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BBC One

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BBC One
Ownership
OwnerBBC
History
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BBC One (or BBC1 as it was formerly styled) is the oldest television station in the world. It is the primary channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and first broadcast as the 'BBC Television Service' on November 2, 1936, although the BBC had been broadcasting experimental and test transmissions in a variety of formats since 1929. The station held a complete monopoly on television broadcasting in the UK until ITV was launched in 1955.

History

The transmission mast above the BBC wing of Alexandra Palace, home of BBC One from 1936 until the early 1950s, photographed in 2001.

Baird Television Ltd. made Britain's first television broadcast on September 30, 1929 from its studio in Long Acre, London via the BBC's London transmitter, using the electromechanical system pioneered by John Logie Baird. This system used a vertically-scanned image of 30 lines — just enough resolution for a close-up of one person, and with a bandwidth low enough to use existing radio transmitters. Simultaneous transmission of sound and picture was achieved on March 30, 1930, by using the BBC's new twin transmitter at Brookmans Park. By late 1930, thirty minutes of morning programmes were broadcast Monday to Friday, and thirty minutes of evening programmes were broadcast at midnight on Tuesdays and Fridays after BBC radio went off the air. Baird broadcasts via the BBC continued until June 1932.

The BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of Broadcasting House, London on August 22, 1932. The studio moved to expanded quarters at 16 Portland Place, London, in February 1934, and continued broadcasting the 30-line images, carried by telephone line to the medium wave transmitter at Brookmans Park, until September 11, 1935, by which time advances in all-electronic television systems made the electromechanical broadcasts obsolete.

After a series of test transmissions and special broadcasts that began in August, regular BBC television broadcasts officially resumed on November 2, 1936, from a converted wing of Alexandra Palace in London, housing two studios, various scenery stores, make-up areas, dressing rooms, offices, and even the transmitter itself, now broadcasting on the VHF band. BBC television initially used two systems, on alternate weeks: the 240-line Baird system and the 405-line Marconi-EMI system, each making the BBC the world's first regular high-definition television service. The two systems were to run on a trial basis for six months. However, the Baird system, which used a mechanical camera for filmed programming and Farnsworth image dissector cameras for live programming, proved too cumbersome and visually inferior, and was dropped in February 1937.

Initially, the station's range was officially only within a twenty-five mile radius of the Alexandra Palace transmitter—in practice, however, transmissions could be picked up a good deal further away, and on one occasion in 1938 were picked up by engineers at RCA in New York, who were experimenting with a British television set. They filmed the static-ridden output they saw on their screen, and this poor-quality, mute film footage is the only surviving record of 1930s British television filmed directly from the screen. However, some images of programmes do survive in newsreels, which also contain some footage shot in studios while programmes were being made, giving a feel for what was being done, albeit without directly replicating what was being shown on screen.

On September 1, 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany, the station was unceremoniously taken off air with only two hours' warning at 12:35pm, after the end of the broadcast of the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey's Gala Première, various sound and vision test signals, and announcements by presenter Fay Cavendish. It was feared that the VHF transmissions would act as a beacon to enemy aircraft homing in on London. Also, many of the television service's technical staff and engineers would be needed for the war effort, in particular on the RADAR programme. According to figures from England's Radio Manufacturers Association, 18,999 television sets had been manufactured from 1936 to September 1939, when production was halted by the war.

BBC television returned on June 7, 1946 at 3pm. Jasmine Bligh, one of the original announcers, made the first announcement saying, "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?” The Mickey Mouse cartoon of 1939 was repeated twenty minutes later.

An Emitron camera, of the type that would have been used to make the earliest 405-line programmes broadcast on the channel. This particular example is a dummy constructed for the 1986 BBC drama Fools on the Hill, which depicted the early days of the station.

Postwar broadcast coverage extended to Birmingham in 1948 with the opening of the Sutton Coldfield television transmitter, and by the early 1950s the entire country was covered.

