±«Óãtv

The ±«Óãtv’s first Director-General John Reith saw broadcasting as a social cement, binding the nation, creating social and cultural unity across the British Isles. The crofter in the north of Scotland would be able to listen to the great events taking place in London at the same time as the farmer in the west of England.

Broadcasting, that great enricher of intellectual and cultural life, would be accessible to all no matter what the background or status of the listener was. No wonder the Conservative MP Selwyn Lloyd once referred to Reith’s vision of broadcasting as ‘compulsory uplift’

Despite the notion of the ±«Óãtv as a unifying force across the four nations of the UK, when broadcasting began in 1922 the radio stations located across the UK operated effectively as individual stations, each with local programming and a local flavour to the output.

The ±«Óãtv’s Regional Scheme, which was launched in 1930, reorganised the radio service into two services: the National Programme based in London and five regions - Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Midlands, the North, and the West – which were responsible for the alternative Regional Programme. From that point on, there has always been a degree of tension between the regions and nations and the centre.

The West Region included Wales up until 1937 when a distinct Welsh Region was established by the ±«Óãtv. However, when television first came to Wales in 1952, the transmitter in the Vale of Glamorgan served both south Wales and the west of England. The ±«Óãtv in Cardiff and Bristol had to share an Outside Broadcast van also, which led to some interesting challenges, recalled here by Alun Oldfield Davies, Controller of the ±«Óãtv in Wales, in an interview from 1987 and by Cliff Morgan, former Welsh rugby union internationaland then Head of ±«Óãtv Television Sport, in 1997:

Regional production centres

When Wales-born Huw Wheldon became Managing Director of ±«Óãtv Television in 1968, he was keen to see production bases established outside of London. Not only would these centres provide programming for their respective regions (or nations) but they would also contribute to network programming across the UK. He outlined his ideas around this issue to Frank Gillard in an interview in 1979:

However, not everybody has been as supportive or positive in their outlook on the role of the regions and nations. Michael Jackson, who was Controller of ±«Óãtv Two and ±«Óãtv One during his time at the Corporation was not so convinced about the nations’ and regions’ contribution in entertainment programming:

Programmes in Welsh and Gaelic

The ±«Óãtv has always had a responsibility to provide programming for all the UK’s nations. From the outset it provided programmes in indigenous languages other than English, although this often resulted in tensions, particularly in .

As Huw Wheldon noted in the clip above, the ±«Óãtv in Wales (Cardiff) and in Scotland (Glasgow) would have specific responsibility for producing programmes in Welsh and Gaelic respectively. Here, Pat Walker, who was at one point Acting Controller Scotland, outlines the ±«Óãtv’s responsibility towards the Gaelic language, producing programmes for a minority audience, and the ±«Óãtv’s role in maintaining and preserving the language:

"[The ±«Óãtv’s] observance of Gaelic for many a long time was largely in terms of music. There was a certain amount of Gaelic speech, but not very much. There'd be a Gaelic talk and a Gaelic news bulletin eventually, and this is sort of after the war you might get that on a fortnightly or a weekly basis. And very, very occasionally a Gaelic play... it was mostly music and things but one great triumph was at the start of the war Dinwiddie, who was a a force to be reckoned with, shot down to London and managed to get a surprising amount of Scottish programmes on the one channel - because at the beginning of the war everything collapsed down to just the ±«Óãtv Service, there wasn't even a Forces Programme - and he got a surprising commitment for Scottish programmes and one was a Gaelic programme.

And he argued this on the case that many, many of the men of the Western Isles and the north of Scotland, fishermen normally but all took to the sea - many of them were in the Merchant Service, a lot of them joined the Navy - in other words there were an immense number of Gaelic speakers out there fighting for King and Country and they should at least be given a Gaelic programme, which they got.

And there's a nice story of an American from one of the American companies visiting Andrew Stewart in London at the beginning of the war. And in Andrew's office in the evening and it was coming up to nine o'clock for the news and Andrew said, "We must hear the news," and switched the loudspeaker on a few minutes before nine and it happened to be the Gaelic programme. And the American said, "Good heavens! What on earth is that?" and Andrew explained. And the man said, "How many Gaelic speakers are there in Scotland or in the UK," and it was thought to be about seventy or eighty thousand.

