It’s common knowledge that the BBC’s first Director General was Lord Reith… except that, as so often with common knowledge, that’s not quite the full story.  John Reith was appointed General Manager of the British Broadcasting Company in December 1922, a month after it started broadcasting, and became Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation on its inauguration on 1 January 1927. 

John Charles Walsham Reith was born in 1889, the youngest by ten years of seven siblings.  His father was a minister with the Free Church of Scotland, which gave him a strong religious foundation in life.  Reith was a very tall young man, at six feet six, and an imposing physical presence was matched by his assertive manner.

He attended Glasgow Technical College prior to an apprenticeship with a railway manufacturing company;  a fellow student was John Logie Baird, whose path would cross Reith’s again in the future. 

When war broke out in 1914, Reith, who was in the Territorial Army, was put in charge of a transport unit in France. In 1915, he was wounded in the face by a German sniper’s bullet, and the scar made his already forbidding face all the more striking.

Reith was sent to America to liaise with factories producing rifles for the British army – this being before the United States joined the war.  He greatly improved productivity, and saw the progress the Americans had made in mass production.  Reith also found himself in demand as a speaker, and he saw a possible future in politics.  When the Americans joined the war in 1917, their munitions factories were required for their own army, and he returned home.

In October 1922, he saw an advertisement in the Morning Post newspaper, inviting applications for the General Managership of a new concern called the British Broadcasting Company.  Despite having no idea what broadcasting was (few did at that time), Reith applied.

Reith did not get an immediate reply, but in early December was interviewed by Sir William Noble, chairman of the Broadcasting Committee, and offered the job (the identities of the five other candidates are unknown).  Reith began at the BBC on 30 December 1922, six weeks after the first official broadcast by the BBC on November 14.  

The station, call sign 2LO, had begun transmitting experimentally in May that year.  Though licensed by the government and answerable to the Post Master General, the BBC was a private company, a consortium of six large electrical equipment manufacturers, with some representation of smaller concerns.

There were immediately numerous problems on Reith’s desk to be solved.  News was the jealously guarded preserve of the newspapers, and their trade association did not want sales affected by radio bulletins.  Eventually it was agreed that no news could be broadcast before 7pm, and the news agencies who provided content had to be acknowledged on each bulletin.  It was not until the late 1930s that the BBC was allowed to collect news itself.

One early trial for the BBC was the General Strike of May 1926, which affected most industries, including newspapers.  The BBC however was able to go on, and broadcasting of news at any time of the day was allowed for the duration of the 9-day strike. 

The BBC was already in the throes of a major government enquiry about the future of broadcasting.  It was decided to turn the Company into the British Broadcasting Corporation, with a Royal Charter to set out its aims and responsibilities.  Reith had already been promoted from to Managing Director in 1923; now he became Director General of the public corporation, and he gained a knighthood to boot.

One innovation with the Corporation was a Board of Governors, to ensure the BBC followed its remit.  While the precise role and influence of the Governors later proved a point of contention, Sir John  had his own problems in the early days.  Used to being left to get on with things by the old Company board, he found the new Governors keener on scrutinising his activities.

After several years of experimentation with short wave transmission, the Empire Service was launched in 1932, and later evolved into the Overseas Service and then the World Service.  At Christmas 1932, the King’s Christmas Message was broadcast for the first time throughout the Empire. 

The BBC’s expanding staff and operations saw it rehoused twice in Reith’s time.  Its original offices were in the GEC building on Kingsway, and when it outgrew these, new premises were found in the Institute of Electrical Engineers on Savoy Hill.  Even here space was limited, and a purpose-built headquarters, Broadcasting House, was opened in May 1932.

London was not of course the be-all and end-all of the BBC even in its founding years, in fact for some time it was difficult to network programmes, and each region created much of its own output.  Gradually more and more was shared, and in 1930 BBC sound services were re-organised.  With the availability of more transmitters, the National Programme was established for the whole country, with a complementary Regional Programme for each sub-section of the UK. 

Reith however was not a great fan of ‘the provinces’ even though he was brought up in Glasgow, and was reluctant to allow too much independence.  Throughout his life, especially once he left the BBC, he constantly criticised what he saw as the falling standards of the Corporation.

