From its earliest days, John Reith’s vision of the BBC was of an institution and a technology that would (in the language of the 1920s) ‘make the nation one man’. Interviews in the BBC Oral History Collection provides a fascinating insight into how this vision was achieved, and how BBC staff members addressed the political, personal, and technological challenges that translated great broadcast events into part of the nation’s collective memory.
Broadcasting and the nation
One of the key aims of the early British Broadcasting Company was to find common ground with its ‘listeners-in’, whether through music, talks or other entertainments. The General Strike of 1926 then demonstrated that radio could provide a national focus when other media were absent. From 1927 the newly emboldened British Broadcasting Corporation instituted a series of outside broadcasts that became moments of national interest, entertainment and reflection, ranging from the Boat Race to the Proms, the FA Cup Final to the Christmas Eve Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
They could also become national talking points: perhaps most notoriously Lieutenant-Commander Thomas ‘Tommy’ Woodrooffe’s audibly inebriated commentary of the 1937 Spithead Naval Review, immortalised in his famous cry, ‘The Fleet’s lit up!’. Even the Royal Family noted the power of broadcasting, with George V embracing the annual King’s Christmas Broadcasts to the Empire, inaugurated in1932, and George VI advocating strongly for radio coverage of his Coronation in 1937. During the Second World War, radio programmes like ITMA or The Brains Trust became nationally shared weekly entertainment events in their own right.
Broadcasting the Coronation
In the years immediately after the Second World War, the national rollout of television beyond the immediate London area offered new ways of experiencing significant events, including the wedding procession of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip (though not the ceremony) in 1947 and the 1948 London Olympics - for which every piece of the BBC’s outside broadcasting equipment was requisitioned to the capital. But it was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 that demonstrated conclusively the power of televised events to bind the nation.
The year between the Queen’s accession and Coronation saw the BBC expand its television signal across the nation at an unprecedented rate. Yet the televising of the Coronation was by no means a given thing. Although the BBC’s radio coverage of the Coronation of George VI in 1937 had been much praised, bringing television cameras into Westminster Abbey was seen by many (including Prime Minister Winston Churchill) as a step too far. In the BBC Oral History Collection, key BBC figures Peter Dimmock, the Reverend Francis House and Seymour de Lotbiniere, recall the battle to get the Coronation onto the television screen, and how they persuaded the powers that be that the BBC’s television cameras would be both safe and respectful.
Peter Dimmock had overseen the televising of the 1948 London Olympics and was now in charge of broadcasting the ceremony from Westminster Abbey. As he remembered, this included much persuasion, as well as some slightly disingenuous technical demonstrations, before the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, finally conceded. Once permission was given, however, Dimmock, with the Earl Marshal’s assistance, set about choreographing the Coronation for the television age.
The BBC’s Head of Religious Broadcasting in 1953 was the Rev. Francis House. His reminiscences take in both the original arguments against televising the ceremony, and the remarkable impact of the broadcast on parts of its audience.
As Head of Radio and Television Outside Broadcasting, Seymour Joly de Lotbiniere (‘Lobby’) was in the position of most responsibility. Now a BBC veteran (appointed in 1935), a pioneer in outside broadcasting and key figure in the development of sports commentary - and at 6’8” taller even than Reith himself - de Lotbiniere felt the anxiety of the day as well as the excitement and was a witness to the huge public anticipation of this unprecedented televisual event.
It is estimated that almost 20 million people, 56 per cent of the British population, watched the Coronation live on television - 8 million in their own homes, 10 million in other people’s homes, and 1.5 million at public screenings - with a further 11.7 million listening on the radio. Subsequent royal events would have bigger audiences (28 million for the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981; 26 million across multiple channels for the wedding of William and Kate in 2011), but none would have the emotional power of that first televised royal event, experienced and enjoyed by audiences across the nation.
Broadcasting to the World - And Beyond
If the Coronation showed how a television broadcast could unite a nation, in the following decade two broadcasting events demonstrated how television could unite the world.
Our World, produced by the BBC and broadcast on 25 June 1967, is perhaps largely forgotten today. But it was a world first, using satellite technology to present a continuous two-hour live television event transmitted to twenty-four countries and featuring broadcast contributions from fourteen of them. The UK’s contribution featured the first broadcast of the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, and the programme was watched by over 23 million people in the UK and 170 million worldwide. Meryl O’Keeffe was one of the three presenters for the BBC, introducing and where necessary describing the range of international contributions. It was a night when, in her words – borrowing from Shakespeare – the BBC for the first time ‘put a girdle around the Earth’.
The Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969 was a world first of a different order again. Here, the BBC brought pictures from the moon into the home via an international satellite relay watched by up to 22 million in the UK and an unprecedented 650 million worldwide. James Burke was the presenter of the BBC weekly science programme Tomorrow’s World, and hosted the all-night BBC One coverage of the moon landing – itself a first for British television. In the BBC Oral History Collection he remembers the anticipation, the tension and the excitement of that night when the world held its breath and watched Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the surface of the moon.
The 'Global Jukebox': Live Aid
National broadcast events could also bring different groups of people together for a purpose. For a generation too young to remember the moon landing, Live Aid on 13 July 1985 gave younger BBC audiences a shared experience of their own. A day-long fund-raising music concert, alternating between Wembley Stadium in London and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, and featuring a remarkable line-up of classic acts and 80s bands, Live Aid had itself been originally inspired by Michael Buerk’s award-winning BBC news report from famine-devastated Ethiopia. Johnny Beerling, who had just been appointed Controller of BBC Radio 1, remembers the administrative as well as the technical challenge that Live Aid presented.
The concert, broadcast live over 16 hours on a blistering hot Saturday was watched by a worldwide audience of over 1.5 billion and ultimately raised some £150 million.
Isles of Wonder: the 2012 London Olympics
It is perhaps through sport, however, that the nation comes together most memorably. The 1948 ‘Austerity’ Olympics marked the post-war BBC’s commitment to world sport. The 1966 World Cup – and, thirty years later, Euro96 – saw half the nation tune in to watch England vs Germany. In 2012, however, the BBC went a stage further, bringing every element of the Corporation into its coverage of the third London Olympic Games. 26 million viewers in the UK and 900 million worldwide watched the opening ceremony, ‘Isles of Wonder’ on 27 July; millions tuned in to the British medal-winning triumphs of ‘Super Saturday’, 4 August; and over 90 percent of the British population tuned in at some point during the three weeks of the Games.
Roger Mosey was the BBC’s Director for the 2012 London Olympic Games, and keenly aware both of the precedent of 1948 and the wealth of broadcasting opportunities now available to the BBC. He recognised that the 2012 London Olympics was an opportunity for the Corporation not just to cover sport, but to present the nation with a Cultural Olympiad, to stream Olympic-themed content across every element of BBC output, and to use the procession of the Olympic Flame around the UK as a continuity thread connecting the BBC’s regional and national coverage, culminating in the stunning opening ceremony directed by Danny Boyle – as he recalls, something that was not always plain sailing, either artistically or financially.
Above all, perhaps, as Amanda Farnsworth, in charge of digital delivery for the Olympics, recalls, the 2012 London Olympics showed how the BBC, working in association with other broadcasting platforms, could provide a depth, range and quality of audience entertainment that was truly unprecedented.
The BBC’s coverage of great events has over the past hundred years moved on significantly from Reith’s singular vision of making the nation ‘as one’. But it remains, as in his vision, public service at its best.
Further reading
- J.C.W. Reith, Broadcast Over Britain (1924)
- Joe Moran, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV (2013)