢). carries weekly program listings, readers’ views, sketches of radio artists, convulses British readers with the humor of “Samuel Pepys, Listener.” Highest-browed B. B. C. publication, The Listener, stems from B. B. C.’s pride, the “talks” by experts and celebrities, preserves the best of these in print. Last year The Listener, which sells for 3d., offered its readers the broadcast thoughts of the Archbishop of Canterbury; King Edward VIII, as Prince of Wales; the late Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Most technical of the Corporation’s weekly papers, the 2d. World-Radio, gives all foreign program listings, except those of the commercial, 200,000-watt Radio Luxemburg (Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Radiodifusion), which sprays advertising programs in English over B. B. C.’s domain from the Duchy of Luxemburg across the Channel.

Though the B. B. C. publications take all the paid advertising they can get, B. B. C. carries no commercial programs paid for by an advertiser with something to sell. Nevertheless, B. B. C. may accept “sponsored” programs credited to outside companies, has done so on several occasions. Recent example was the Hyde Park Community Sing, a stunt by the lively Daily Express which brought that Beaverbrook paper an invaluable B. B. C. credit line in return for the program arrangements.