The BBC operates four domestic sound broadcasting services from 59 transmitting stations, and two main groups of external broadcasting services from 37 high power, high frequency transmitters in the United Kingdom and from two (used for relay purposes) at Tebrau, near Singapore. Until recently, the domestic sound, services were broadcast solely on long and medium […]
In 1936, the BBC launched the world’s first public television service. By 1958, this service was being transmitted from 20 stations and was available to over 98 per cent of the population. The BBC television service broadcasts a maximum of 50 hours of programmes a week, with permitted extensions (averaging 10 hours) for outside and […]
Wire broadcasting — a system whereby radio programmes are received at a central point, whence they are distributed by wire to listeners and viewers — began in the United Kingdom in 1925 as a private venture and remains in the hands of private enterprise. Wire broadcasting companies operate under licence from the Postmaster General. They […]
The Political Committee of the Communist Party yesterday issued the following statement: What is at issue in the proposals of the Pilkington Committee is the future development and control of the most powerful propaganda weapon of to-day. The sharp criticism levelled at commercial television for the violence and low artistic and moral standards of many […]
On the fifth floor of Radio Centre, the headquarters of the English Broadcasting Company, a young man called Alan Applerose was sauntering along the main corridor. He was a swarthy and handsome young man, whose melancholy dark face faintly lit with impudence made him immediately attractive to women. (He was, however, unaware of this attraction […]
Quite soon now, and just off Chiswick Mall, there lived a husband and wife called Adam and Vanessa. Adam had taken a First in Greats and was rather high up in the Treasury, but his real passion was making little models of Regency furniture which he slivered and snipped and stuck on a tray on […]
There has been too much talk about a Crisis in the British film industry. This is not to. deny the justice of abolition of entertainments duty (for the cinema has been in recent years the only popular entertainment to be so taxed); nor to overlook the sobering facts that annual attendances have slumped in ten […]
I believe that there is a place in Britain for realistic, hard-hitting films which take chances and show the well-trodden paths of stereotyped, purely commercial, film-making. The Italians found such a place soon after the war. The French in the early 50’s. The Americans with Marty (1955) and in Britain the first film of this […]
The notorious clash between art and industry in the cinema world, and specifically in Britain, is never-ending. It goes on through the eternal crises that beset the financial men, and the lively spates of opinion which are second nature to the cinephiles. In this latter region, and with justification, directors are the key figures of film- […]
(By Oswell Blakeston) In 1954 I went to interview a young man called Kenneth Russel because he was making an unconventional intrusion into the glossy magazines as a photographer and I was writing at that time for a photographic paper. It is interesting, I think, to recall the encounter, for it helps to give a […]
