158-524: The BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC 's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, BBC products (including toys, games, merchandise, books, publications, and programme releases on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, DVD, vinyl, audio cassette, audio book CD, and Blu-ray), press cuttings, artefacts and historic equipment. The original contents of
316-740: A bar code system for locating stored items and tracking items that have been lent out. The BBC says that the budget for managing, protecting and digitising the archive accounts for only a small part of its overall budget. The BBC is engaging in an ongoing project to digitise and preserve their entire archived programme material, migrating (transferring) recordings made on older analogue formats such as film, audio tape, videotape, vinyl, wax cylinders etc. on to today's latest electronic formats as digital files, which are compatible with modern computer hardware and software equipment and systems. The BBC Archives are constantly preserving, cataloguing and digitising its physical formats in order to safeguard material that
474-480: A 12-year period, including the fast-paced Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In . With the variable quality of Kinescopes, networks looked towards alternative methods to replace them with a higher degree of quality. Programs originally shot with film cameras (as opposed to kinescopes) were also used in television's early years, although they were generally considered inferior to the big-production live programs because of their lower budgets and loss of immediacy. In 1951,
632-476: A backup reference copy of a program. Another occasional use of telerecording into the late 1980s was by documentary makers working in 16 mm film who wished to include a videotape-sourced excerpt in their work, although such use was again rare. In other territories, film telerecordings stopped being produced after the introduction of videotape. In Czechoslovakia, the first videotape recorders (Machtronics MVR-15) were introduced in 1966 but soon were replaced by
790-722: A censorship apparatus for the inevitability of war. Due to the BBC's advancements in shortwave radio technology, the corporation could broadcast across the world during the Second World War. Within Europe, the BBC European Service would gather intelligence and information regarding the current events of the war in English. Regional BBC workers, based on their regional geo-political climate, would then further censor
948-482: A characteristic white glow around black objects (and a corresponding black glow around white objects), which was a defect of the pick-up. Later vidicon and plumbicon video camera tubes produced much cleaner, more accurate pictures. In 1951, singer Bing Crosby ’s company Bing Crosby Enterprises made the first experimental magnetic video recordings ; however, the poor picture quality and very high tape speed meant it would be impractical to use. In 1956, Ampex introduced
1106-472: A handful of episodes , such as with the early television work of comedian Ernie Kovacs , and the original version of Jeopardy! hosted by Art Fleming . Another purpose of Kinescopes involved satisfying show sponsors. Kinescopes sometimes would be sent to the advertising agency for the sponsor of a show so that the ad agency could determine whether or not the sponsor's ads appeared properly. Due to this practice, some kinescopes have actually been discovered in
1264-464: A high-tech name (and avoiding the word kinescope) to distinguish the process from conventional film photography. Nonetheless, the advances in picture quality were, at the time, a major step ahead. By capturing more than 800 lines of resolution at 25 frame/s, raw tape could be converted to film via kinescope recording with sufficient enhanced resolution to allow big-screen enlargement. The 1960s productions used Marconi image orthicon video cameras, which have
1422-455: A higher quality result. For overseas sales, 16 mm film would be used, as it was cheaper. Although domestic use of telerecording in the UK for repeat broadcasts dropped off sharply after the move to colour in the late 1960s, 16 mm black and white film telerecordings were still being offered for sale by British broadcasters well into the 1970s. Telerecording was still being used internally at
1580-509: A large number of images are of historic events which are often incorporate into the daily news bulletins; as a result, half the photographic library team work specifically with these images. The images themselves are kept as originals in the archive, with digitisation only utilised when a specific image is required for use, when the image is sent in a digital format. Copies of images are also used in case any images are damaged due to vinegar syndrome and other issues. The most requested images from
1738-469: A larger brand: in 2003, BBC Choice was replaced by BBC Three , with programming for younger adults and shocking real-life documentaries, BBC News 24 became the BBC News Channel in 2008, and BBC Radio 7 became BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2011, with new programmes to supplement those broadcast on Radio 4. In 2008, another channel was launched, BBC Alba , a Scottish Gaelic service. During this decade,
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#17327798974241896-559: A news and information service. In 1978, BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one. Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4 ), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services. In
2054-637: A number growing daily. Some of the wax cylinder collection has been donated to the British Library. The Sound Archive is based at the BBC Archive Centre in Perivale, along with the television archive, and was previously based at Windmill Road, Brentford. The BBC Written Archives contain all the internal written documents and communications from the corporation from the launch in 1922 to the present day. Its collections shed light into
2212-484: A number of Nuremberg Rallies , or official state visits (such as Benito Mussolini 's) were shot directly on 35 mm instead and transmitted over the air as a television signal, with only a two minutes' delay from the original event, by means of the so-called Zwischenfilmverfahren (see intermediate film system ) from an early outside broadcast van on the site. According to a 1949 film produced by RCA , silent films had been made of early experimental telecasts during
2370-493: A number of additional channels and radio stations have been launched: Radio 5 was launched in 1990, as a sports and educational station, but was replaced in 1994, with BBC Radio 5 Live to become a live radio station, following the success of the Radio 4 service to cover the 1991 Gulf War . The new station would be a news and sport station. In 1997, BBC News 24 , a rolling news channel, launched on digital television services, and
2528-467: A production of The Scarlet Pimpernel in this way, only for film director Alexander Korda to order the burning of the negative as he owned the film rights to the book, which he felt had been infringed. While there is no written record of any BBC Television production of The Scarlet Pimpernel during 1936–1939, the incident is dramatized in Jack Rosenthal 's 1986 television play The Fools on
2686-744: A proposal to cut 4,000 jobs, and to privatise parts of the BBC, disrupted much of the BBC's regular programming. In 2006, BBC HD launched as an experimental service and became official in December 2007. The channel broadcast HD simulcasts of programmes on BBC One , BBC Two , BBC Three and BBC Four as well as repeats of some older programmes in HD. In 2010, an HD simulcast of BBC One launched: BBC One HD . The channel uses HD versions of BBC One's schedule and uses upscaled versions of programmes not currently produced in HD. The BBC HD channel closed in March 2013 and
2844-709: A record of the programmes in the archives. Internal databases include Infax and Fabric , and publicly accessible databases include BBC Genome and BBC Programmes . BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC ) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London , England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company , it evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees,
3002-420: A second time until recording methods improved. Eventually, telerecordings would be used to preserve a program for repeat showings. In the UK, telerecordings continued to be made after the introduction of commercial broadcast videotape in 1958 as they possessed several distinct advantages. Firstly, they were easier to transport and more durable than videotape. Secondly, they could be used in any country regardless of
