Sometimes when preparing these posts, the accessibility of some elements in different places means you can get a fuller picture of a historic moment. So find below a short Newsreel piece about the making of the Christmas Radio Times in 1950, followed by a link to a scan of the Christmas Radio Times from 1950.
Christmas Radio Times 1950
"Newsreel documented the making of "the periodical with the world's biggest sale", the Radio Times Christmas edition."
[BBC Archive][BBC Programme Index]
"It is not uncommon to hear people say -- "I shall be glad when Christmas is over."
[BBC Programme Index]
"Tradition is a funny thing – it can pop up out of nowhere and become established within a relatively short period of time, by which point you mess with it at your peril."
[The Reprobate]
Archive
"The BBC produced program, "Art-of-Our Time," made specially for WNYC's American Art Festival. The program includes brief discussions of art from three British experts in the arts. Sculptor Barbara Hepworth (pictured above later in life) calls for the arts to reassess the primary needs of humanity for their work. Geoffery Grigson, a writer, lecturer, and broadcaster on art subjects, wonders if everyone must be made to appreciate arts, if there is some limit to how many people might genuinely appreciate it. Basil Taylor, lecturer and critic, worries about the inclusion of art from outside the traditional realm of art, and whether it has led critics to ignore the identity of individual works of art."
[WNYC]
Source: From the family of Capt Karspinski, via the BBC.
[Paradata]
People
"In July 2011 Leah Panos and myself had the good fortune to interview veteran television director Darrol Blake in his Barnes Bridge home. In a career that spans fifty years, Darrol started as a Design Assistant at the BBC in the 1950s, going on to become a Production Designer and then direct for the BBC, before becoming a freelance director for both the BBC and a range of ITV companies from the 1970s onwards."
[Spaces of Television]
Places
"1950: The BBC airs the first live, in-flight TV broadcast, from a specially outfitted plane flying over London. It is not free of glitches, but once TV stations are introduced to the concept of air supremacy, news coverage will never be the same."
[Wired]
Thorough history of the studios, including the BBC era (the first broadcast from here was in 1950) as well as before and after, with blueprints for the building and studios.
[TV Studio History]
"Newsreel went behind the scenes of... Newsreel. Warning: this report contains actual footage of Edward Halliday, the voice of Newsreel, that regular viewers may find illusion-shattering."
[BBC Archive][BBC Programme Guide]
MṛgaMadāsava
"This four page pamphlet was circulated by BBC Nepali service. This contain information about the radio programs in the BBC Nepali service."
[British Library]
"This four page pamphlet was circulated by BBC Nepali service. This contain information about the radio programs in the BBC Nepali service."
[British Library]
"BBC engineers travel to the Mendips to test the feasibility of this area for effective television transmission across the West Country."
[BBC Rewind]
"Every day, all round the clock, the polyglot experts of the BBC’s Monitoring Service record news and comment broadcast by radio stations throughout the world. ALAN HUNTER visited Caversham Park recently and in this special article gives listeners an insight into the workings of what must he the world’s greatest listening station. Its reports not only provide much material for BBC news broadcasts but serve the needs of the Government, foreign embassies, and the Press."
[Radio Times via Transdiffusion]
Programmes
"For all its importance as a pioneering force in British broadcasting, the early BBC was never much good at coming up with programme names."
[Off The Telly]
"Parochialism is, has been and almost certainly always will be a problem for British television."
[Screen Plays]
"In 1950, the British literary magazine Nine asked its readers whether ‘the BBC and the literary periodicals are carrying out their responsibilities to poetry’. The readers replied that the BBC ‘should encourage more new poets’. The idea of the ‘new’ was a constant theme of the decade. Britain emerged from the war years with a desire for national renewal, expressed by the Festival of Britain in 1951, with its celebration of contemporary art, design and science."
[The Poetry Archive]
"This year sees the tenth anniversary of Radio Newsreel’s first appearance as a regular feature of the Light Programme. This is, of course, only one of seven daily editions, four of the others being given in the General Overseas Service and two in the North American Service."
[Ariel via Transdiffusion]
"Historian David Kynaston explores the way the villagers of Ambridge and beyond have reflected the seismic shifts in British society across the last seven decades."
[BBC Sounds][BBC Programme Guide]
Politics
"A new television service (G2DUS) is demonstrated. Owner-operator Ivan Howard, a radio dealer and one of Britain's first television operators, hopes to get a transmitting licence for a regular local service. Celebrity guests Ronnie Waldman and Joe Gilbert were present."
[BBC Rewind]
"The BBC came into existence as a company in 1922. During the period under review, it completed its twenty-third year of working as a Corporation under Royal Charter and its third year under the current five-year Charter, which will expire at the end of 1951."
[hathitrust]
"Soon after the inauguration of the BBC's television service at Alexandra Palace on 2 November 1936, the Corporation's attention was compelled to the question of providing in London permanent accommodation adequate to the requirements of a service whose expansion, exemplified by the keen public interest which transmissions had aroused, was important and urgent."
[World Radio History]