The first television service was nothing like modern television. It ran for just two hours a day - 3-4pm, and 9-10pm - with a heavy emphasis on variety. Cecil Madden, pioneering producer, tapped a steady supply of international entertainers in London's West End to fill the schedule. In the pre-war years guests on Picture Page, Variety and 100% Broadway included Tyrone Power, Sophie Tucker, Larry Adler, Fats Waller, Gene Autry, Maurice Chevalier, Elisabeth Welch, Stanley Holloway, Vera Lynn, Arthur Askey, George Robey and Gracie Fields.
Among the more serious offerings were talks by the aviator Amy Johnson, the writer Rebecca West, and J.B. Priestley, the dramatist. An early documentary, The Declining Population, looked at birth statistics in the Depression, and Eye of the Artist introduced the audiences to the little-known sculptor Henry Moore.
Cooking and gardening programmes found a place in the early schedule, as did do-it-yourself - prompting the Daily Telegraph to complain, three weeks after the launch, about the dullness of a half-hour demonstration on how to replace a broken window pane.
The small screen proved ideal for puppetry, and a number of mannequin acts were precursors of Andy Pandy, Muffin the Mule and the Flower Pot Men.
The most demanding and expensive shows were the dramas. At the start, Madden circulated a motto of his own, 'a play a day', and he was not far from achieving it.
By the time war was declared and the television service closed, the ±«Óãtv had transmitted 326 live plays, some of them remarkably innovative. Julius Caesar was portrayed in modern dress as Hitler, and All God's Chillun, on the subject of mixed marriage, was very challenging for its time.
The turnaround was such that shows were rarely rehearsed as much as they should have been, but Alexandra Palace nevertheless attracted an impressive array of actors - among them Ralph Richardson, Trevor Howard, James Mason, Michael Redgrave, Sybil Thorndike and Laurence Olivier.