3160-555: A series of strikes; however, the BBC stated that the cuts were essential to move the organisation forward and concentrate on increasing the quality of programming. On 20 October 2010, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that the television licence fee would be frozen at its current level until the end of the current charter in 2016. The same announcement revealed that the BBC would take on
3318-430: A television broadcast. A telecine is the inverse device, used to show film directly on television. The term originally referred to the cathode-ray tube (CRT) used in television receivers , as named by inventor Vladimir K. Zworykin in 1929. Hence, the recordings were known in full as kinescope films or kinescope recordings . RCA was granted a trademark for the term (for its CRT) in 1932; it voluntarily released
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#17327798974243476-462: A time convenient in the different time zones. Prior to this, the broadcast of recordings was seen as being false to the listener and was avoided. Any recordings made were frequently disposed of and it was the efforts of Marie Slocombe , who founded the Sound Archive in 1937 when she retained recordings of prominent figures in the country, that the archive became into being officially when she
3634-706: A warehouse in Los Angeles. Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions , the producers of such TV game shows as What's My Line? , had a significant portion of their output recorded on both videotape and kinescopes. These programs are rebroadcast on the American cable TV's Game Show Network . All of the NBC Symphony Orchestra telecasts with Arturo Toscanini , from 1948 to 1952, were preserved on kinescopes and later released on VHS and LaserDisc by RCA and on DVD by Testament . The original audio from
3792-464: Is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer , The Lady from the Sea and the opening two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment , although in varying degrees of quality. A complete 7-hour set of telerecordings of Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation also exists. In the era before satellite communications, kinescopes were used to distribute live events such as a royal wedding as quickly as possible to other countries of
3950-399: Is a recording of a television program on motion picture film directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor . The process was pioneered during the 1940s for the preservation, re-broadcasting, and sale of television programs before the introduction of quadruplex videotape , which from 1956 eventually superseded the use of kinescopes for all of these purposes. Kinescopes were
4108-518: Is digitised into the BBC Digital Archives. Much of the audio-visual material was originally recorded on formats which are now obsolete and incompatible with modern broadcast equipment due to the fact that the machines used to reproduce many formats are no longer being manufactured. Additionally, some film and audio formats are slowly disintegrating, and digitisation also serves as a digital preservation programme. The BBC Archive website
4266-521: Is listed on the National Archives of Australia website as a kinescope, while surviving episodes of the 1978 drama series The Truckies also exist as kinescopes, indicating that the technology was still being used by the ABC at that point. Until the early 1960s, much of the BBC's output, and British television in general, was broadcast live, and entire drama productions were performed live for
4424-500: Is obviously of paramount importance." Reith succeeded in building a high wall against an American-style free-for-all in radio in which the goal was to attract the largest audiences and thereby secure the greatest advertising revenue. There was no paid advertising on the BBC; all the revenue came from a tax on receiving sets. Highbrow audiences, however, greatly enjoyed it. At a time when American, Australian and Canadian stations were drawing huge audiences cheering for their local teams with
4582-606: Is physically deteriorating for the future. Their aim is to eventually create a complete digital archive where they no longer have to use now obsolete media formats and their respective equipment. The BBC can instead then continue to preserve original master material in their secure vaults. The BBC Archives have contingencies in place when digitising material so that digitised copies are not accidentally overwritten, encrypted, deleted, incorrectly catalogued, incorrectly labelled, and no more than one copy of each (other than various back up spare copies and other copies at various different sites)
4740-538: Is responsible for operational management and delivery of services within a framework set by the board, and is chaired by the director-general , currently Tim Davie , who is chief executive and (from 1994) editor-in-chief. The corporation has the following in-house divisions covering the BBC's output and operations: Kinescope Kinescope / ˈ k ɪ n ɪ s k oʊ p / , shortened to kine / ˈ k ɪ n iː / , also known as telerecording in Britain,
4898-642: The Archbishops of Canterbury and York came to St Paul's to broadcast to the UK and the world on the National Day of Prayer. BBC employees during the war included George Orwell who spent two years with the broadcaster. During his role as prime minister during the war, Winston Churchill delivered 33 major wartime speeches by radio, all of which were carried by the BBC within the UK. On 18 June 1940, French general Charles de Gaulle , in exile in London as
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5056-521: The BBC in the 1980s too, to preserve copies for posterity of programs that were not necessarily of the highest importance, but which nonetheless their producers wanted to be preserved. If there were no videotape machines available on a given day, then a telerecording would be made. There is evidence to suggest that the children's magazine program Blue Peter was occasionally telerecorded as late as 1985. After this point, however, cheap domestic videotape formats such as VHS could more easily be used to keep
5214-579: The BBC News ' archive and programmes made by the BBC Natural History Unit for creative use by the public. While artists and teachers were encouraged to use the content to create works of their own, the terms of the licence were restrictive compared to copyleft licences. Use of Creative Archive content for commercial, "endorsement, campaigning, defamatory or derogatory purposes" was forbidden, any derivative works were to be released under
5372-598: The BBC Television Service ) started from Alexandra Palace in November 1936, alternating between an improved Baird mechanical 240-line system and the all-electronic 405-line Marconi-EMI system which had been developed by an EMI research team led by Sir Isaac Shoenberg . The superiority of the electronic system saw the mechanical system dropped early the following year, with the Marconi-EMI system
5530-690: The MLB Network shortly afterwards. Early Australian television drama series were recorded as kinescopes, such as Autumn Affair and Emergency , along with variety series like The Lorrae Desmond Show . Kinescopes continued to be made after videotape was introduced to Australia; most existing episodes of the 1965–1967 children's series Magic Circle Club are kinescopes (per listings for episodes on National Film and Sound Archive website) Telerecordings form an important part of British television heritage, preserving what would otherwise have been lost. Nearly every pre-1960s British television program in
5688-958: The MediaCityUK development in Salford , with BBC Three moving online only in 2016, the sharing of more programmes between stations and channels, sharing of radio news bulletins, more repeats in schedules, including the whole of BBC Two daytime and for some original programming to be reduced. BBC HD was closed on 26 March 2013, and replaced with an HD simulcast of BBC Two; however, flagship programmes, other channels and full funding for CBBC and CBeebies would be retained. Numerous BBC facilities have been sold off, including New Broadcasting House on Wilmslow Road in Manchester. Many major departments have been relocated to Broadcasting House in central London and MediaCityUK in Salford, particularly since
5846-522: The Pacific Time Zone . In September 1956, NBC began making color hot kines of some of its color programs using a lenticular film process which, unlike color negative film, could be processed rapidly using standard black-and-white methods. They were called hot kines because the film reels being delivered from the lab were still warm from the developing process. Even after the introduction of quadruplex videotape machines in 1956 removed
