BROADCASTING

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5297, 9 January 1947, Page 7

BROADCASTING

EARLY DAYS RECALLED Twenty-four years ago the first BBC programme went on the air, but back in 1920, when the BBC was yet unborn, the broadcasting of entertainment to the public (a quarter hour of speech and music once a week) was pioneered bj> members of the experimental staff of Marconi's Design Department. They ran Britain's first broadcasting station,' Writtle, as a spare-time job, using a hut there as both studio- and transmdtter. Several of these young* pioneers are now in the BBC, including* Sir Noel Ashbridge, Deputy Director-General of the BBC. As one of them has said, Writtle was an "engineer's do." A special programme staff was still unheard of, and the engineers did everything. R. T. B. Wynn, now the BBC's Assistant Chief Engineer, was one of them, and he recently reealled some of his memories of thQse early days in these words: "Some time on Tuesday afternoon the piano would be trundled into the hut, and we'd receive a bunch of records — most of which were usually rejected as too highbrow! Programme planning was done at the 'Ceck and Bell' up the road, about half an hour beforehand.

We had artistic ambitions — for example, we put on "Cyrafto de Ber-.g-erac," the first play ever to he broadcast in this country. I well remember our sitting around a table in my digs, reading our scripts (my part was to produce rustling leaves) with spoans held to our mouths in simulation of hand microphones we had to use. There were more play?rs than microphones, so much of the rehearsal consisted of practising the passing of the spoon from one to another at the right moment without dropping* it! But our star was Eckersley (the first Chief Engineer of the BBC). He'd go up to the microphone, and apparently without effort, be spontaneously funny for ten minutes at a time. He talked to our listeners as if he'd lived next door to them for years and they loved it. The frivolity of Writtle, however, brought Wynn and his colleagues their first clue to the potential power of broadcasting. Their joking, sometimes ribald, was always good-natur-ed; but when, following a joeular remark one night, there came evidence that they had been talcen seriously, they began to realise the^importance of their "toy". They were neyer quite sure, when they started up the transmitter, that it was aetually radiating. So they devised a test. They said at the microphone : "If all was well, a hand would . come put of the window of a receiver hut 100 yards away, and flap a handkerchief . Listeners shared in it all.