 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "British Broadcasting Company" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Company type | Private company limited by shares |
|---|---|
| Founded | 18 October 1922; 103 years ago (1922-10-18) |
| Defunct | 1 January 1927; 99 years ago (1927-01-01) (4 years, 2 months and 14 days) |
| Fate | Liquidation sale, re-established in 1927 as the non-commercial and crown-charteredBritish Broadcasting Corporation |
| Successor | BBC |
| Headquarters |
TheBritish Broadcasting Company Limited (BBC) was the commercial forerunner of the public British Broadcasting Corporation and formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom. Licensed by the UK'sGeneral Post Office, its original office was located on the second floor of Magnet House, aGEC building in London, and consisted of a room and a small antechamber.
On 14 December 1922,John Reith was hired to become the managing director of the company at that address. The company later moved its offices to the premises of theMarconi Company. The BBC as a commercial broadcasting company did not sell air time but it did carry a number of sponsored programmes paid for by British newspapers. On 31 December 1926, the company was dissolved and its assets were transferred to the non-commercial and crown-charteredBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
In Britain prior to 1922, theGeneral Post Office (GPO) retained exclusive rights given to it by the government to manage and control all means of mass communication with the exception of the printed word. The laws which evolved into the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1947, upon which modern British communication laws were established, concerned:
All these activities require a government licence which was originally granted by the General Post Office.
The invention of the electricaltelegraph came under the control of the Telegraph Act of 1869 which was based upon a law that forbade the encoding of electrical cables with messages without a licence. The messages were viewed as electrical forms of a letter. This invention was followed by thewireless telegraphy which was then placed under theWireless Telegraphy Act 1904.
In the US, the development of the telegraph, wireless telegraph, telephone and wireless telephony proceeded according to the dictates of entrepreneurial commercial interests concerned only with supply and demand for profit. Beginning in August 1920, commercial broadcasting stations programming to the general public had begun broadcasting in the United States, licensed by theDepartment of Commerce (these duties were transferred in 1934 to theFederal Communications Commission) and offering several hours of programming, usually at night. Two of the first stations wereWWJ in Detroit (then known as 8MK)[1] andKDKA inPittsburgh (which has claimed to be the first station specifically licensed for commercial broadcasting; however commercial licences were actually not awarded until September 1921).[2] In France experimental broadcasts started in November 1921.
In the United Kingdom, all broadcasts were licensed by the GPO, who were reluctant to license any fully commercial stations and initially only 'experimental' stations were allowed on air.
Beginning in 1920, a number of licences were issued to British and American subsidiary companies in Britain for the purpose of conducting experimental transmissions under terms of a licence issued by the General Post Office in accordance with theWireless Telegraphy Act 1904.
The managing director of theMarconi Wireless Telegraph Company,Godfrey Isaacs, decided to spearhead radio broadcasting and in January 1920 the firm based inChelmsford, Essex completed installation of along wave transmitter on 2750meters (109kilocycles/second) with a power of 6 kilowatts to conduct experimental broadcasts from theNew Street Works. A license was granted on 23 February for two 30 minute broadcasts per day and on 15 June 1922 there was a famous performance byDame Nellie Melba later followed by other well known artists of the time. The signal was received throughout Europe and as far as Newfoundland, Canada. Further transmissions were also made.
On 23 November 1920, the General Post Office halted all further transmissions due to complaints of alleged interference withmilitary communications. As the number of wireless receiving sets increased during the early 1920s, the General Post Office came under extreme pressure from hobby listeners to allow the experimental wireless broadcasts to resume.
On 14 February 1922, which was two years after ceasing their original transmissions, the Marconi Company was issued a licence for experimental transmissions under the call sign2MT on awavelength of 700 meters. Chief engineerPeter Eckersley, who later pushed for the development of longwave radio,[3] was given charge of providing both the broadcast entertainment and the engineering. The station operated out of a hut in a field atWrittle near Chelmsford.
On 11 May 1922, the Marconi Company was issued another licence for experimental broadcasts from a station identified as2LO which was located atMarconi House inThe Strand, London. The programme consisted of a boxing commentary by W. Southey of the fight betweenKid Lewis andGeorges Carpentier. Further tests were also advertised as demonstrations of "Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony" which were "subject to permission from thePostmaster General". These demonstrations were performed by the "Demonstration Department (of) Marconi's London Wireless Station 2LO".
On 16 May 1922, the Metropolitan Vickers Company Ltd. ("Metrovick") with links to Westinghouse in the USA commenced test broadcasting from its own station inManchester, call sign2ZY.
Pressure was building from manufacturers and enthusiasts for regular scheduled radio broadcasting in Britain but the form in which it would take was highly contended.
In May a committee of representatives was appointed from the "Big Six" companies – theMarconi Company,Metropolitan-Vickers, Radio Communication Company,British Thomson-Houston,General Electric Company andWestern Electric. The Post Office also pressed for the inclusion of a representative from the smaller firms manufacturing radio equipment in the UK – Frank Phillips of Burndept. George Campbell was one of the members on the committee.
In a 2018 peer-reviewed paper entitled "Marconi Proposes: Why it's time to rethink the birth of the BBC"[4] the media historian David Prosser from The University of Bristol used newly discovered material to show that the case for public service broadcasting was made by Godfrey Isaacs (then managing director of the Marconi Company) in the meeting at the General Post Office on 18 May 1922.