6004-453: The 1930s. The films were produced by aiming a camera at television monitors – at a speed of eight frames per second, resulting in somewhat jerky reproductions of the images. By the mid-1940s, RCA and NBC were refining the filming process and including sound; the images were less jerky but still somewhat fuzzy. By early 1946, television cameras were being attached to American guided missiles to aid in their remote steering. Films were made of
6162-523: The 2025–26 season of the Women's Super League campaign. The BBC is a statutory corporation , independent from direct government intervention, with its activities being overseen from April 2017 by the BBC Board and regulated by Ofcom . The chairman is Samir Shah. The BBC is a state owned public broadcasting company and operates under a royal charter . The charter is the constitutional basis for
6320-424: The 30 frame/s image to 24 frame/s, the standard sound speed of film cameras and do so in a way so that the image is clear enough to then re-broadcast by means of a film chain back to 30 frame/s. In kinescoping an NTSC signal, 525 lines are broadcast in one frame. A 35 mm or 16 mm camera exposes one frame of film for every one frame of television (525 lines), and moving a new frame of film into place during
6478-550: The Ampex 2" Quadruplex in 1967. Most of the programs, like TV dramas, were recorded on video, but only a few programs continued to be telerecorded onto 16 mm film. The last known telerecording was produced in 1971 and soon after, all programs were recorded on video only. Kinescopes were intended to be used for immediate rebroadcast, or for an occasional repeat of a program; thus, only a small fraction of kinescope recordings remain today. Many television shows are represented by only
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6636-798: The Archive include Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice , Michael Parkinson interviewing Muhammad Ali , Martin Bashir interviewing Diana, Princess of Wales and a picture of Delia Derbyshire at work in the Radiophonic workshop at the BBC. At the turn of the millennium, the BBC launched the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt , a public appeal to recover pre-1980s lost BBC radio and television productions. Original material of many programmes
6794-640: The BBC One Noddy Globe and clock, a BBC-Marconi Type A microphone, an early crystal radio made by the British Broadcasting Company , a Marconi/EMI camera used in the early BBC Television experiments, a BBC Micro computer and a selection of items used to create Foley effects on soundtracks. In addition to all the broadcast technology, art is also kept, namely the portraits of all the BBC Director Generals , as well as props including an original TARDIS from Doctor Who and
6952-649: The BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, Berkshire , near Reading . The centre houses the archive on four and a half miles of shelving along with reading rooms. The centre is different from the other BBC Archives in that the centre opens for writers and academic researchers in higher education. The BBC Photographic Library is responsible for approximately 7 million images, dating back to 1922, created for publicity purposes and subsequently kept for future use. In addition to programme promotion,
7110-467: The BBC announced a BBC News savings target of £80 million per year by 2022, involving about 520 staff reductions. The BBC's director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth said there would be further moves toward digital broadcasting, in part to attract back a youth audience, and more pooling of reporters to stop separate teams covering the same news. In 2020, the BBC reported a £119 million deficit because of delays to cost reduction plans, and
7268-542: The BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,200 are in public-sector broadcasting. The BBC was established under a royal charter , and operates under an agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport . Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use
7426-515: The BBC has played a prominent role in British life and culture. It is sometimes informally referred to as the Beeb or Auntie . In 1923 it launched Radio Times (subtitled "The official organ of the BBC"), the first broadcast listings magazine; the 1988 Christmas edition sold 11 million copies, the biggest-selling edition of any British magazine in history. Britain's first live public broadcast
7584-585: The BBC is subject to an additional 'Agreement' between it and the Culture Secretary , and that its operating licence is to be set by Ofcom, an external regulatory body . It used to be that the Home Secretary be departmental to both Agreement as well as Licence, and regulatory duties fall to the BBC Trust , but the 2017 charter changed those 2007 arrangements. The charter, too, outlines
7742-771: The BBC released minutes of the board meeting which led to Greg Dyke's resignation. Unlike the other departments of the BBC, the BBC World Service was funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office . The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, more commonly known as the Foreign Office or the FCO, is the British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom abroad. A strike in 2005 by more than 11,000 BBC workers, over
7900-440: The BBC suddenly became the primary source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position. On the one hand Reith was acutely aware that the government might exercise its right to commandeer the BBC at any time as a mouthpiece of the government if the BBC were to step out of line, but on the other he was anxious to maintain public trust by appearing to be acting independently. The government
8058-466: The BBC undertook color restoration work on the existing 16 mm monochrome telerecording of Room at the Bottom , a 1969 episode of the sitcom Dad's Army . Although this episode was originally produced and broadcast in color, the black and white film was the only surviving copy of the episode following the wiping of the original videotape. However, the telerecording process left color information in
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#17327798974248216-480: The BBC was granted sufficient leeway to pursue the government's objectives largely in a manner of its own choosing. Supporters of the strike nicknamed the BBC the BFC for British Falsehood Company. Reith personally announced the end of the strike which he marked by reciting from Blake's " Jerusalem " signifying that England had been saved. While the BBC tends to characterise its coverage of the general strike by emphasising
8374-536: The BBC", was priced at tuppence (two pence ) on newsstands, and quickly sold out its run of a quarter of a million copies. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee. By now, the BBC, under Reith's leadership, had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified (monopoly) broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit
8532-464: The BBC's airwaves. In 1937, a MI5 security officer was given a permanent office within the organisation. This officer would examine the files of potential political subversives and mark the files of those deemed a security risk to the organisation, blacklisting them. This was often done on spurious grounds; even so, the practice would continue and expand during the years of the Cold War. There
8690-686: The BBC's archive collections and offers guidance around on how items from the collections can be reused online. From 1963 to 2010, the majority of television material of nationally networked programmes in the BBC Archive were housed at the archive centre in Windmill Road, Brentford , in west London . Television programmes were also stored by the Open University in Milton Keynes, and by BBC nations and regional libraries around
8848-540: The BBC's censorship office, which surveilled and edited American coverage of British affairs. By 1940, across all BBC broadcasts, music by composers from enemy nations was censored. In total, 99 German, 38 Austrian and 38 Italian composers were censored. The BBC argued that like the Italian or German languages, listeners would be irritated by the inclusion of enemy composers. Any potential broadcasters said to have pacifist, communist or fascist ideologies were not allowed on
9006-516: The BBC's revenue comes from its commercial subsidiary BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide ), which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and also distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC News , and from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. In 2009, the company was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international achievements in business. Since its formation in 1922,
9164-707: The BBC's streaming service, iPlayer . The fee is set by the British Government , agreed by Parliament , and is used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic and Persian . Some of