One area of broadcasting Reith was never entirely reconciled to was television.  Television was first demonstrated to the press by Reith’s old college fellow, John Logie Baird, in 1926.  For the next few years Baird lobbied for access to transmitters, but was frustrated as the BBC had the monopoly of broadcasting, and its engineers were unconvinced of the potential of his primitive 30-line mechanical system.

In 1929 the BBC gave in, and experimental transmissions began.  Programmes came from Baird’s own studio, as there was no room in the Savoy Hill for the cumbersome equipment.  In 1932 the BBC started producing programmes themselves, with space found in the newly opened Broadcasting House.  In February 1934 television was moved out to 16 Portland Place. 

The low-definition service ended in September 1935, by which time higher definition technology had been developed both by Baird (240 lines) and by the rival Marconi-EMI consortium  (405 lines).  The new service began officially in November 1936, though a scratch programme was thrown together in August for the RadiOlympia exhibition, and experimental tests began in October, both from Alexandra Palace.

The official launch ceremony was staged on both systems consecutively, after which Baird and Marconi-EMI were used on alternate weeks until February 1937, when the Baird system was dropped.  Reith had stormed out of the opening ceremony, unimpressed.  To be fair, it was a while before television was much to write home about, but he didn’t give it much of a chance.  Although little survives of pre-war television apart from a few specially made films, there is a sound recording of the opening ceremony.

One of the last big challenges Reith faced as Director General came in 1936 with the Abdication of Edward VIII.  Although all mention of it was kept out of British media, people in the higher echelons of society knew of the affair between the Prince of Wales and a married American, Wallis Simpson.

After he succeeded to the throne in January 1936, Edward eventually decided he would marry Mrs Simpson, and give up the Crown, realising he could not have both.  Reith supervised the broadcast to the nation on 10 December 1936, as the now Prince Edward (later the Duke of Windsor) announced that he was unable to continue as King ‘without the help and support of the woman I love’.

Edward’s brother Albert, became King instead, as George VI, and in May 1937 the BBC covered its first Coronation.  Even television was involved, in the first proper outside broadcast, covering part of the Coronation procession at Hyde Park Corner.

Sir John Reith left the BBC on the last day of June 1938 take over the ailing Imperial Airways, fore-runner of British Airways.  However he found himself with little to do at the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, since civil aviation effectively ceased.  He was eventually appointed Minister of Information in Neville Chamberlain’ government, and became MP for Southampton in an unopposed by-election.  But soon after, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.

According to biographers, including Ian McIntyre in The Expense of Glory (1993), Churchill and Reith did not get on – they clashed during the General Strike, and during the 30s when Churchill wanted to broadcast against giving more autonomy to India, he thought Reith had vetoed it.  Reith found himself reshuffled into less appealing posts, and he was sent to the House of Lords, as Baron Reith of Stonehaven (after his birthplace).

In 1942, Lord Reith found himself out of the government altogether, and he spent the rest of the war in the Royal Navy, making behind-the-scenes contributions to the plans for the D-Day invasion. He kept attending the House of Lords, and contributed to debates about the setting up of ITV in the 1950s, being passionately against it – even if the BBC was not what it had been in his time, he would still rather it had kept its monopoly.

His relations with later Directors General of the BBC were sometimes difficult, even when they went out of their way to befriend him, like Sir William Haley, DG from 1944 to 1952.  He had ambitions to return as Chairman of the BBC Governors, but that post always passed him by.  He was a constant critic of the BBC’s policies for years afterwards, even railing against the start of the Third Programme, seeing it as putting serious music and talks into a ghetto where they would not reach the masses.

Reith relented in his opposition to television on two occasions, by submitting to John Freeman’s questions in Face to Face in 1960, and in a three-part interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Reith Looks Back, in 1967.  Reith used the latter to discourse at length about his life and especially his time at the BBC, and pronounced his opinion that television was a ‘social menace’.

Reith died on 16 June 1971, just short of his 82nd birthday.  His funeral was private, but there was a suitably grand memorial service on 22 July.  Lord Reith, whose name has passed into the language as a byword for a particular set of broadcasting standards, was already a historical figure for his effective founding of the BBC. 

If he was disappointed by the course of his later life, his legacy is assured – if nothing else, apart from the prestigious Reith Lectures, the BBC’s internal computer network is named after him, which means that at least on two levels, Lord Reith can never be forgotten by the organisation he shaped…

You can read more about Lord Reith’s life in Asa Briggs’ The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom (volumes I & II), in his own autobiography Into the Wind, his published diaries, and biographies by Ian McIntyre, Andrew Boyle and others.

