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YEAR=BOOK 1 93 3 The Programme Year covered by this book is from November I, 1931 to October 31, 1932 THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION BROADCASTING HOUSE LONDON W I www.americanradiohistory.com f Readers unfamiliar with broadcasting will find it easier to understand the articles in this book if they bear in mind the following :- (I) The words "Simultaneous(ly) Broadcast" or "S.B." refer to the linking of two or more transmitters by telephone lines for the purpose of broadcasting the same programme ; e.g. the News Bulletins are S.B. from all B.B.C. Stations. (2) The words "Outside Broadcast" or "O.B." refer to a broadcast outside the B.B.C. studios, not necessarily out -of- doors; e.g. a concert in the Queen's Hall or the commentary on the Derby are equally outside broadcasts. (3) The B.B.C. organisation consists, roughly speaking, of a Head Office and five provincial Regions- Midland Region, North Region, Scottish Region, West Region, and Belfast. The Head Office includes the administration of a sixth Region - the London Region-which supplies the National programme as well as the London Regional programme. The provincial centres supply the Regional programme for their own Regions. The words "Region" or "Regional" refer throughout the book to this system of organisation. PRINTED & MADE IN ENGLAND BY RICHARD CLAY AND SONS LIMITED BUNGAY, SUFFOLK www.americanradiohistory.com CONTENTS TEN YEARS OF BROADCASTING PAGE 9 Ten Years of Technical Progress 41 PAGE PAGE The B.B.C.'s Constitution 51 Rediffusion 6g Advertising on the Wire- Wireless Exchanges 71 less 59 Listeners' Societies 73 Broadcasting and Adver- The Wireless Industry 77 tising 61 Licences in Great Britain 85 The Broadcasting Service World Licences 88 in Wales 65 BROADCASTING HOUSE The Architecture 91 The Organ I07 The Ventilating Plant tot Decoration of the Studios 115 PROGRAMME SECTION Notes of the Year 131 School Broadcasts 185 International Broadcasting 139 The Broadcast Pulpit 187 The Time Signals 143 A Vesper Hymn 194 Voice Records 145 First Morning Service 197 The "Microphone Voice" 147 Future Developments in Auditions 149 the North 199 The London Orchestras 155 Some Midland Outside The Music Library 161 Broadcasts 203 The New B.B.C. Dance The Welsh Programmes 207 Orchestra 165 Broadcasting in Northern Development in Drama 171 Ireland 2 I 1 How the News is Chosen 177 Events of the Year 215 Group Listening 181 SCOTLAND Notes 227 The Scott Centenary 247 Problem of Distribution 231 Scottish Orchestral Music 249 Scottish Regional Station 235 The Scots Vernacular 251 The Early Days 241 Frae a' the Airts 255 A Policy of Centralisation 245 [5] www.americanradiohistory.com PAGE PAGE THE EMPIRE Broadcasting in the Em- Notes 259 pire 291 Empire Broadcasting 263 Programmes for the Em- pire 267 INTERNATIONAL The Empire Station at Notes 299 Daventry 275 The Year at Geneva 305 Receiving the Empire The Madrid Conference 309 Station 285 The Relation of Govern- Recorded Programmes ments to Broadcasting 313 for the Empire 289 Broadcasting in Russia 318 TECHNICAL SECTION Notes 323 The Control Room Am- The New Daventry 331 plifiers 391 Ultra -short Wave Broad- S.B. Developments 401 casting 337 Adjusting Receivers for The Power Rating of Wavelengths 407 Transmitters 347 Reception for Groups and The Tuning Note 353 Schools 415 Short -wave Relays 357 Electrical Interference 421 Acoustics of the Studios 363 The Tramway Problem 429 Microphones 371 Television in 1932 441 The Dramatic Control Panels 385 APPENDIX B.B.C. Addresses 450 List of European Stations 461 Visits to the Studios 451 List of Short -wave B.B.C. Transmitters 451 Stations 466 Weather Forecasts 452 Taking Sets Abroad 468 The Radio Circle 452 Balance Sheet and Ac- S.O.S. Rules 454 counts 469 The Time Signals 455 Buyers' Guide 472 Forthcoming Concerts 456 List of Illustrations 475 The B.B.C. Orchestras 457 Index 477 The B.B.C. Chorus Calendar 480 Some B.B.C. Books 4460 [6] www.americanradiohistory.com THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION Board of Governors The Rt. Hon. J. H. Whitley Chairman The Rt. Hon. Lord Gainford Vice -Chairman Harold G. Brown, Esq. M. J. Rendall, Esq., C.M.G., LL.D. The Viscountess Snowden Director -General Sir J. C. W. Reith Head Office BROADCASTING HOUSE, LONDON, W.' www.americanradiohistory.com Jport aka General THE KING AND QUEEN LEAVING BROADCASTING HOUSE AFTER THEIR VISIT ON 7 JULY 1932 [8] www.americanradiohistory.com TEN YEARS OF BROADCASTING ON July 7th, 1932, the visit of their Majesties the King and Queen to