9322-522: The BBC, and sets out the BBC's Object, Mission and Public Purposes. It emphasises public service , (limited) editorial independence , prohibits advertising on domestic services and proclaims the BBC is to "seek to avoid adverse impacts on competition which are not necessary for the effective fulfilment of the Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes". The charter also sets out that
9480-586: The British government's asylum policy on social media. Lineker was suspended from his position on Match of the Day before being re-instated after receiving overwhelming support from his colleagues. The scandal was made worse due to the connections between BBC's chairman, Richard Sharp, and the Conservative Party. In April 2023, Richard Sharp resigned as chairman after a report found he did not disclose potential perceived conflicts of interest in his role in
9638-506: The CBBC Channel and CBeebies Channel. In addition to the television channels, new digital radio stations were created: 1Xtra , 6 Music and Radio 4 Extra . BBC 1Xtra was a sister station to Radio 1 and specialised in modern black music, BBC 6 Music specialised in alternative music genres and BBC7 specialised in archive, speech and children's programming. The following few years resulted in repositioning of some channels to conform to
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#17327798974249796-502: The Commonwealth that had started a television service. A Royal Air Force aircraft would fly the telerecording from the UK to Canada, where it would be broadcast over the whole North American network. Prior to the introduction of videotape in 1956, kinescopes were the only way to record television broadcasts, or to distribute network television programs that were broadcast live from originating cities to stations not connected to
9954-701: The Corporation's governance and regulatory arrangements as a statutory corporation, including the role and composition of the BBC Board. The current Charter began on 1 January 2017 and ends on 31 December 2027; the Agreement being coterminous. The BBC Board was formed in April 2017. It replaced the previous governing body, the BBC Trust, which itself had replaced the board of governors in 2007. The board sets
10112-660: The GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee. The committee recommended a short-term reorganisation of licence fees with improved enforcement in order to address the BBC's immediate financial distress, and an increased share of the licence revenue split between it and the GPO. This was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee to fund broadcasts. The BBC's broadcasting monopoly
10270-548: The Hill . Some of the surviving live transmissions of the Nazi German television station Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow , dating as far back as the 1930s, were recorded by pointing a 35 mm camera to a receiver's screen, although most surviving Nazi live television programs such as the 1936 Summer Olympics (not to be confused with the cinematic footage made during the same event by Leni Riefenstahl for her film Olympia ),
10428-567: The Pacific Time Zone. But as an article in American Cinematographer explained, In the beginning there was a very definite reason for the decision of Desilu Productions to put I Love Lucy on film instead of doing it live and having kinescope recordings carry it to affiliate outlets of the network. The company was not satisfied with the quality of kinescopes. It saw that film, produced especially for television,
10586-422: The Peter Sellers Estate Collection donated numerous recordings featuring Peter Sellers . The BBC together with the British Film Institute , the Open University , Channel 4 and Teachers' TV formed a collaboration, named the Creative Archive Licence Group, to create a copyright licence for the re-release of archived material. The Licence was a trial, launched in 2005, and notable for the re-release of part of
10744-441: The Prime Minister, maintained the censorship of editorial opinions on public policy, but allowed the BBC to address matters of religious, political or industrial controversy. The resulting political "talk series", designed to inform England on political issues, were criticised by members of parliament, including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and Sir Austen Chamberlain . Those who opposed these chats claimed that they silence
10902-430: The UK's first Independent local radio station, LBC came on-air in the London area. As a result of the Pilkington Committee report of 1962, in which the BBC was praised for the quality and range of its output, and ITV was very heavily criticised for not providing enough quality programming, the decision was taken to award the BBC a second television channel, BBC2 , in 1964, renaming the existing service BBC1 . BBC2 used
11060-691: The United States, and by 1955 that number had increased to 2,500 per week for CBS. By 1954 the television industry's film consumption surpassed that of all of the Hollywood studios combined. After the network of coaxial cable and microwave relays carrying programs to the West Coast was completed in September 1951, CBS and NBC instituted a hot kinescope process in 1952, where shows being performed in New York were transmitted west, filmed on two kinescope machines in 35 mm negative and 16 mm reversal film (the latter for backup protection) in Los Angeles, rushed to film processing, and then transmitted from Los Angeles three hours later for broadcast in
11218-443: The United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufacturers, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd , which was formed on 18 October 1922. John Reith , a Scottish Calvinist , was appointed its general manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. L. Stanton Jefferies
11376-629: The air and forced the British government finally to regulate radio services to permit nationally based advertising-financed services. In response, the BBC reorganised and renamed their radio channels. On 30 September 1967, the Light Programme was split into Radio 1 offering continuous "Popular" music and Radio 2 more "Easy Listening". The "Third" programme became Radio 3 offering classical music and cultural programming. The Home Service became Radio 4 offering news, and non-musical content such as quiz shows, readings, dramas and plays. As well as
11534-418: The archive are 16 inches in diameter and require large phonograph units to play, while the players for the wax cylinders and DATs are no longer in production. There are also 700,000 vinyl records, 180,000 78rpm records, 400,000 LP records and 350,000 CDs in the archive. The Radio Digital Archive has been capturing radio programmes as broadcast quality wav files since 2008, with over 1.5 million recordings,
11692-574: The archive in the event of an incident at the centre, so the total loss of the archive is avoided. As of April 2019, the BBC Archives employ around 200 staff, most of whom are based at the Archive Centre in Perivale. The BBC Television Archive contains over 1.5 million tape items as well as over 600,000 cans of film material. The archive itself holds extensive material from approximately the mid-1970s onwards, when important recordings at
11850-411: The archives is in the form of a telerecording, along with the vast majority of existing 1960s output. Videotape was expensive and could be wiped and re-used; film was cheaper, smaller, and in practice more durable. Only a very small proportion of British television from the black-and-white era survives at all. As the BBC has taken stock of the large gaps in its archive and sought to recover as much of
12008-422: The behind the scenes workings of the corporation and also elaborate on the difficulties of getting a television or radio programme to or off the air as the case may be. The archive guidelines state that access to files post-1980 is restricted due to the current nature of the files; the general exception to this rule are documents such as scripts and Programme as Broadcast records. The Written Archives are located at
12166-462: The broadcast of baseball, rugby and hockey, the BBC emphasised service for a national rather than a regional audience. Boat races were well covered along with tennis and horse racing, but the BBC was reluctant to spend its severely limited air time on long football or cricket games, regardless of their popularity. John Reith and the BBC, with support from the Crown , determined the universal needs of
12324-432: The broadcaster were retained for the future. Recordings from before this date are less comprehensively preserved; the process of telerecording was originally invented in 1947 while videotape recording was gradually introduced from the late 1950s onwards, but due to the expense of the tapes, recording was seen for production use only with recordings subsequently being lost . or telerecordings being junked. The exceptions in
