British Broadcasting Corporation

**British Broadcasting Corporation** is British media company owned by the **Crown**. The company have eight television channels and sixty-nine radio stations.

## History

**BBC**'s radio services began in 1922. The **British Government** licensed **BBC** through its **General Post Office**, which had original control of the airwaves because they had been interpreted under law as an extension of the Post Office services. Today radio broadcasting still makes up a large part of the corporation's output - title of the **BBC**'s listings magazine, **Radio Times**, reflects this.

On 1 January 1927, the **British Broadcasting Company** was succeeded in monopoly control of the airwaves by the **British Broadcasting Corporation**, under the terms of a Royal Charter.

John Reith, who had been the founding managing director of the commercial company, became the first Director General. He expounded firm principles of centralised, all-encompassing radio broadcasting, stressing programming standards and moral tone. These he set out in his autobiography, ***Broadcast Over Britain***, influencing modern ideas of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. To this day, **BBC** aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".

Although no other broadcasting organisation was licensed in the UK until 1973, commercial competition soon opened up from overseas. The English language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earliest commercial radio stations broadcasting to Britain and Ireland. With no possibility of commercial broadcasting available from inside the UK, a former British **Royal Air Force** captain and entrepreneur (and from 1935 Conservative Partymember of parliament) named Leonard F. Plugge set up his own **International Broadcasting Company** in 1931. **IBC** began leasing time on transmitters in continental Europe and then reselling it as sponsored English-language programming aimed at audiences in Britain and Ireland. Because Plugge successfully demonstrated that State monopolies such as that of **BBC** could be broken, other parties became attracted to the idea of creating a new commercial radio station specifically for this purpose. It was an important forerunner of pirate radio and modern commercial radio in the United Kingdom. The onset of World War II silenced all but one of the original **IBC** stations; only Radio Luxembourg continued its nightly transmissions to Britain.

To provide a different service from the domestic audience the Corporation started the BBC Empire Service on short wave in 1932, originally in English but it soon provided programmes in other languages. At the start of the Second World War it was renamed The Overseas Service but is now known as BBC World Service.

Beginning in March 1964, Radio Caroline was the first in what became an eventual fleet of 10 offshore pirate radio stations that began to ring the British coastline, mostly along the South East coast. By 1966 millions were tuning into these commercial operations, and **BBC** was rapidly losing its radio listening audience. This was largely due to the fact that even though they were fully aware of the problem, **BBC** still only played a few hours of Pop music from record a week, as opposed to the pirates who broadcast chart music and new releases all day.

The **British government** reacted by passing the Marine Offences Act, which all but wiped out all of the stations by midnight on 14 August 1967, by banning any British citizen from working for a pirate station. Only Radio Caroline survived, and still continues today (though the last original offshore broadcast was in 1989).

One of the stations called Radio London (Big L) was so successful that **BBC** was told to copy it as best they could. This led to a complete overhaul by Frank Gillard the **BBC**'s Director of Radio of **BBC** output creating the four analogue channels that still form the basis of its broadcasting today. The creator of BBC Radio One told the press that his family had been fans of Radio London.

**BBC** hired many out-of-work broadcasting staff who had come from the former offshore stations. Kenny Everett was asked for input in how to run the new Pop station due to his popularity with both listeners and fellow presenters. Tony Blackburn who presented the very first BBC Radio One morning show had previously presented the same morning show on Radio Caroline and later on Big L. He attempted to duplicate the same sound for BBC Radio One. Among the other DJs hired was the late John Peel who had presented the overnight show on Big L, called **The Perfumed Garden**. Though it only ran for a few months prior to Big L's closure, **The Perfumed Garden** got more fan mail than the rest of the pop DJ's on Radio London put together, so much that staff wondered what to do with it all. The reason it got so much mail was that it played different music, and was the beginning of the "album rock" genre. On Everett's suggestion, Big L's **PAMS** jingles were commissioned to be resung in Dallas, Texas so that Wonderful Radio London became Wonderful Radio One on BBC.

**BBC**'s more popular stations have encountered pressure from the commercial sector. John Myers, who had developed commercial brands such as **Century Radio** and Real Radio, was asked in the first quarter of 2011 to conduct a review into the efficiencies of BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC Radio 6 Music. His role, according to Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of **Radio Centre**, was "to identify both areas of best practice and possible savings."

On 30 September 1967:

* BBC Radio 1 was launched as a pop music station (part-time at first)
* BBC Light Programme (launched 29 July 1945) was renamed BBC Radio 2 and broadcast easy listening, folk, jazz and light entertainment.
* The evening BBC Third Programme (launched 29 September 1946) and daytime **BBC Music Programme** (launched 22 March 1965) were merged under the heading of BBC Radio 3, although the Third Programme kept its separate title until 3 April 1970.
* BBC Home Service (launched 1 September 1939) became BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 5 was launched on 27 August 1990 as a home for sport and educational and children's programming, but was replaced by BBC Radio 5 Live, a dedicated news and sport network, on 28 March 1994.

With the increased rollout of **Digital Audio Broadcasting** (DAB) between 1995 and 2002, **BBC Radio** launched several new digital-only stations BBC 1Xtra, BBC 6 Music and BBC 7 in 2002 on 16 August 11 March and 15 December respectively – the first for "new black British music", the second as a source of performance-based "alternative" music, the latter specialising in archive classic comedy shows, drama and children's programmes. BBC Asian Network joined the national DAB network on 28 October 2002. The stations have since been renamed to include the **BBC Radio** brand, to BBC Radio 1Xtra, BBC Radio 6 Music, and BBC Radio 7. In 2011, BBC Radio 7 was renamed BBC Radio 4 Extra as the service was brought more into line with BBC Radio 4.

## Navigation

* National stations
* Regional stations
* Local stations

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