Historian David Hendy looks back on 100 years of the BBC in a very readable anniversary book ★★★★☆

On the evening of Friday, April 18, 1930, British listeners were able to enjoy a live performance of the opera parsifal by Richard Wagner. At a quarter to nine there was a fifteen minute break for the evening news. When the time came, the BBC announcer coolly stated that there was no news. The time was filled with piano music from the studio.

Historian David Hendy, author of The BBC – A People’s History, a very readable anniversary book on the occasion of 100 years of the British Broadcasting Corporation, checked whether there was really nothing to report. The papers hadn’t appeared on that Good Friday, but that didn’t mean the world had come to a standstill.

Eight firefighters were injured and many families were affected in two major fires in Glasgow. In Bradford, 6,000 textile workers went on strike and in Wales thousands of miners were laid off. In Karachi, police opened fire on protesters against British colonial rule.

Hardly any own reporting

Hendy does not blame the BBC itself for ignoring these nevertheless newsworthy events. Director General John Reith wanted nothing more than to inform listeners first hand about what was going on in the world. However, reporting by their own journalists was not appreciated by the authorities – and the newspapers certainly had no need for competition. In the early years, it was not possible to do more than read a bulletin from the Reuters news agency.

And while the BBC was formally independent as a public service broadcaster, the British government didn’t resist the temptation to step in when things got really tense. For example, Reith gave up when in 1926 millions of workers had stopped working after a call from the trade union federation TUC.

The general strike was triggered by successive pay cuts in the British mines. Reith refused to allow Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, the hawk in the Conservative government, to rage against the strikers and unions in front of the BBC microphone. But under penalty of having the license revoked, Reith had to have Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin declare that TUC was starving the country and called off the strike immediately. Labor leader Ramsay MacDonald wanted airtime for a response but was denied it. Not even the Archbishop of Canterbury was given an opportunity to address the nation with a word of peace.

It would not be the last clash between government and broadcaster. For example, forty years ago Margaret Thatcher prevented the British Bastard Corporation from properly reporting the fighting in the Falkland Islands. Current Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatens the ‘Brexit-Bashing Corporation’ with abolition of the TV license fee, the main source of income.

Commercial Competition

News has therefore always been a thorny issue for the BBC. The program makers therefore focused on the upliftment of the people and civilized entertainment. During the week, usually to the satisfaction of millions of listeners and, from the late 1930s, also of the first television viewers. But on Sunday there was little more to do than a Bible reading and Bach cantatas. From 1933, however, there was an attractive alternative: dance music on Radio Luxembourg, in between the Colgate toothpaste commercials. On Sunday, two in three listeners turned the BBC away from commercial competition from mainland Europe.

Even more painful was the popularity of the Nazis’ English-language broadcasts with swinging music at the start of the war. The BBC eventually hit back with the famous Armed Forces program, a combination of reliable news, entertainment and light music.

During the Second World War, the BBC had its major breakthrough. In 1944 she broadcast programs in 46 languages ​​– to tens of millions of listeners in all corners of the world. Using coded messages, the broadcaster initiated more than a thousand sabotage actions on railway lines on D-Day (June 6, 1944) alone.

Criticism

Hendy devotes a critical chapter to the BBC’s failure to integrate large groups of migrants from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan as a result of decolonization. As late as 1975, the Caribbean community in Manchester refused to participate in a BBC program because it was felt that the broadcaster was completely incapable of doing justice to the lives, problems and aspirations of ethnic minorities. Despite repeated protests over the years, it wasn’t until 1978 for the BBC to end the racist campaign Black and White Minstrel Show†

Hunted by commercial challenger ITV, who scored big with I Love Lucy and Ready Steady Go!a new generation of program makers managed to hook up to the swinging sixties with the satire of That Was The Week That Was and with Top of the Pops† Later there were squatters like Top Gear† eastenders and Strictly Come Dancing† Meanwhile, on BBC 2, without pressure from viewing figures, the upliftment of the people could be given a new look with historical drama series such as The Forsyte Saga and David Attenborough’s wildlife programs. As an export product, this type of high-quality series provides a source of additional income.

David Hendy characterizes the BBC as we know it today as a national institution and at the same time the favorite piss pole for viewers, politicians and competitors. Leading, innovative (with a top website and a great streaming service), but also complacent and not easily inclined to admit mistakes. The debate about the future of the 100-year-old has therefore erupted with great intensity. During the pandemic, the British resorted to Netflix and social media en masse. But that was not – contrary to what many thought – at the expense of the BBC; the percentage of Britons who managed to find the public broadcaster rose from 91 to 94 in 2020. In the rest of the world, the number of viewers and listeners is now approaching 500 million.