12482-631: The challenge of better reflecting and representing a changing UK". Since 2017, the BBC has also funded the Local Democracy Reporting Service , with up to 165 journalists employed by independent news organisations to report on local democracy issues on a pooled basis. In 2016, the BBC Director General Tony Hall announced a savings target of £800 million per year by 2021, which is about 23% of annual licence fee revenue. Having to take on
12640-596: The children's television puppet Gordon the Gopher . The heritage collection itself has no single permanent home, as the majority of objects are on display, either around BBC properties or on loan to museums or other collections; the most significant museum housing the collection is the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford . Over the years, the BBC has used various programme catalogue databases to keep
12798-469: The closure of BBC Television Centre in March 2013. On 16 February 2016, the BBC Three television service was discontinued and replaced by a digital outlet under the same name, targeting its young adult audience with web series and other content. Under the new royal charter instituted in 2017, the corporation must publish an annual report to Ofcom, outlining its plans and public service obligations for
12956-672: The collections are permanently retained, but are in the process of being digitised. Some collections have been uploaded to the BBC Archives section of the BBC Online website for visitors to view. The archive is one of the largest broadcast archives in the world, with over 15 million items. The BBC Archives encompass numerous collections containing materials produced and acquired by the BBC. The earliest material dates back to 1890. The archives contain 15 million items on 60 miles of shelving spread over several sites, and include approximately 1 million hours of playable media. Items are managed using
13114-458: The concept was instead adopted by BBC Radio 4 as a collection of film interviews from various programmes. The BBC Heritage Collection is the newest of the BBC Archives and holds historic broadcast technology, art, props and merchandise. The collection was created out of personal collections and bequeaths by former staff members, as the BBC had no formal policy on the heritage collection until c.2003. The collection includes, amongst other items,
13272-408: The corporation began to sell off a number of its operational divisions to private owners; BBC Broadcast was spun off as a separate company in 2002, and in 2005, it was sold off to Australian -based Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Group Limited and rebranded Red Bee Media . The BBC's IT , telephony and broadcast technology were brought together as BBC Technology Ltd in 2001, and
13430-492: The country. In the late 1990s, and early in the 2000s material from the radio side of the BBC were also stored on the site. The condition of the three Windmill Road buildings deteriorated over the years and suffered occasional flooding incidents, and eventually the archive was relocated to a new centre at Perivale Park, Perivale , three miles north of the old site. The new BBC Archive Centre was opened in Summer 2010 and all material
13588-623: The daily five-minute syndicated series Les Paul & Mary Ford At Home in 1954–55), but with the introduction of a practical videotape recorder only one year away, the Electronicam system never saw widespread use. The DuMont network did not survive into the era of videotape, and in order to gain clearances for its programs, was heavily dependent on kinescopes, which it called Teletranscriptions. Attempts were made for many years to take television images, convert them to film via kinescope, then project them in theatres for paying audiences. In
13746-561: The division was later sold to the German company Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS). SIS was subsequently acquired from Siemens by the French company Atos . Further divestments included BBC Books (sold to Random House in 2006); BBC Outside Broadcasts Ltd (sold in 2008 to Satellite Information Services ); Costumes and Wigs (stock sold in 2008 to Angels Costumes ); and BBC Magazines (sold to Immediate Media Company in 2011). After
13904-465: The early 1970s by which time programs were being videotaped in color. Most, if not all, recordings from the 405-line era have long since been lost as have many from the introduction of 625-line video to the early days of color. Consequently, the majority of British shows that still exist before the introduction of color, and a number thereafter, do so in the form of these telerecordings. A handful of shows, including some episodes of Doctor Who and most of
14062-470: The early years were usually occasions of great importance, such as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II . In addition, numerous programmes at the time were broadcast 'live' and so utilised no recording procedure in the production process. The earliest item in the collection is from 1936. Today, the majority of programmes are kept, including news, entertainment, drama and a selection of other long-running programmes such as quiz shows. The remaining material from
14220-407: The facilitation of a loan to Prime Minister Boris Johnson . Dame Elan Closs Stephens was appointed as acting chairwoman on 27 June 2023, and she would lead the BBC board for a year or until a new permanent chair has been appointed. Samir Shah was subsequently appointed with effect from 4 March 2024. In October 2024 it was announced that the BBC along with Sky Sports signed a deal to broadcast
14378-462: The few surviving DuMont kinescopes, with the UCLA Film and Television Archive having collected over 300 for preservation. In September 2010, a kinescope of game 7 of the 1960 World Series was found in the wine cellar of Bing Crosby. The game was thought lost forever but was preserved due to Crosby's superstition about watching the game live. The film was transferred to DVD and was broadcast on
14536-529: The first commercial Quadruplex videotape recorder, followed in 1958 by a colour model. Offering high quality and instant playback at a much lower cost, Quadruplex tape quickly replaced kinescope as the primary means of recording television broadcasts. In the late 1960s, U.S. television networks continued to make kinescopes of their daytime dramas available, many of which still aired live during that time period, for their smaller network affiliates that did not yet have videotape capability but wished to time-shift
14694-447: The first fully electronic television system in the world to be used in regular broadcasting. The success of broadcasting provoked animosities between the BBC and well-established media such as theatres, concert halls and the recording industry. By 1929, the BBC complained that the agents of many comedians refused to sign contracts for broadcasting, because they feared it harmed the artist "by making his material stale" and that it "reduces
14852-746: The first series of Adam Adamant Lives! , were deliberately telerecorded for ease of editing rather than being videotaped. In September 1947, Eastman Kodak introduced the Eastman Television Recording Camera, in cooperation with DuMont Laboratories and NBC , for recording images from a television screen under the trademark "Kinephoto". NBC, CBS , and DuMont set up their main kinescope recording facilities in New York City, while ABC chose Chicago . By 1951, NBC and CBS were each shipping out some 1,000 16 mm kinescope prints each week to their affiliates across
15010-429: The following year, BBC Choice was launched as the third general entertainment channel from the BBC. The BBC also purchased The Parliamentary Channel, which was renamed BBC Parliament . In 1999, BBC Knowledge launched as a multimedia channel, with services available on the newly launched BBC Text digital teletext service (later rebranded as BBC Red Button), and on BBC Online . The channel had an educational aim, which
15168-578: The form of chroma dots in the frames of the film; using a specially designed computer program, these chroma dots were used to bring out the original color information, which as then applied to the film, allowing the color to be restored to the episode. The restored version of Room at the Bottom was broadcast on 13 December 2008, the first time it had been seen in color since May 1970. NTSC television images are scanned at roughly 60 Hz , with two interlaced fields per frame, displayed at 30 frames per second . A kinescope must be able to convert
