The BBC’s first 50 years range from the earliest outside radio broadcasts, through pre-war television to the launch of a second TV channel, colour television, local radio, and the lead-up to the first news-on-demand service. Along the way came the challenges of political impartiality, the coverage of sex and violence, and the protests of those who believed the BBC’s ambitions risked overturning life as they knew it. In two feature-length documentaries The BBC’s first 50 years will explore how the challenges and triumphs of today’s BBC have their roots in the corporation’s first half century. Ever since John Reith launched BBC Radio in 1922, the rapid pace of technological change has driven editorial priorities and opened up fresh opportunities – and the changing shape of British society has fuelled the debate over whether the national broadcaster should lead or follow new social attitudes. At the same time, the BBC’s international broadcasting has exported British values, while giving domestic audiences a window on the world. The 2LO London listing for November 14 1922, the first day of broadcasting, can be found here: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/service_rt_2lo/1922-11-14 Our role as an organisation solely serving the public has allowed us to take the risks on which innovation in the market depends – from the birth of TV and radio, to the first steps into the digital world with Ceefax and BBC Micro, to breakthroughs like iPlayer which blazed a trail for the global streamers and created a whole new market for video-on-demand. The man behind many of these very public arguments during the BBC’s first two decades was its chief executive, John Reith; an imposing figure who dominated the Corporation and seldom tolerated dissent or opposition. Reith has often been celebrated as the original mind behind “public broadcasting”, establishing a “Reithian” approach – centring on the idea that this new medium should inform and educate its audiences, as well as entertain them – that set the tone for British radio and television for decades.

Being Human Festival. Credit: University of Bradford Blending virtual and real life with XR Stories All this probably saved the BBC from dwindling into irrelevance. If it had failed to compete with ITV, licence fee funding could not have lasted. Under Greene, the BBC managed to balance the quest for popularity with the making of genuinely innovative and challenging programmes. Yet this came at a cost. By championing an adventurous new approach to programming and bringing previously taboo aspects of life onto British screens, the BBC became a lightning rod for debates about acceptable standards of taste and behaviour.The listings include a number of BBC ‘firsts’, including the first weather forecast, the first sports commentary, the first live concert, the first outside broadcast and the first children’s radio programming. They also reveal the first election coverage which remarkably fell on day two of broadcasting, the day the country went to the polls to elect a Conservative government led by Bonar Law.

Marking the centenary, Radio 4’s Past Forward takes a deep dive into the BBC's archive to explore what it can tell us about who we are now. Historian Greg Jenner uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the BBC's vast archive. He finds a piece of audio from that day and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the future. In each episode, Jenner uncovers connections through the people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal much about the people we were and the people we have become. The Battle of Savoy Hill First weather report: The first regular daily weather forecast was broadcast as early as 14th January 1923 on 2ZY from Manchester. Fielden went off to help establish broadcasting in India, then part of the British empire, where he felt similarly frustrated by the bureaucracy and the forces of conformity that dominated the Raj.improving access to BBC archival collections, including using artificial intelligence to transcribe (and make searchable) radio archives with the British Library A photograph of BBC pioneer Hilda Matheson by Howard Coster. National Portrait Gallery, CC BY-NC-ND television comes of age with the Coronation of the current Queen, as the Corporation comes into the age of mass media.