New research accompanying the centenary of the BBC’s first radio broadcast suggests the North, and Manchester in particular, may have played a far bigger role in the birth of UK radio than previously thought.
Today, November 14, marks the centenary of the broadcast, a news bulletin that included a court report from the Old Bailey, details of London fog disruption, and billiards scores. The BBC is celebrating with the launch of its online BBC Programme Index, a list of the pioneering programmes first broadcast in the early days of BBC radio.
That debut broadcast came from London station 2LO, which was operated by the Marconi company, but new research shows many early BBC moments came from Northern England, and Manchester in particular.
Manchester station 2ZY, operated by Marconi rival Metropolitan-Vickers, aired the first children’s show and introduced the first regular weather forecast.
The BBC’s first five radio stations were 2LO in London and 2ZY in Manchester, both of which launched in 1922, and 5IT from Birmingham, 5NO from Newcastle, 5WA from Cardiff and 5SC from Glasgow, which all launched from 1923 onwards. The Radio Times launched in September 1923, meaning that little has been known about these early pioneers, until now.
Self-confessed radio obsessive Steve Arnold has turned to sources including the gossip columns of local newspapers and BBC and regional archives from the era to try and piece together what was going on at these fledgling broadcasters in the days before the Radio Times was first published.
Arnold says that Manchester’s 2ZY appears to have been the best-organised of the early stations, and was at least as important as the London channel in those early days: “It looks as though the Manchester station is probably the origins of the BBC as much as the Marconi 2LO station (in London),” he said. “They seem to have had a far more professional approach. There’s a lot more documentation and it seems they knew their onions. I’d love to know more.”
The record of Manchester’s pioneering children’s programme reveals that on 15 November 1922, Miss A Bennie, known as The Lady of the Magic Carpet, read The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.
Algy’s Priceless Piffle, featuring Victor Smythe, was a pioneer of radio satire and again came from Manchester.
A contemporary edition of the Liverpool Echo also reveals that Manchester also broadcast the first variety acts, on 24 November 1922, two months before 2LO’s first official variety programme, Veterans of Variety.
The BBC’s pioneering Manchester station was also significant in terms of its reach. On launch it could only be heard in an area around 25 miles from its Trafford Park base. Over the next few years, however, the signal was relayed to other transmitters in Liverpool, Leeds/Bradford, Hull, Nottingham and Stoke-on-Trent.
Some of those early radio moments will be rebroadcast from 18:00 GMT today on BBC Radio 4 as the station’s Six O’Clock News marks exactly 100 years since the evening the BBC first took to the air with its own Centenary Bulletin.