15326-458: The forthcoming ending of the remaining £253 million funding towards pensioner licence fees would increase financial pressures. In January 2021, it was reported that former banker Richard Sharp would succeed David Clementi , as chairman, when he stepped down in February. In March 2023, the BBC was at the centre of a political row with football pundit Gary Lineker , after he criticised
15484-506: The four national channels, a series of local BBC radio stations were established in 1967, including Radio London . In 1969, the BBC Enterprises department was formed to exploit BBC brands and programmes for commercial spin-off products. In 1979, it became a wholly owned limited company, BBC Enterprises Ltd. In 1974, the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax , was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into
15642-633: The full cost of running the BBC World Service and the BBC Monitoring service from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and partially finance the Welsh broadcaster S4C . Further cuts were announced on 6 October 2011, so the BBC could reach a total reduction in their budget of 20%, following the licence fee freeze in October 2010, which included cutting staff by 2,000 and sending a further 1,000 to
15800-647: The government. Throughout the 1930s, political broadcasts had been closely monitored by the BBC. In 1935, the BBC censored the broadcasts of Oswald Mosley and Harry Pollitt . Mosley was a leader of the British Union of Fascists , and Pollitt a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain . They had been contracted to provide a series of five broadcasts on their parties' politics. The BBC, in conjunction with The Foreign Office of Britain, first suspended this series and ultimately cancelled it without
15958-405: The higher resolution 625-line standard which had been standardised across Europe. BBC2 was broadcast in colour from 1 July 1967 and was joined by BBC1 and ITV on 15 November 1969. The 405-line VHF transmissions of BBC1 (and ITV) were continued for compatibility with older television receivers until 1985. Starting in 1964, a series of pirate radio stations (starting with Radio Caroline ) came on
16116-525: The kinescopes, however, was replaced with high fidelity sound that had been recorded simultaneously either on transcription discs or magnetic tape . In the mid-1990s, Edie Adams , wife of Ernie Kovacs, claimed that so little value was given to the kinescope recordings of the DuMont Television Network that after the network folded in 1956 its entire archive was dumped into upper New York bay. Today however, efforts are made to preserve
16274-549: The late 1980s, the BBC began a process of divestment by spinning off and selling parts of its organisation. In 1988, it sold off the Hulton Press Library, a photographic archive which had been acquired from the Picture Post magazine by the BBC in 1957. The archive was sold to Brian Deutsch and is now owned by Getty Images . In 1987, the BBC decided to centralize its operations by the management team with
16432-686: The leader of the Free French, made a speech, broadcast by the BBC, urging the French people not to capitulate to the Nazis. In October 1940, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret made their first radio broadcast for the BBC's Children's Hour , addressing other children who had been evacuated from cities. In 1938, John Reith and the Government of the United Kingdom , specifically the Ministry of Information which had been set up for WWII, designed
16590-546: The loss-making consortium, and Reith was keen that the BBC be seen as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 United Kingdom general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production, and with restrictions on news bulletins waived,
16748-489: The material is offered to the British Library Sound Archive . The archive consists of multiple formats including wax cylinders , numerous gramophone records made from both shellac and vinyl, as well as numerous more recordings on tape , CD and on digital audio tape (DAT). The difficulty of these different formats is the availability of the machines required to play them; some of the records in
16906-776: The material their broadcasts would cover. Nothing was to be added outside the preordained news items. For example, the BBC Polish Service was heavily censored due to fears of jeopardising relations with the Soviet Union . Controversial topics, i.e. the contested Polish and Soviet border, the deportation of Polish citizens, the arrests of Polish Home Army members and the Katyn massacre , were not included in Polish broadcasts. American radio broadcasts were broadcast across Europe on BBC channels. This material also passed through
17064-474: The mid-1960s, Producer/entrepreneur H. William "Bill" Sargent, Jr. used conventional analog Image Orthicon video camera tube units, shooting in the B&;W 819-line interlaced 25fps French video standard, using modified high-band quadruplex VTRs to record the signal. The promoters of Electronovision (not to be confused with Electronicam ) gave the impression that this was a new system created from scratch, using
17222-464: The missing material as possible, many recovered programs, have been returned from the 1980s onwards as telerecordings held by foreign broadcasters or private film collectors. Many of these surviving telerecorded programs, such as episodes of Doctor Who , Steptoe and Son and Till Death Us Do Part continue to be transmitted on satellite television stations such as UKTV Gold , and many such programs have been released on VHS and DVD . In 2008,
17380-597: The modest, church-going elderly or a member of the Clergy . Until 1928, entertainers broadcasting on the BBC, both singers and "talkers" were expected to avoid biblical quotations, Clerical impersonations and references, references to drink or Prohibition in the United States , vulgar and doubtful matter and political allusions. The BBC excluded popular foreign music and musicians from its broadcasts, while promoting British alternatives. On 5 March 1928, Stanley Baldwin,
17538-429: The need for hot kines , the television networks continued to use kinescopes in the double system method of videotape editing. It was impossible to slow or freeze frame a videotape at that time, so the unedited tape would be copied to a kinescope, and edited conventionally. The edited kinescope print was then used to conform the videotape master. More than 300 videotaped network series and specials used this method over
17696-466: The network programming. Some of these programs aired up to two weeks after their original dates, particularly in Alaska and Hawaii . Many episodes of programs from the 1960s survive only through kinescoped copies. In Australia, kinescopes were still being made of some evening news programs as late as 1977, if they were recorded at all. A recording of a 1975 episode of Australian series This Day Tonight
17854-493: The network, or to stations that wished to show a program at a time different than the network broadcast. Although the quality was less than desirable, television programs of all types from prestigious dramas to regular news shows were handled in this manner. Even after the introduction of videotape, the BBC and the ITV companies made black and white kinescopes of selected programs for international sales and continued to do so until
18012-413: The new corporation adopted the coat of arms , including the motto "Nation shall speak peace unto Nation". British radio audiences had little choice apart from the upscale programming of the BBC. Reith, an intensely moralistic executive, was in full charge. His goal was to broadcast "All that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement.... The preservation of a high moral tone
18170-477: The next year. In its 2017–18 report, released July 2017, the BBC announced plans to "re-invent" its output to better compete against commercial streaming services such as Netflix . These plans included increasing the diversity of its content on television and radio, a major increase in investments towards digital children's content, and plans to make larger investments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to "rise to
18328-413: The notice of the public. Less radical politicians faced similar censorship. In 1938, Winston Churchill proposed a series of talks regarding British domestic and foreign politics and affairs but was similarly censored. The censorship of political discourse by the BBC was a precursor to the total shutdown of political debate that manifested over the BBC's wartime airwaves. The Foreign Office maintained that
18486-405: The only practical way to preserve live television broadcasts prior to videotape. Typically, the term can refer to the process itself, the equipment used for the procedure (a movie camera mounted in front of a video monitor, and synchronized to the monitor's scanning rate), or a film made using the process. Film recorders are similar, but record source material from a computer system instead of
