You will notice that the selection below, apart from the opening lecture, is mostly texts and documents. Some years aren't as well represented in the archives I've been covering and so now and then they will be a slightly threadbare, though I hope with a no less interesting selection.
One of the topics I've been less able to find material on is the foundation of the BBC Dance Orchestra under Jack Payne (see above). Even the History of the BBC page is a bit threadbare. Fortunately they did release a lot of material on 78 and there are plenty of those recordings at the Internet Archive.
A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
"The technical challenges of transmitting a service live from a space like King’s with its notoriously difficult acoustic must have been an almost impossibly ambitious feat in 1928, involving early Marconi-Reisz microphones slung on cables across the Chapel as well as fixed around the building."
[Recorded Church Music]
"To mark the centenary of this Christmas tradition, composer Bob Chilcott returns to King's College Chapel to explore the history of the service, to meet the people involved and to reflect on why this sequence of carols and readings has had such a major impact."
[BBC Sounds][BBC Programme Index]
Includes detailed account of the first broadcast, including order of service and participants.
[Gresham College]
Behind The Scenes
"Memorandum from William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary, concerning the commemoration of the Armistice and the BBC, 16 April, 1928."
This led the way to the first radio broadcast of the service of remembrance from the cenotaph later that year.
[The National Archive]
Wide-ranging video lecture by Professor Jeremy Summerly about BBC radio in this period which partly uses as its basis a poem written by a listener to the Radio Times in 1928.
[Gresham College]
"If the true policy of an open forum is adopted the BBC may become one of the greatest educational forces in the country."
[The Guardian]
"In advance of a special Media Show debate on the future of the BBC, Steve Hewlett explores the troubled past behind today's dilemmas - and traces them back to the Corporation's origins in the distant world of the 1920s."
[BBC Sounds][BBC Programme Index]
"The year 1928 witnessed a steady endeavour to improve the quality and increase the variety of programme material transmitted, and developed the plans for better distribution combined with a service of alternative programmes, referred to in the last Report as the Regional Scheme."
[hathitrust]
"The second issue of this Handbook shows that consolidation and further preparation are the characteristics of 1928 in broadcasting. The plans for an improved system of distribution by fewer and higher powered stations, framed two years ago, received official sanction in principle, and the construction of a twin wavelength regional station for London and the south-east has begun. The work of the Daventry Experimental Station has been continued and developed. It will be seen that there has been no relaxation of effort to improve the programmes."
[World Radio History]
No comments:
Post a Comment