On January 1st 1927, the British Broadcasting Corporation was created by Royal Charter “acting as a Trustee for the national interest”, took over from the original British Broadcasting Company.

Under the first Charter, the Corporation was to be established for an initial term of ten years until January 1 st 1937, and administered by five directors with a Director-General (John Reith) appointed by the Crown as Chief executive Officer.

NOT BEING A GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT OR AN OFFICIAL BODY, THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION IS NOT ENTITLED TO USE THE ROYAL ARMS, BUT HAS ITS OWN COAT OF ARMS, A VERSION OF WHICH IS SHOWN ABOVE.

The shareholders in the old Company were paid off and the Company's trade directors retired , but the Corporation retained the original sources of revenue together with the staff, studios and transmitters previously held by the Company.

The general policy, including that of political independence and impartiality, was little effected, for the Company had all along been administering the broadcast system in the spirit of a public trust rather than purely as a commercial concern.

In recognition of his past services with the British Broadcasting Company, John Reith received a knighthood and was to remain at his new post of Director-General until June 30th 1938.

BROADCASTING HOUSE 1932

Meanwhile in London, the B.B.C.'s new headquarters at Broadcasting House had been completed, although it was recognised that conditions would be cramped and that additional premises would have to be acquired in order to accommodate all the staff and all programme productions.

The new building, designed by the architect Lieut.-Col. G. Val Myer, was brought into partial service on May 2nd and on the 14, the old studios at Savoy Hill were locked up for the last time after just over nine years service. Broadcasting House now took over completely, except for Studio No.10 near Waterloo Bridge which continued to be used by the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra for many of their concerts until 1934.

Many of the reporters and special correspondents who are concerned with this endless task are directly employed by news-papers, but others are servants of the four news agencies – Reuter's, Press Association, Exchange Telegraph, and Central News – whose names are familiar to newspaper readers and to listeners to the broadcast news bulletins.

The men who work for the agencies are the original sources of the evening bulletins, but a great many stages have to be gone through before the announcer reads the news to the listening public.

Gale Warnings are broadcast with the Shipping Forecasts, and at 1.0, 4.45, 6.00 and 9.0 p.m., and on Sundays at 4.15 p.m. when received from the Meteorological Office.

Navigational warnings are broadcast with the shipping forecast at 11 p.m. when received from the Admiralty.

The official Broadcasting Time Signal is that which is received from Greenwich Observatory and radiated from Daventry 5XX. These signals will invariably be radiated by this transmitter at the advertised times.

Big Ben will be broadcast in accordance with the chart when possible and will, in addition, be radiated at the beginning of any programme emanating from London.

The Greenwich Time Signal, consists of six dot seconds, is accurate to one-twentieth of a second: the sixth dot indicates the time.

Big Ben is normally accurate to within half a second, and the time is indicated by the hour stroke of any hour or the first chime stroke of any quarter.

A Programme in Transmission From the Studio to the Transmitting Aerial - 1940's

It is commonplace to say that broadcasting has become so much a part of our daily lives that we take it for granted, rarely if ever pausing to think of the intricate equipment and technical skill that are indispensable in the production of even the simplest programme. Here then is a backstage view of a progress of a programme on its journey to the transmitting aerial.

The first stage of this journey is the studio, where sound waves are generated by the speaker,singer,or orchestra. Several types of studio are needed to cope with the many kinds of programme that are broadcast, but all of them have their walls and ceilings specially treated, so that the original sounds shall not be distorted.

A studio may have one or more microphones, whose role is to translate the sound waves into electric waves, in the form of a minute and continually varying electric current The Programme Engineer responsible for the broadcast, decides during rehearsal how the microphones shall be used and where they shall be placed.

From the studio the programme goes to the studio control room, where the Programme Engineer, working with the Producer, controls all the microphone outputs and blends them to form a complete programme item.

The control room adjoins the studio, with a soundproof window between them and contains a control desk, gramophone reproducing equipment, and a loudspeaker.

The current from a microphone is very minute-how minute can be gauged from the fact it would take a million million microphones to produce enough current to light a hundred-watt lamp at full brilliance. These tiny currents are first magnified by amplifiers and then taken to the control desk, on which there is a fader for each microphone, similar to the volume control on a wireless receiver. With these faders the Programme Engineer can fade up or down the output from each microphone and blend the outputs from several microphones in whatever proportions he wishes. By moving the faders and listening to the results on the loudspeaker he gets the blend of sound that he wants.

Many programmes, especially plays and features, require musical and other sound effects as well as the voices of the artists.

Some sound effects are produced with special contraptions before a microphone in the studio, and others are obtained from gramophone records. The output from the gramophone-reproducing equipment, representing the sounds recorded on the disk, is amplified and then taken to the control desk, where its contribution to the programme item is controlled by a fader, similar to those used for controlling the microphone outputs.

The Producer and his assistants in the control room can see the artists through the window and hear them over the loudspeaker, he can also speak to them

The currents from each microphone and from the gramophone equipment go through the faders and then combined into a single current, representing the complete blended programme output from the studio.

This composite output is taken to the main fader on the control desk, where its strength, representing the loudness of the sounds which will be transmitted, is controlled. After further amplification it leaves the studio control room by line for its next destination-the continuity suite.

The individual programme items which constitute a day's broadcasting from one programme service, such as the light programme, come from several different places-from different studios and from theatres, sports grounds , and so on.

In the continuity suite a complete programme service is strung together from these individual programme items.

The suite consists of a continuity studio, where the Announcer and the Presentation Assistant on duty supervise the running of the programme, and an adjoining room, separated from the studio by a soundproof window, which contains the technical operator's equipment. The technical operator has in front of him four faders, like the one on the studio control desk, to each of which he can connect one programme item.

These items may come from studios in the same building or in other studio centres, from temporary outside points, from overseas by the GPO radio telephone, or from the machines that reproduce recordings.

The technical operator can communicate by signals and telephone with each of the four places he has selected, When one programme item finishes, he turns down the fader to which it is connected, turns up the fader corresponding to the next programme item, and signals to the programme engineer to start. In this way, one programme item follows another throughout the day.

The continuity studio is used for making announcements between or during programme items, and for playing gramophone records to fill a gap in the programme, when one item finishes before the next is due to begin.

It contains a microphone and two gramophone turntables, a fader for each, and a main fader. With this equipment the announcer can readily and quickly fade out a programme item, fade up his own microphone, and make an announcement.

The output from the continuity suite is a complete programme service ready for radiation by the transmitters. This output is taken to the central control room, which is the terminus for all the special telephone lines that carry the incoming and outgoing programmes.

The engineers in the central control room connect the output from the continuity suite to the lines that go to the transmitting stations which are to radiate the programme.

On arrival at the transmitting stations the programme is near the end of its journey.

Here a carrier wave of the correct frequency is generated by an oscillator of great accuracy and stability and then amplified in the transmitter up to the power for which the station is licensed. The programme wave, sent by line from the studio centre, is also amplified in the transmitter and is then made to modulate, or regulate the strength of, the carrier wave. By this modulation process the shape of the programme wave is impressed on the carrier wave. Finally, the modulated carrier wave is conveyed over a transmission line to the aerial, whence it is propagated through space as an electro-magnetic wave bearing the imprint of the sound waves generated in the studio.