The Second World War was one of the single greatest defining events of the 20^th century, and so it is no surprise that it had a fundamental effect on the BBC.

In many ways, the war made the BBC what it is today, and closed the chapter of the BBC’s early years under its first Director General, Sir John Reith.

The BBC’s bosses became less commanding than Reith, although they sufficiently powerful allies to prevent the Corporation from being taken over directly by the government, which would have been a disaster for its reputation.  In fact, the institution was taken to the heart of the British public during the six years of conflict far more than it had been before, and internationally it became a byword for truthful news reporting.

But the BBC’s war started shakily, when initial plans to simplify output and relocate its staff to avoid the expected mass bombing of London resulted in early wartime programmes of such stultifying boredom that the Corporation came in for heavy criticism, and listeners turned to other European broadcasters for light relief.

As war had been more or less expected since the Munich crisis in late 1938, the BBC had its plans well prepared.  In order that its transmissions should not provide a beacon for enemy aircraft to home in on, the various Regional and National programmes were to be amalgamated into one Home Service, and the fledgling television service would be shut down. 

This all duly occurred on 1 September 1939, when Germany had invaded Poland and war was clearly imminent, although the declaration – carried live on the BBC – did not come for another two days. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, spoke the famous words at just after 11 am, following Britain's ultimatum to the Nazis to withdraw their troops:

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

With all places of public entertainment shut down, the public looked to the BBC for news, government announcements and light relief - but they found very little of it.  The BBC’s drama and Variety departments were busily being relocated to various parts of the country away from expected attacks, and the entertainment output was virtually restricted to endless organ recitals by the BBC’s stalwart Sandy MacPherson.  

It was actually at this time that the BBC’s nickname of ‘Auntie’ came into use, reflecting people’s dissatisfaction with being given what they were expected to like and need rather than what they actually did, as if by a disapproving maiden aunt.

Gradually things improved, but there was still a discrepancy between what the BBC was putting out on its single channel and what the audience wanted.  By early 1940, the war that had been expected was not showing any signs of materialising, and the armies facing the Germans in France wanted something more to their taste – and that meant dance music and variety shows.

After some direct consultation with the troops, the BBC started trials of a Forces Programme in January, which was formally launched the following month, and had more room for more popular fare than the Home Service.

Wartime turned out to be a period of great expansion for the BBC.  Its staff more than doubled over the period, despite many of its peace-time complement being called up for military service or other war work.  As well as the Forces Programme, there was a great expansion in overseas services, both in English and in foreign languages.  The first foreign language service had been in Arabic in 1938, to counter Italian Fascist propaganda in North Africa and the Middle East in the wake of Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia and rule over Libya.

With the European war starting, the BBC began German broadcasts, and as serious hostilities began on the Western Front in spring 1940 with invasions of Scandinavia, the Low Countries and France, a whole raft of language services sprang up to deliver an alternative to the Nazi propaganda message – even if anyone listening to these services in occupied countries risked dire consequences.

The war also shook up the mindset of programme makers, whether in drama, variety or in the news division.  Pre-war news had relied on news agencies for information, and there had been an agreement not to broadcast bulletins before 6pm to avoid affecting the sales of evening papers.  Now with the need and ability to broadcast all day with the latest war news, the BBC upped its number of bulletins considerably.

With other production departments scattered around the country, it took some time for them to catch up and re-establish themselves.  Variety moved first to Bristol then later to Bangor in Wales, where some of the best remembered wartime shows came from.  

Some pre-war comic stars carried on, such as Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch in the earliest regular comedy series, Band Waggon.  This was one of the first sitcoms, albeit of a surreal sort, with the two stars supposedly living in a penthouse apartment in Broadcasting House, although this was only one section of a longer variety show.

There were other popular comedy shows in the war period including Happidrome, and later shows like Merry-Go-Round, which featured a rotation of shows provided by Army, Navy and RAF talent.  The RAF programme became Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, which survived long after the war and united Richard Murdoch with Kenneth Horne, the latter going on to great success in the 50s and 60s with Beyond Our Ken and Round the Horne.

