TV History

From humble beginnings in 1922 to the dawn of television - Television Heaven takes a look at the history of the British Broadcasting Corporation

On 1st September 1939 when the BBC ceased television broadcasting it was explained that it was feared that the German air force would use the transmission signals from the aerial of Alexandra Palace as a navigational aid. In fact, the aerial was to be used for transmitting signals of an entirely different kind.

On an October day in 1945 the Government announced that it wanted the BBC to start television again, on the pre-war technical system. Within a few days those television engineers who had been demobilised were back inside Alexandra Palace

It was on 2 June 1953 for the Coronation of Elizabeth 11 that television really came into its own. This was the day that Britain began its eternal love affair with 'the box.'

Within a few years of BBC television restarting after the end of the Second World War, there were already suggestions that perhaps the Corporation's monopoly on broadcasting was restricting the type of programmes available to the British public due to the limit that public funding imposed.

The history of TV Mirror - one of Britain's first weekly television periodicals