Alexandra Palace was the home base of the channel until the early 1950s when the majority of production moved to the Lime Grove Studios, and then in 1960 the headquarters moved to the purpose-built BBC Television Centre at White City, also in London, where the channel is based to this day.

The station was renamed BBC1 when BBC2 was launched in April 1964. On November 15, 1969, simultaneous with ITV and two years after BBC2, the channel began 625-line PAL colour programming. Stereo transmissions began in 1988, and wide-screen programming was introduced on digital platforms in 1998. However, many of these developments took some years to become available on all transmitters.

For the first half-century of its existence, with the exception of films and imported programmes from countries such as the United States and Australia, almost all the channel's output was produced by the BBC's in-house production departments. This changed following the 1990 Broadcasting Act, which required that 25% of the BBC's television output be out-sourced to independent production companies. As of 2004 many popular BBC One shows are made for the channel by independents, but the in-house production departments continue to contribute heavily to the schedule.

Programming

BBC One is more mainstream than its sister station BBC Two and generally gets higher ratings, competing with ITV1 as the most-viewed terrestrial channel in the UK. The BBC's sport and news programmes have their homes here, as does CBBC (the output aimed at younger viewers), mainstream drama and comedy programming, film premieres and documentaries. Regional news programmes generally follow the main news, in particular the Six O'Clock News is followed at 6:30 by half-hour regional news shows. Shows found to have been popular on other BBC channels tend to be moved to primetime slots on BBC One. Notable examples include Match of the Day, Have I Got News For You, and The Kumars at No. 42. Occasionally programmes may also move the other way if they decline in popularity or if the audience is judged to have changed; for example, Top of the Pops switched channels in 2005 after 41 years on BBC One.

Some popular programmes:

For a fuller list of programmes screened on all BBC television channels, see List of BBC television programming.

On-screen identity

File:BBC-one-1985.jpg
Computer Originated World (COW), BBC1's primary ident from 1985 to 1991.

BBC One's identity has been symbolised by a globe for most of its existence. In the early 1960s a map of the UK was shown between programmes, but in 1963 the globe first appeared, changing in style and appearance over the next 39 years.

  • From 15 November 1969 it became a 'mirror-globe' in several colours and sizes (a globe in front of a curved mirror which reflected a distorted view of the reverse).
  • On 18 February 1985 the COW (Computer Originated World) debuted. This was a computer-animated globe with the land coloured gold and the sea a transparent blue, giving the impression of a glass globe.
  • On 16 February 1991, on the same day that BBC2 rebranded, an ethereal crystal-ball-type globe appeared, which was played out on air from laserdisc.
  • On 4 October 1997, the revolving aspect disappeared as the globe became a red, orange and yellow globe-patterned hot-air balloon flying around various places in the UK. This was the first BBC1 identity to appear in multiple versions; the balloon was seen floating over numerous British landscapes, and in later variations, superimposed on more distant locations including Sydney (during the 2000 Summer Olympics) and even prehistoric Earth (when Walking with Dinosaurs was broadcast). See BBC balloon.
  • On 29 March 2002, the globe finally disappeared from screens to be replaced by the current ident sequences, consisting of people dressed in red and dancing in various styles (see BBC 'Rhythm & Movement' idents).

Instead of the globe, a clock was sometimes displayed (usually before the news). This disappeared along with the balloon in 2002. The use of on-screen clocks has been largely discontinued in recent years as the delays introduced by the various forms of modern TV transmission (e.g. digital encoding and decoding, transmission delays in sending a signal to a geosynchronous satellite and back to the viewer, etc.) mean that there can be several seconds' variation between analogue terrestrial, digital terrestrial, and digital satellite reception. For schools programmes a countdown clock with two-minute countdown was shown with music, until 1983 when schools programmes moved to BBC Two. Various special idents have been used over the years at Christmas, with a new one each year (except 2003, when 2002's idents were reused).

Channel Controllers

Of the Controllers, only Grade and Fincham had never previously worked for the BBC prior to taking the position.

See also

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