BBC Is Celebrating The Centenary Of Its First Official Broadcast

The BBC is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its first broadcast, a news bulletin that featured a court report from the Old Bailey, information about a disruption caused by London fog, and billiards scores.

Although it was broadcast by London station 2LO, recent research reveals that many of the early BBC broadcasts came in northern England.

The first children's show and the first regular weather forecast were both broadcast by Manchester station 2ZY. The first "official concert" was broadcast by Birmingham's 5IT station.

The British Broadcasting Corporation of today was not the BBC when it first started broadcasting on November 14, 1922, at 6 p.m. In actuality, it was the British Broadcasting Company, which was composed of various stations spread around the nation run by multiple companies.

The Marconi firm was in charge of London 2LO. Metropolitan-Vickers managed the station in Manchester. However, there were few records of what was broadcast during these early times.

But self-described Radio Times obsessive Steve Arnold has conducted a new study on the BBC's very early days. Before the Radio Times, which was named as such because it specified the times that the new medium's shows were being broadcast, was first published in September 1923, his challenging work was to attempt to piece together the BBC's schedules.

 "gossip columns [in regional newspapers] mainly, people saying we listened to this last night and this is the only record of some of these things". he said when asked where he got his information from.