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...
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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.
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Closing down now, closing down.
#027 Season 2 Trailer (aka Season 1 Recap)
#026 Percy Edgar - BBC and the Midlands from Day 2 to 1948
#025 SPECIAL: Part 2 of 1922‘s Parliamentary Broadcasting Debates
#024 SPECIAL: Part 1 of 1922‘s Parliamentary Broadcasting Debates
#023 Gertrude Donisthorpe: Britain‘s 1st DJ?
#022 SPECIAL: Capt H.J. Round, a speech from Dec 1952
#021 Loose Ends (with Gareth Jones)
#020 The First BBC Christmas: From Carols to Kings
#019 Day 2 of the BBC: Our Friends in the North
#018 The First BBC Broadcast: "Hullo, Hullo!"
#017 The Eve of the BBC: A Partly Political Broadcast
#016 Live at the Apo2LO: Our 1st Broadcast Comedian
#015 John Reith: Mastermind
#014 1922's British Wireless Exhibition: Tomorrow's World
#013 Inform, Educate, Entertain: Have I Got News For You?
#012 The Pre-BBC 6/Music, part 2: 1 BBC
#011 The Pre-BBC 6/Music, part 1: 2 BBCs
#010 2ZY Manchester: Are You Sitting Comfortably? (with Chris Jarvis)
#009 2LO London Calling
#008 2MT Writtle: Radio Active
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