1939 in British radio
Events
January to July
- No events.
August
- August – The BBC Monitoring service is established at Wood Norton Hall in Worcestershire, acquired earlier in the year as a standby location in case of the need to evacuate facilities from London.
September
- 1 September – At 18.55 local time BBC engineers receive the order to begin closing down all transmitters in preparation for wartime broadcasting: this marks the end of the National and Regional Programmes of the BBC. At 20.15 the BBC's Home Service begins transmission: this will be the corporation's only domestic radio channel for the first four months of World War II (BBC Television has been shut down until 1946). There will be a daily Welsh language bulletin of world news at 5 pm.[1]
- 3 September
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, speaking from 10 Downing Street, announces on the BBC at 11.15 local time that "this country is at war with Germany".[2]
- Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley reads the first installment of his novel Let the People Sing, a celebration of local democracy specially written for radio, on the Home Service.[3]
- 19 September – Popular British radio comedy show It's That Man Again with Tommy Handley is first broadcast on the BBC Home service, following trial broadcasts from 12 July.[4][5] Known as "ITMA", and also featuring Jack Train and many others, it runs until Handley’s death in 1949;[6] the performers have initially been evacuated to Bristol.
October
- No events.
November
- No events.
December
- 25 December – In his Christmas broadcast on BBC Radio, King George VI quotes Minnie Louise Haskins' poem "The Gate of the Year".[7]
Station debut
- 1 September – BBC Home Service (1939–1967)
Debuts
- 12 July – It's That Man Again (1939–1949)
- 25 September – Singing Together on BBC Radio schools service (1939–2001)
Continuing radio programmes
1930s
- In Town Tonight (1933–1960)
Births
- 23 January – Vincent Duggleby, personal finance radio presenter
- 4 March – Keith Skues, radio presenter
- 23 April – Tom Vernon, broadcaster (died 2013)
- 7 May – David Hatch, radio executive and performer (died 2007)
- 11 July – John Walters, radio music producer and jazz trumpeter (died 2001)
- 30 August – John Peel, born John Ravenscroft, DJ (died 2004)
- 19 September – Louise Botting, radio presenter and businesswoman
- 27 October – John Cleese, comic actor
Deaths
- 20 July – Sir Dan Godfrey, orchestral conductor, 71[8]
- 19 December – Eric Fogg, composer and conductor, 36 (killed by Underground train)[9]
See also
References
- "Literature Wales: Encyclopedia – Broadcasting". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-01-05.
- McDonough, Frank (1998). Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War. Manchester University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-7190-4832-6.
- Chignell, Hugh (2011). Public Issue Radio: Talks, News and Current Affairs in the Twentieth Century. Springer. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-230-34645-1.
- Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 385–386. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
- "The BBC Story – 1930s" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-05-31.
- Wilmut, Roger (1985). Kindly Leave the Stage!: Story of Variety, 1919–1960. Methuen. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-413-48960-9.
- The Eternal Vision: The Ultimate Collection of Spiritual Quotations. Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd. 2002. p. 516. ISBN 978-1-85311-495-3.
- Sterling, Christopher H. (2003). Encyclopedia of Radio. Routledge. p. 344. ISBN 978-1-135-45649-8.
- The Listener, British Broadcasting Corporation, July 1939, p. 1270.
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