Stanton Jefferies was its first director of music. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its general manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. : 50–97 Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in 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. : 50īut by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests : 110 and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members. By late 1920, 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.

: 47 However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio. It was sponsored by the Daily Mail 's Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The birth of British broadcasting, 1920 to 1922īritain's first live public broadcast was made from the factory of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in Chelmsford in June 1920. Historyįor a chronological guide, see Timeline of the BBC. It is colloquially known as the Beeb or Auntie. Since its formation in 1922, the BBC has played a prominent role in British life and culture. In 2009, the company was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international achievements in business. Some of 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 World News, and from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. 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. 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. 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 the BBC's streaming service, iPlayer. The BBC was established under a royal charter, and operates under an agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,900 are in public-sector broadcasting. 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 British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England.

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