18644-559: The opinions of those in Parliament who are not nominated by Party Leaders or Party Whips, thus stifling independent, non-official views. In October 1932, the policemen of the Metropolitan Police Federation marched in protest at a proposed pay cut. Fearing dissent within the police force and public support for the movement, the BBC censored its coverage of the events, only broadcasting official statements from
18802-407: The people of Britain and broadcast content according to these perceived standards. Reith effectively censored anything that he felt would be harmful, directly or indirectly. While recounting his time with the BBC in 1935, Raymond Postgate claims that BBC broadcasters were made to submit a draft of their potential broadcast for approval. It was expected that they tailored their content to accommodate
18960-435: The positive impression created by its balanced coverage of the views of government and strikers, Seaton has characterised the episode as the invention of "modern propaganda in its British form". Reith argued that trust gained by 'authentic impartial news' could then be used. Impartial news was not necessarily an end in itself. The BBC did well out of the crisis, which cemented a national audience for its broadcasting, and it
19118-482: The post, with a note saying 'We regret, etc.'" In the 1930s music broadcasts also enjoyed great popularity, for example the friendly and wide-ranging BBC Theatre Organ broadcasts at St George's Hall , London by Reginald Foort , who held the official role of BBC Staff Theatre Organist from 1936 to 1938. Television broadcasting was suspended from 1 September 1939 to 7 June 1946, during the World War II , and it
19276-504: The pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office (GPO), was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in
19434-466: The public should not be aware of their role in the censorship. From 1935 to 1939, the BBC also attempted to unite the British Empire's radio waves, sending staff to Egypt, Palestine , Newfoundland , Jamaica, India, Canada and South Africa. Reith personally visited South Africa, lobbying for state-run radio programmes which was accepted by South African Parliament in 1936. A similar programme
19592-423: The radio and television divisions joining forces together for the first time, the activities of the news and currents departments and coordinated jointly under the new directorate. During the 1990s, this process continued with the separation of certain operational arms of the corporation into autonomous but wholly owned subsidiaries , with the aim of generating additional revenue for programme-making. BBC Enterprises
19750-443: The sales of OBs and costumes, the remainder of BBC Resources was reorganised as BBC Studios and Post Production , which continues today as a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC. The 2004 Hutton Inquiry and the subsequent report raised questions about the BBC's journalistic standards and its impartiality. This led to resignations of senior management members at the time including the then Director General, Greg Dyke . In January 2007,
19908-585: The same licence, and content was only to be used within the UK. The trial ended in 2006 following a review by the BBC Trust and works released under the licence were withdrawn. Voices from the Archives was a former BBC project, launched in partnership with BBC Four that provided free access to audio interviews with various notable people and professions from a variety of political, religious and social backgrounds. The website ceased to be updated in June 2005, and
20066-482: The short duration of a 16 mm film magazine, was that a large opaque frame had to be placed in front of the TV set in order to block out any stray reflections, making it impossible to watch the set normally while filming. It is not known if any recordings made using this equipment still exist. British broadcasters used telerecordings for domestic purposes well into the 1960s, with 35 mm film usually used as it produced
20224-459: The show was kinescoped for later rebroadcast for the West Coast. Per his contract, he would receive one copy of each broadcast, which he kept in his vault, and only released them to the public (on home video) shortly before his death in 1987. Milton Berle sued NBC late in his life, believing the kinescopes of a major portion of his programs were lost. However, the programs were later found in
20382-462: The show was originally broadcast on BBC TV it was 60 minutes in length and also included performances from Winifred Atwell , Evelyn Dove , Cyril Blake and his Calypso Band, Edric Connor and Mable Lee , and was produced by Eric Fawcett. The six-minute footage of Miss Hall is all that survives of the show. From the following month, the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip also survives, as do various early 1950s productions such as It
20540-539: The stars and producers of the Hollywood-based television series I Love Lucy , Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball , decided to film the show directly onto 35 mm film using the three-camera system , instead of broadcasting it live. Normally, a live program originating from Los Angeles would be performed live in the late afternoon for the Eastern Time Zone and seen on a kinescope three hours later in
20698-469: The storage areas of some of these older advertising agencies or in the storage areas of the program sponsors themselves. Certain performers or production companies would require that a kinescope be made of every television program. Such is the case with performers Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle , for whom nearly complete program archives exist. As Jackie Gleason's program was broadcast live in New York,
20856-427: The strategy for the corporation, assesses the performance of the BBC's executive board in delivering the BBC's services, and appoints the director-general. Ofcom is responsible for the regulation of the BBC. The board consists of the following members: The executive committee is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the broadcaster. Consisting of senior managers of the BBC, the committee meets once per month and
21014-462: The studio TV cameras had built-in 35 mm film cameras which shared the same optical path. An Electronicam technician threw switches to mark the film footage electronically, identifying the camera takes called by the director. The corresponding film segments from the various cameras then were combined by a film editor to duplicate the live program. The "Classic 39" syndicated episodes of The Honeymooners were filmed using Electronicam (as well as
21172-593: The television archive is offered to the British Film Institute prior to being disposed of. The BBC Sound Archive contains the archived output from the BBC's radio output. Widespread recordings exist in the archive from the mid-1930s, when recording of programmes and speeches were kept for rebroadcast; the catalyst for this was the launch of the BBC Empire Service in 1932 and the subsequent rebroadcast of speeches from political leaders at
21330-456: The television broadcasting standard, which was not true of videotape. Later, the system could be used to make black-and-white copies of color programs for sale to television stations that were not yet broadcasting in color. The system was largely used for black-and-white reproduction. Although some color telerecordings were made, they were generally in the minority as by the time color programs were widely needed for sale, video standards conversion
21488-560: The television images they transmitted for further evaluation of the target and the missile's performance. The first known surviving example of the telerecording process in Britain is from October 1947, showing the singer Adelaide Hall performing at the RadiOlympia event. Hall sings " Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep) " and " I Can't Give You Anything But Love ", as well as accompanying herself on ukulele and dancing. When
21646-501: The term to the public domain in 1950. The General Electric laboratories in Schenectady, New York experimented with making still and motion picture records of television images in 1931. There is anecdotal evidence that the BBC experimented with filming the output of the television monitor before its television service was suspended in 1939 due to the outbreak of World War II . A BBC executive, Cecil Madden , recalled filming
21804-454: The time equivalent of one field of television (131.25 lines). In the British 405-line television system , the French 819-line television system and the greater European 625-line television system , television ran at 25 frames—or more correctly, 50 fields—per second, so the film camera would also be run at 25 frames per second rather than the cinematic film standard of 24 frames. Therefore, in order to maintain successful kinescope photography,
