IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023 - 14

Book Review
Book Review
The BBC: A Century on Air-David Hendy
(New York, NY, USA: Public Affairs,
Hachette Book Group, 2022, 638 pp.)
Reviewed by A. David Wunsch
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Lowell, MA 01854 USA
 In 2022, a number of literary critics observed
that exactly 100 years had elapsed since 1922, the
year that Ezra Pound had once proclaimed as " Year
one of a new era. " He was doubtless referring to the
publication of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land as well as
James Joyce's Ulysses. It was the year that Einstein
won the Nobel Prize in physics. Not generally noted,
but certainly of social importance was the entry of
the BBC into the world of radio broadcasting-a
major event in the shaping of culture in Great Britain.
What does BBC stand for? A trick question. Originally,
it stood for the British Broadcasting Company
Ltd. This was a short-lived entity created by British
and American electrical companies (e.g., Marconi
and Western Electric) having a presence in the United
Kingdom. Note that the Marconi Company had been
broadcasting concerts, for example, before the formation
of the BBC in an effort to sell their hardware and
receiving sets. This first BBC was licensed by the British
Post Office-a natural choice since it had already
control of the telephone and telegraph in the United
Kingdom. A for-profit company, this first BBC derived
its income from the sale of radio sets and transmitters
as well as an annual license fee of 10 shillings that had
to be purchased by radio owners and which was collected
for the BBC by the Post Office, which kept a portion
of the revenue. In 1926, the Company ended-its
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2023.3299327
Date of current version: 21 September 2023.
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assets were transferred to a noncommercial business,
the British Broadcasting Corporation, a nationalized
company. This organization was chartered by the
Royal Crown but its freedom and constraints were
not that of an American-style corporation: for example,
the Postmaster General was empowered to take
over or close down the BBC in times of emergency,
a fact that has been a major subtext in the history of
the BBC to this day. The BBC was given a monopoly
over broadcasting in Britain. No one else could broadcast
radio from British soil for general consumption
even though stations on the continent, notably from
Luxembourg, could readily be heard as far back as
the earlier BBC. It was not until the 1970s that commercial
radio could legally be broadcast from within
the United Kingdom, although commercial television
dates from somewhat earlier. The situation of broadcasting
in the United States in the early 1920s was
seen as a visible warning of the chaos and vulgarity of
taking the commercial road. The BBC charter of 1926
stated that the BBC must develop broadcasting " to
the best advantage and the national interest. " Failing
that, the charter could be revoked, and the Post Office
would cease collecting fees from radio set owners,
thus drying up the revenue stream.
There were three important figures at the start of
the BBC in 1922: Cecil Lewis, John Reith, and Arthur
Burrows. All had seen World War I firsthand, a not
insignificant fact in the ethos of the radio service
they started. One is reminded of how the horror of
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023

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