Broadcasting House, the B.B.C.'s new London head- quarters, set the seal on ten years of British broadcasting. On November 14th and the following days the B.B.C. celebrated its actual tenth anniversary with a week of special programmes. The purpose of the present article is to review the B.B.C.'s career as objectively as possible. On May 4th, 1922, the Postmaster -General, Mr. F. G. Kella- way, announced in the House of Commons that it had been decided to authorise regular broadcasting in Great Britain. Long and delicate negotiations were still, however, to take place, and it was not until October 18th that the form of Com- pany was officially agreed by the radio manufacturers and the Post Office. The British Broadcasting Company was registered on December 15th, 1922, but its licence to broadcast was not issued till January 18th, 1923. It was retrospective, however, and gave permission to broadcast as from November 1st, 1922. Broadcasting had actually begun officially in aç r on November 14th from the station 2LO, loaned by the oni Company and operated under their auspices until the end of the year. On the following day, the Company took over the existing stations at Birmingham and Manchester under similar arrangements with the Western Electric Company and the Metropolitan Vickers Company. In the last week of December, with the appointment of a General Manager and other officials, the B.B.C. organisation began to take effect, and the company began its public service career which the Corporation has con- tinued since January 1st, 1927. The essential constituents of a broadcasting system are pro- grammes, transmission (dealt with in the next article) and, thirdly, constitution and management, the last -named being under- stood to cover on the one hand external policy, viz. relations with the public, the professions and industries concerned or affected, the Government, and other broadcasters : and on the other, internal policy, viz. co- ordination of effort, allocation of resources, and planning of development. The term " manage- ment " covers, of course, the control exercised by the Board of Directors or Governors as well as that exercised by the executive A2 [91 www.americanradiohistory.com officials. Before one settles the constitution of any service or business one must have at least a general idea of the purpose that it is meant to fulfil. But in I92I -I922 even a general idea was difficult to formulate. The situation was that broadcasting, hitherto practised for the love of the thing by a few scientific amateurs, had leaped into considerable popularity in the United States, and was spreading to Europe under the impul- sion of some urge that might be either a whim of the moment or the sign of a real social necessity. In America the pace of the movement had been too hot for careful thought and planning.* Although the first important and sensational broadcast had been one of political news, and educational broadcasting of a sort was done here and there as early as I92I, the field was at once captured by the combined forces of handy -fingered Youth and recreation -seeking Labour, for whose demands the radio trade set itself to cater on purely commercial lines. This was not in the least surprising. Most, even among thoughtful men, were satisfied to think of "radio" as a solution of the great problem of how to occupy the leisure of a population that worked for short and intense hours on uninspiring series -production. Moreover, communications not being, in America, a public service, the national authority was not obliged, as in Europe, to take a standpoint in the matter. In Great Britain, on the contrary, the Post Office was in a position to regulate broad- casting from the first, and indeed under the constitutional necessity of doing so. Even thus, the line of least resistance might well have been to allow commercial broadcasting for entertain- ment alone with some form of competition, but it chose other- wise and, looking at the future as well as the present, it adopted unequivocally the principle of putting broadcasting in the hands of a single and undivided organisation with public service as a motive. This decision was of fundamental importance not only for British Broadcasting, but for European practice in general. It marked the intention to make broadcasting, as a public service, subserve a public need. What precisely that need was, * The first true broadcasting station in that country, KDKA, of the Westinghouse Company, opened on November 2nd, 1920; six hundred stations were in existence by the end of I922 and fourteen hundred by the end of 1924.