21962-563: The value of the artist as a visible music-hall performer". On the other hand, the BBC was "keenly interested" in a cooperation with the recording companies who "in recent years ... have not been slow to make records of singers, orchestras, dance bands, etc. who have already proved their power to achieve popularity by wireless." Radio plays were so popular that the BBC had received 6,000 manuscripts by 1929, most of them written for stage and of little value for broadcasting: "Day in and day out, manuscripts come in, and nearly all go out again through
22120-519: The £700 million cost for free TV licences for the over-75 pensioners, and rapid inflation in drama and sport coverage costs, was given as the reason. Duplication of management and content spending would be reduced, and there would be a review of BBC News . In September 2019, the BBC launched the Trusted News Initiative to work with news and social media companies to combat disinformation about national elections. In 2020,
22278-442: Was a widely reported urban myth that, upon resumption of the BBC television service after the war, announcer Leslie Mitchell started by saying, "As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted ..." In fact, the first person to appear when transmission resumed was Jasmine Bligh and the words said were "Good afternoon, everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh ... ?" The European Broadcasting Union
22436-499: Was adopted in Canada. Through collaboration with these state-run broadcasting centres, Reith left a legacy of cultural influence across the empire of Great Britain with his departure from the corporation in 1938. Experimental television broadcasts were started in 1929, using an electromechanical 30-line system developed by John Logie Baird . Limited regular broadcasts using this system began in 1932, and an expanded service (now named
22594-533: Was appointed the Sounds Recording Librarian in 1941. Today, all of the BBC's radio output is recorded for re-use, with approximately 66% of output being preserved in the Archives; programmes involving guests or live performances from artists are kept, whereas programmes in which the DJ plays commercially available music are only sampled and not kept entirely. Prior to any material being disposed of,
22752-519: Was divided on how to handle the BBC, but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PM's own. Although Winston Churchill in particular wanted to commandeer the BBC to use it "to the best possible advantage", Reith wrote that Stanley Baldwin 's government wanted to be able to say "that they did not commandeer [the BBC], but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial". Thus
22910-460: Was easier and higher quality and the price of videotape had become much reduced. Before videotape became the exclusive recording format during the early to mid-1980s, any (color) video recordings used in documentaries or filmed program inserts were usually transferred onto film. In the 1950s a home telerecording kit was introduced in Britain, allowing enthusiasts to make 16 mm film recordings of television programs. The major drawback, apart from
23068-671: Was followed by the Government's acceptance of the recommendation made by the Crawford Committee (1925–26) that the British Broadcasting Company be replaced by a non-commercial, Crown-chartered organisation: the British Broadcasting Corporation. The British Broadcasting Corporation came into existence on 1 January 1927, and Reith – newly knighted – was appointed its first director general. To represent its purpose and (stated) values,
23226-479: Was formed on 12 February 1950, in Torquay with the BBC among the 23 founding broadcasting organisations. Competition to the BBC was introduced in 1955, with the commercial and independently operated television network of Independent Television (ITV) . However, the BBC monopoly on radio services would persist until 8 October 1973 when under the control of the newly renamed Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA),
23384-509: Was its first director of music. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers. To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain". The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate. Set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between
23542-596: Was left to BBC Radio broadcasters such as Reginald Foort to keep the nation's spirits up. The BBC moved most of its radio operations out of London, initially to Bristol , and then to Bedford . Concerts were broadcast from the Bedford Corn Exchange ; the Trinity Chapel in St Paul's Church, Bedford was the studio for the daily service from 1941 to 1945, and, in the darkest days of the war in 1941,
23700-618: Was lost due to the practice of discarding recordings because of the need to reduce costs, copyright issues and for technical reasons. The resolution of this appeal was that over one hundred productions were recovered including The Men from the Ministry , Something To Shout About , Man and Superman , The Doctor's Dilemma , I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again , Hancock's Half Hour , I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue , and The Ronnie Corbett Thing in addition to recording sessions with Elton John , Ringo Starr and Paul Simon . In addition,
23858-543: Was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, as was the prohibition on advertising. To avoid competition with newspapers, Fleet Street persuaded the government to ban news bulletins before 7 pm and the BBC was required to source all news from external wire services. The Radio Times , the world's first and longest-running radio and television listings magazine, was launched by Reith in September 1923. The first edition, subtitled "The official organ of
24016-648: Was made from the factory of Marconi Company in Chelmsford in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mail ' s Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba . The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920,
24174-400: Was modified later on in its life to offer documentaries. In 2002, several television and radio channels were reorganised. BBC Knowledge was replaced by BBC Four and became the BBC's arts and documentaries channel. CBBC , which had been a programming strand as Children's BBC since 1985, was split into CBBC and CBeebies , for younger children, with both new services getting a digital channel:
24332-439: Was relaunched online in 2008 and has provided newly released historical material regularly since then. The BBC works in partnership with the British Film Institute (BFI), The National Archives and other partners in working with and using the materials. In 2012, BBC Archive Development produced a book - primarily aimed as BBC staff - titled 'BBC Archive Collections: What's In The Archive And How To Use Them'. This book describes
24490-461: Was reorganised and relaunched in 1995, as BBC Worldwide Ltd. In 1998, BBC studios, outside broadcasts, post production, design, costumes and wigs were spun off into BBC Resources Ltd. The BBC Research & Development has played a major part in the development of broadcasting and recording techniques. The BBC was also responsible for the development of the NICAM stereo standard. In recent decades,
24648-479: Was replaced by BBC Two HD in the same month. On 18 October 2007, BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced a controversial plan to make major cuts and reduce the size of the BBC as an organisation. The plans included a reduction in posts of 2,500; including 1,800 redundancies, consolidating news operations, reducing programming output by 10% and selling off the flagship Television Centre building in London. These plans were fiercely opposed by unions, who threatened
24806-518: Was successfully moved by March 2011. Material is stored in thirteen vaults, controlled to match the best climate for the material inside them, and named after a different BBC personality depending on the content contained in them. In addition to the vaults, new editing, preservation and workrooms have been added so that the material can easily be transferred between formats as well as viewed, restored and digitised for future posterity. The building has also been fitted with fire suppression systems to protect
24964-492: Was the only means of ensuring top quality pictures on the home receiver as well as ensuring a flawless show. The I Love Lucy decision introduced reruns to most of the American television audience, and set a pattern for the syndication of TV shows after their network runs. The program director of the DuMont Television Network , James L. Caddigan, devised an alternative – the Electronicam . In this, all
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