The formation of the BBC

The UK’s first live radio broadcast came from the factory of the Wireless Telegraph Company in Chelmsford, under the ownership of Guglielmo Marconi in June 1920. Sponsored by the Daily Mail's Lord Northcliffe and featuring famous soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the broadcast entranced the nation.

Within months the General Post Office (GPO) had received 100 requests for broadcast licences, and to avoid an un-regulated scramble for the radio spectrum, one licence was issued to the British Broadcasting Company. Formed on 18 October 1922, the commercial operation grouped the main companies under one umbrella. Weeks later the BBC was on air with its first programme - a news bulletin.

By 1927 the BBC had become a public corporation financed by a licence fee, which, 100 years later forms a major part of the corporation’s income.

BBC managers were not content with just broadcasting to a domestic audience, and it was not long after the formation of the corporation that a British perspective could be heard globally. The radio industry in the Netherlands was more advanced than in the UK, so the BBC contracted Philips of Eindhoven to relay its domestic service from a transmitter in Daventry to listeners in India and South Africa. Philips also established a network of re-broadcasters in Australia and New Zealand before the BBC was able to launch its own dedicated Empire Service in 1932.