Today in history
The British Broadcasting Company began its daily radio broadcasts from London.
On 14 November 1922, the British Broadcasting Company began its daily service from station 2LO at Marconi House on London’s Strand.
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An evening on the Strand
On 14 November 1922, the British Broadcasting Company began daily transmissions from Marconi House, using the existing London station 2LO. Its audience was initially local: this was not yet a service that listeners throughout Britain could receive.
That evening, Arthur Burrows, the Company’s director of programmes and a former newspaper journalist, delivered news bulletins at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., accompanied by weather information. These were modest beginnings for an institution that would make broadcasting part of everyday domestic life.
The occasion was not Britain’s first radio broadcast. Weekly transmissions from station 2MT at Writtle, Essex, had begun on 14 February 1922, while 2LO itself had already transmitted on 11 May. November marked the beginning of the Company’s daily service, not the birth of broadcasting.
A company before a corporation
Formed on 18 October 1922, the Company brought together wireless manufacturers whose commercial interests favoured programmes attractive enough to encourage receiver sales. The government, meanwhile, wanted an orderly broadcasting system under Post Office supervision. Public service and private commerce were not yet neatly separated.
Six manufacturers guaranteed the Company’s capital, among them Marconi and General Electric. This was a regulated commercial undertaking, not the chartered British Broadcasting Corporation familiar today. The Corporation succeeded the Company on 1 January 1927.
Towards a shared national medium
Expansion followed swiftly. Birmingham’s 5IT and Manchester’s 2ZY began regular BBC broadcasting on 15 November. John Reith was appointed general manager on 14 December: his influence would be profound, but he was not directing the inaugural London broadcast.
As its reach grew, the BBC carried news, music, drama and talks into British homes, helping radio become a shared cultural medium. The significance of that November evening lies less in technological novelty than in institutional continuity: a local service had begun the daily practice from which a national broadcaster would develop.