Season 2 Episode 4 (aka Episode 31 in total) flashes us back to Arthur Burrows' pre-BBC days, and brings us to December 17th-20th 1922, when 4/5 of the BBC workforce (ie. 4 people of the 5) tour central London searching for a building.
They can use Magnet House for now, on loan from General Electric, but after that, where? After deciding against a gold-flatting mill (now a Gym Box), they discover a nice little premises on Savoy Hill.
But before that, Arthur Burrows shows John Reith the ropes, via a chart, of everything this new BBC will need, from engineers to commissionaires a lady's assistant. Reith is still baffled.
But before THAT - several years before that - Burrows was the lone voice trying to convince the Marconi Company that broadcasting was a Good Thing. The Marconi bosses didn't agree. Our special guest knows all about this: Professor Gabriele Balbi, Associate Professor of Media Studies at USI in Switzerland, has written a paper called 'Wireless’ Critical Flaw: The Marconi Company, Corporation Mentalities and the Broadcasting Option'. He fills in Burrows' back-story, explains how several voices can be heard within a company's culture, and is a lone voice in academia too, suggesting that the Marconi Company still didn't get behind broadcasting even when the Melba concerts showed it was possible. Even then, he argues, the transmissions were just to show home-users that wireless communication was easy.
So perhaps when Burrows was explaining to Reith everything about broadcasting, he was STILL fighting the corner for his vision of what radio was, and could be.
And broadcasting has clearly reached its pinnacle in this podcast, so thank you for supporting it...
Memos included in this episode are BBC copyright content, reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation, all rights reserved. Archive clips are either public domain or someone's domain but the mists of time has hidden from us whose they are. Thank you, all rights holders! And we hope this is ok with you...
Do please rate and review this podcast where you found it... and keep liking/sharing/commenting on what we do online. It all helps others find us.
Next time: The staff grows! We look at Marconi House in late December 1922, as Rex Palmer joins, but experimental licences cause a headache for those hoping for any income from this new 'BBC' experiment.
Subscribe to get this next time.
Closing down now, closing down.
#047 ”Hark, The Engine’s Failing”: The Closedown of 2MT Writtle
#046 Justin Webb on Leonard Crocombe... and January 1923
#045 2ZY Manchester and 5IT Birmingham Calling... with Jude Montague
#044 Hanso Idzerda and The Dutch Concerts - with Gordon Bathgate
#043 The First Outside Broadcast: A Night at the Opera!
#042 Drops Mic, Drops Callsign
#041 The BBC’s First Female Employee: Isobel Shields
#040 New Year 1923, Magnet House: ”Pandemonium Reigned!”
#039 SPECIAL: The Twelve Airplays of Christmas (with Ben Baker)
#038 SPECIAL: What Marconi Thought of Broadcasting... + 1920s ads
#037 SPECIAL: The Prehistory of the BBC (extended cut)
#036 Out with the Old: The First BBC New Year’s Eve
#035 Reith Begins!
#034 Newcastle‘s Christmas Launch: Let It 5NO, Let It 5NO, Let It 5NO!
#033 The First Couple of Marconi House: December 1922
#032 The Licence Fee Problem... of 1922
#030 The First BBC Staff: Reith, Burrows, Lewis, Anderson, White (+ David Hamilton)
#029 The First Listings: from Norman Long to Neville Chamberlain
#028 The First BBC Entertainers... and Lee Mack
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Lore