According to Prosser "The 39 members of the wireless trade invited to the GPO's headquarters near St Pauls in London, on 18 May 1922 were keenly aware that the future of a new industry rested on their shoulders and that failure might mean, as one participant noted, this 'whole delightful enterprise which fascinates everybody and which promises good business, will end in a fizzle and disappointment'. This meeting is one of the most significant events in the history of British broadcasting and it took place behind closed doors."
A transcript of the meeting was thought to be lost and although its outcome, the creation of the licence fee funded British Broadcasting Company was clear, the deliberations were not known and an inaccurate assumption made that the Post Office had made the proposal.
"It is Godfrey Isaacs, the managing director of Marconi, who emerges from the pages of this transcript as the dominant force in the room. At Isaacs' suggestion, twenty companies indicated at the outset 'a desire to have licences". With broadcasting to be allowed in only eight cities, the challenges were evident during a lengthy discussion regarding mutual interference, transmitter power and how slots might be divided between the different broadcasting companies".
Of the wireless set manufacturers present at the meeting only one, Metropolitan Vickers whose parent was US firmWestinghouse disagreed with the proposal for a single non advertising-based entity, But Isaacs used his company's clout stating he didn't believe a 'transmitting station can be erected to work efficiently' without using Marconi patented technology, which he would only make available to his single scheme.
Prosser concludes, "We can identify the exact moment the BBC was conceived. It was not the Post Office that proposed the BBC, but Godfrey Isaacs of Marconi." Shortly after its creation in November 1922 Isaacs was made a director of the BBC and remained so until his death in 1925.
On 18 October 1922 the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. was incorporated under the Companies Acts 1908 to 1917 with a share capital of £60,006, with cumulative ordinary shares valued at £1 each.[5] No further capital could be issued without the Postmaster-General's consent:
The shares were equally held by six companies:
The shareholders gave the BBC the benefit of their respective patents, and only radio sets supplied by BBC companies were permitted to be licensed to receive programmes. The ability of the shareholders to profit from the BBC was limited as part of the agreement with the Postmaster General:
The holders of the Cumulative Ordinary Shares are entitled to receive out of the profits of the Company a fixed Cumulative Dividend at the rate of 7½% per annum on the capital for the time being paid up thereon but are not entitled to any further or other participation in profits.
| Name | Portfolio | Address |
|---|---|---|
| Jack Pease, 1st Baron Gainford | Chairman of British Broadcasting Company | Headlam Hall,Gainford,Durham |
| Godfrey C. Isaacs | Managing director ofMarconi's Wireless Telegraph Company | Marconi House, Strand, WC2 |
| Archibald McKinstry | Joint managing director ofMetropolitan Vickers Electrical Company | The Red Lodge, Southill Avenue,Harrow on the Hill |
| Major Basil Binyon | Managing director of Radio Communication Company | "Hawtthorndene",Hayes, Kent |
| John Gray | Chairman of theBritish Thomson-Houston Company | "Beaulieu", Park Farm Road,Bromley, Kent |
| Sir William Noble | Director of The General Electric Company | Magnet House, Kingsway, London WC2 |
| Henry Mark Pease | Managing director of Western Electric Company | 18 Kensington Court Mansions, London W8 |
The initial remit of the British Broadcasting Company was to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters many of which had originally been owned by member companies, from which the BBC was to provide a national broadcasting service.
The British Broadcasting Company was formed using a blueprint that theUnited States Navy and theGeneral Electric Company had attempted to institute in the USA. Early inWorld War I, all of the ship-to-shore and transatlantic radio stations controlled by a US subsidiary company of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, Limited in Chelmsford, England, were seized and handed to the US Navy for the duration of the War. After the War, theUS Congress forced the US Navy to divest itself of the stations and they turned to the General Electric Company which in 1919 formed a subsidiary called theRadio Corporation of America. With the US Navy on its board,RCA then absorbed the former Marconi stations. In 1926 RCA created theNational Broadcasting Company, the first network in the United States. Peaking in the 1930s, there were unsuccessful attempts to bring all radio communications in America back under single monopoly control by using the patent laws.
TheWestern Electric Company Ltd. in the UK was originally formed as a subsidiary ofAmerican Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in the USA where it served as its manufacturing subsidiary to equip the AT&TBell Telephone system.
TheBritish Thomson-Houston Company Ltd. was a controlled UK subsidiary of the General Electric Company in the USA. TheHotpoint Electric Appliance Company Ltd. was formed by British Thomson-Houston (BTH) in 1921.
The only other company later added to the original shareholders of the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. was Burndept Limited. It represented the interests of over twenty small electrical manufacturers in the UK.
The British Broadcasting Company did not sell air time for commercials but its licence did allow for it to carry sponsored programming, and eight such sponsored broadcasts were aired in 1925.[6] However, the main source of its income was from the sale of radio receiving sets and transmitters manufactured by its shareholding member companies as well as from a portion of the government (GPO) licence fee that had to be purchased by BBC listeners.
| Services | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management | |||||||||
| Departments | |||||||||
| Nations and regions |
| ||||||||
| Commercial subsidiaries | |||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| Key properties (full list) |
| ||||||||
| Finance | |||||||||
| Projects | |||||||||
| Technical | |||||||||
| Other | |||||||||
| UK stations | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| International stations | |||||||
Defunct stations and services |
| ||||||
| Related topics | |||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