Another great early hit was Garrison Theatre, where cabaret artist Jack Warner compered in the persona of a soldier, memorably asking people to ‘Mind My Bike’ and reading comic letters from his brother, suitable censored with ‘blue pencil’ to provide double entrendres.  Warner’s sisters, Elsie and Doris Waters, who featured as their characters Gert and Daisy, were later enlisted to deliver useful advice from government ministries.

But the paramount comedy series of the war years was It’s That Man Again – ITMA.  It had begun in a small way earlier in 1939, but it was not until cast changes were enforced by the start of the war that it really started to take off.  Built round the central character of Tommy Handley, ITMA was famous for its roster of eccentric guest characters, each with their distinctive and obligatory catchphrase, including Mrs Mopp – ‘Can I do you now sir’, Colonel Chinstrap – ‘I don’t mind if I do’, and Funf, the German spy – ‘Zis is Funf speaking’. 

With its incredibly quick-fire delivery, satires of wartime bureaucracy and painful puns, ITMA became one of those shows truly loved by the public, who carried its jokes and references over into real life.  It was to last 10 years until Tommy Handley’s untimely death in 1949.

Drama too had its part to play in wartime.  The department had had something of a culture shock initially, swapping state-of-the-art equipment in Broadcasting House for more rudimentary facilities in regional studios following evacuation.

Sounds of battle

Some of the dramatic highlights included the drama documentary series The Shadow of the Swastika, which detailed the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, and Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Man Born to Be King, controversially depicting the life of Jesus, with an actor playing that part for the first time in a modern drama.  First broadcast in Children’s Hour, it was later repeated for adult listeners. 

Radio continued the tradition of bringing classic drama to the bulk of people who had never experienced it in the theatre, but also featured lighter fare such as Paul Temple thriller stories, and the spine-chilling horror of Appointment with Fear, featuring Valentine Dyall as the narrator, the 'Man in Black'.

As expected, news came into its own during the war.  Gradually the role of the news correspondent developed, going to war zones and starting to record the actual sounds of battle, and bringing the reality of the conflict into people’s homes. 

The innovation of worldwide broadcasting also reminded troops of what they were missing at home, and what they were fighting for.  War correspondents such as Richard Dimbleby, Chester Wilmot, Frank Gillard and many others risked life and limb to report from the battle front.  New recording technology such as portable disc-recorders, was primitive by today’s standards, but the very idea of recording real events overrode quality considerations.

The BBC had long feared the unscripted programme, as people might say things that were libellous or would offend decency, or just not get to the point.  It was an innovation when one of the great hits of the war, The Brains Trust, was inaugurated. 

Originally under the title Any Questions?, the idea was that people could send in questions on virtually any topic and a wide-ranging panel of experts would discuss them and give an answer. The heightened circumstances of wartime meant people were looking beyond narrow margins of what they were expected to like.

One area that reflected this was music.  While there had always been a mixture of classical works and lighter music, and dance bands had proliferated with the coming of the Forces Programme, there was a greater cross-over now.  Classical pianists like Myra Hess proved popular, while native British dance band talent like Lew Stone, Roy Fox and Henry Hall were augmented by American bands, once that country entered the war and US troops were stationed in the UK. 

Most loved of all though were the singers – from the likes of Al Bowlly, sadly killed during an air raid in 1941 (as was the band leader Ken ‘Snake-Hips’ Johnson in a separate incident a few weeks before), to the great female singers such as Anne Shelton and the legendary Vera Lynn.

As the war drew to a close, the place of the BBC in the national consciousness had definitely changed forever.  It had adapted to the needs of the time and provided shows that got people through bombing raids, rationing, the loss of loved ones, and the sheer stress and uncertainty of the times.  Auntie had become a term of affection rather than disdain. 

The BBC sustained its own losses:  when Broadcasting House was hit by a bomb in October 1940, seven staff members were killed.  Covered in plaster dust and soot, newsreader Bruce Belfrage continued with the bulletin he was reading at the time with barely a pause audible. Another later bomb severely damaged the building, while adjacent St George’s Hall and Queen’s Hall, used for musical concerts including the Proms, were damaged beyond repair.  Other staff were killed in bombing raids at home, or on duty with the services overseas.

The BBC came out of World War Two with its reputation enhanced both at home, and to an even greater extent abroad.  With the replacement of the Forces networks with the Light Programme, and plans underway for a new high-culture Third Programme and the revival of the television service in 1946, the BBC looked to the future.