And the American said, "That is quite incredible," he said. "Only the ±«Óãtv would do such a thing, put on a Gaelic programme for so few people." And it wasn't until the end of the war that Gaelic began to try and burst through the bonds of just music... And so you're into the eternal argument that we all used, and that was what was the function of Gaelic broadcasting? Was it there to encourage people to speak Gaelic or was it there because people couldn't be informed other than in Gaelic and of course what you've said is right - everybody understood English. So it's always had a hard row to follow."

There’s a key point which arises during this interview – the notion that all Gaelic (and Welsh) speakers speak English so why provide programming for such small numbers of people (although the Welsh-speaking population is far greater in number than the Gaelic-speaking population). This goes to the heart of broadcasting culture and politics in Wales and Scotland, and the ±«Óãtv has historically seen part of its public service mission to nurture and promote these languages where it can.

When ±«Óãtv Cymru Wales was established as a ‘national region’ in February 1964, it was required to produce seven hours of Welsh-language programming a week. In October 1974, the ±«Óãtv’s longest-running (and UK’s second longest-running) soap opera, Pobol y Cwm, was launched.

The brainchild of ±«Óãtv Wales’s talented and progressive head of drama, John Hefin, it immediately became a hit and, almost fifty years later, is still topping the ratings on S4C.

In this clip from a ±«Óãtv programme broadcast in 1993, John Hefin, Mike Povey (scriptwriter) and Harriet Lewis (actor) recall the origins of the programme and the early years.

London and the nations

Thomas Hajkowski, in his study of the ±«Óãtv and national identity in Britain, has argued that the ±«Óãtv promoted national differences in the UK, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and did not centralise power as much as has been suggested in the past. Many of the interviews in the Oral History Collection support this. Here is Andrew Stewart (Controller Scotland, 1957–1968) talking to Frank Gillard in 1989 about the money spent on programmes for the Scottish and UK audiences:

There has, however, always been a certain creative tension between the network, based in London and the nations. In particular, how should the ±«Óãtv reflect the life and culture of a particular nation to the rest of the UK. Pat Walker, former Assistant Controller ±«Óãtv Scotland, tackled that issue in his interview in 1996:

"It was difficult always to find enough people in London, for want of a better term, to understand nationalism and the way it was beginning to grow in Scotland. And in broadcasting, just after the war you could see a change in the Scottish side of broadcasting because it seemed suddenly that Scotland was increasingly concerned to talk to itself as a nation. Now that certainly had not happened up to and including the war.

It saw itself as an important and interesting part of the United Kingdom, but now it was beginning to talk on its own Scottish wavelength, increasingly concerning itself saying "We are a nation". And programmes showed signs of examining the present and the future rather than the past … suddenly Scotland seemed to be much more interested in talking about the present day and the future and that there was less need to escape into the past.

And along with that came this change in opt outs because, as I said earlier, opt outs to begin with were inclined to be just a Scottish or a tartan version of what was going on. But now opt-outs were programmes in their own right. Because we were opting out of a book review, we didn't say we must do a book review. We could do something totally different. It could be Light Entertainment, it could be anything. In other words we were beginning to be ourselves as a nation."

The ±«Óãtv in Northern Ireland, similarly, has had to tread carefully and sensitively in much of its programming, in particular when discussing programme ideas from London. In an interview in 1988 Controller of ±«Óãtv Northern Ireland, James Hawthorne, recalls how he had to intervene on a number of occasions in order to avoid political repercussions as a result of a lack of ‘local’ sensitivity:

Conclusion

For almost 100 years, the ±«Óãtv has broadcast to ‘the nation’ but also to ‘the nations’. A common narrative that the ±«Óãtv controlled everything and everyone from London needs to be understood in a slightly more nuanced way, but as some of the interviews here suggest, political, creative, and cultural tensions between ‘HQ’ and the outlying parts of the ±«Óãtv empire are an important and continuing part of that story.

Further Reading

• Jonathan Bardon, Beyond the Studio: A History of ±«Óãtv Northern Ireland (2000)
• John Davies, Broadcasting and the ±«Óãtv in Wales (1994)
• Thomas Hajkowski, The ±«Óãtv and National Identity in Britain 1922–1953 (2010)
• W. H. McDowell, The History of ±«Óãtv Broadcasting in Scotland 1923-83 (1992)