Editor's Pick

ON 18 OCTOBER 1922, the British Broadcasting Company was established as a private corporation. At the time, the use of radio as mass media, rather than for point-to-point communications, was relatively new. The end of the First World War had eased military restrictions on radio usage, allowing amateurs to set up experimental stations, and, on 2 November 1920, the first commercial radio station began broadcasting in Pittsburgh with the results of the US presidential election.

In Britain, the General Post Office held jurisdiction over all forms of mass communication other than print. By March 1921, it had approved around four thousand licences for radio receivers and over a hundred amateur transmitting licences. In February 1922, the Marconi Company—founded by the pioneer of radio communication, Guglielmo Marconi, who had shifted his operations from Bologna to London in 1896—began broadcasting a weekly fifteen-minute show. The GPO urged Marconi and other manufacturers of radio equipment to cooperate, facilitating the formation of the BBC, which would have a monopoly over broadcasting in Britain. Only domestic manufacturers were allowed to own shares in, and appoint directors of, the company, which was funded by half of the licence fees paid by listeners and a ten-percent royalty on the sale of receivers. The creation of the BBC posed a challenge to the print media, and publishers successfully lobbied the postmaster general to mandate that all news on the station be commissioned from agencies such as Reuters and not be broadcast before 7 pm, in order to protect sales of evening newspapers.

In 1925, parliament set up a committee, under the Conservative peer David Lindsay, to consider the renewal of the BBC’s licence, which was due to expire the following year. On its recommendations, the company was liquidated and replaced by a public authority, the British Broadcasting Corporation, on 1 January 1927.