When broadcasting first began in earnest in the UK in 1922, BET soon realised that they had a complete wired network of cables that passed a significant number of homes in the larger industrial towns. Those home that they didn’t pass by were very close and easy to reach. And radio reception – thanks to very low-power broadcasts and crystal-based, home-made ‘cat’s whisker’ radio sets – was a touch and go business.

If a company were to pick up, off-air but with large, well-tuned and expertly directed aerials, the signals from the then British Broadcasting Company, and provide them directly to a loudspeaker in the front room of a well-off household, they could easily replace the headphones-and-drifting-tuning that bedevilled early radio.

If that company already had a complete electricity distribution system to hand, they could run additional ‘cable radio’ wires between the same poles in the street as the overhead wires for the trams used, and even, ultimately, carry the radio signals via AC (Alternating Current) through the same cables as the DC (Direct Current) power to the trams was supplied. They could access a ready-made market of potential listeners-in who wanted radio entertainment – if only it were affordable and non-technical. That company could then charge a few shillings a month (or less), and, with little capital expenditure, make a fortune from the public’s interest in the new medium.

BET was the company to do it, and while they initially called their offspring, formed in March 1928, Broadcast Relay Service Ltd, it soon became known as ‘Rediffusion’ – literally meaning ‘broadcasting again’.

Rediffusion was almost immediately profitable. The company soon branched out from simply ‘re-diffusing’ radio, into the manufacture of radio sets. From there, the sale and hire of sets in the High Street followed.

As broadcasting opened up in the Dominions, Rediffusion was hot on its heels, using the tram wires, or bespoke ‘pipe radio’ systems, to provide the new Dominion broadcasting stations to the cities, as well as the new BBC Empire Service (now BBC World Service Radio).

When the BBC began the first regularly scheduled high-definition television service in the world in the mid-1930s, Rediffusion was again well-placed to provide television sets for sale and rent, plus a ‘pipe-TV’ service to those not well-placed for broadcasts from Alexandra Palace, or reluctant to have such a gauche symbol as a VHF TV aerial on their roofs.

World War II interrupted television, the growth of wired distribution, and much of the peacetime activities of both BET and Rediffusion. For the duration, the whole of the Empire was put ‘on hold’ and all energy devoted to the war effort. For Rediffusion, this meant their expertise in reception and rebroadcasting suddenly became, not a diversion for the middle classes, but of essential national importance.

Rediffusion had a wealth of knowledge that the Allies – and especially the UK, ‘standing alone’ – needed. From broadcasting (for radar) to cathode ray tubes (for radar). From cables (for troop communications and radar) to reception sets (for monitoring communications of friend and foe, and radar). To this day, several elements of what Rediffusion did during the war are held under the Hundred Years Rule (that means it will be late 2045 before we know exactly what they were). So even today, we don’t know exactly what Rediffusion did in the war against Fascism – though we can probably guess.

Immediately post-War, the world changed dramatically. BET was included, with some justification, in the list of companies the new Labour government planned to nationalise. The tram systems started to disappear too, partially because the necessary nationalisation of the electricity companies meant that the old local generators became part of the new Central Electricity Board. The councils who ran the trams had to pay for the electricity, and coupled with war-delayed refurbishment of the systems, it was cheaper and easier to shut them down and replace them with bus services.

Within a decade of the end of the war, nearly all of the trams – and all of the services in the industrialised areas – had gone.

BET, however, survived without being nationalised, due largely to Labour losing power at the end of 1951, despite getting more votes than it achieved in 1945, because of the UK’s antiquated electoral system.

BET and Rediffusion, in an effort to avoid nationalisation, had started to diversify even further than before, especially overseas. With the Dominions gone, they repeated previous successes by starting Overseas Rediffusion, offering wired television and radio, and later over-the-air broadcasting stations in the remaining colonies. Soon, places as diverse as Barbados and Hong Kong had, respectively, Rediffusion Radio and Rediffusion TV in operation – one broadcast, the other wired. So when a commercial television service to rival the existing non-commercial BBC Television Service was first mooted by the incoming Conservative administration, BET and Rediffusion were immediately on the scene. They sought to run the entire operation – or, failing that, they would be happy with having the franchise for London.

When the first contracts were awarded in 1954, they were given London weekdays, sharing a frequency with a rival company who were given Saturday and Sunday. To a degree, a modified version of this system still exists in London to this day.

BET and Rediffusion were reluctant to take on the full risks of this venture – just in case – so they split 50% of the company equally between them and took on partners for the other half, in the form of Associated Newspapers, publishers of the British arch-right-wing Daily Mail newspaper to this day.

On Thursday 22 September 1955, Associated-Rediffusion (A-R) took to the air in London.

It was an immediate disaster. Both Associated-Rediffusion and weekend rivals ATV (though they started life calling themselves ABC until an injunction from the cinema chain and putative commercial television contractor of the same name put paid to the initials) lost money on Day One.

By the end of the first week of broadcasting, the loss of money had turned into a haemorrhage.

By the end of the first month, the loss of money was such that a man shovelling fifty-pound notes on to a fire could scarcely have kept up.

By the start of 1956, ATV was going under and Associated-Rediffusion, fearful that it would be asked to provide programmes on the weekend as well, started to prop themselves up in various ways.

By early 1956, ATV had spread to the Midlands and the next contractor, ABC (owners of the cinema chain of the same name) was providing the weekends from the Birmingham transmitter whilst the London weekend company provided the weekdays. New entrant ABC immediately began to lose money.

By mid-1956, Granada in the nominal north of England had arrived on weekdays, with ABC again on weekends. And whilst ABC’s parent company, the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), had pretty deep pockets, Granada did not. Granada had 35 cinemas in the south east and no film-making production base to rely on (ABPC also had a large investment from Warner Brothers to help). So Granada signed a deal with Associated-Rediffusion that was against both the wording and the spirit of the 1954 Television Act.

But the deal allowed Granada to feel secure and gave Associated-Rediffusion an important source of networked programming. The deal meant that A-R guaranteed that Granada wouldn’t make a loss – but that Granada’s profits were, effectively, to be Associated-Rediffusion’s property.

At this point, no one was making a profit. But BET had very deep pockets, and was more than willing to gamble them away on British commercial television.

By the end of 1956, Associated Newspapers were desperate to leave and paid BET and Rediffusion to buy the majority of the shares back, leaving only a 10% holding.

The corner was turned in 1957-58. From that point, A-R, ATV and ABC all began to make greater and greater profits every year – more money than they knew what to do with, in fact. Poor Granada was left breaking just over even until the 1960s, thanks to their justified timidity and Associated-Rediffusion’s unjustified boldness.

But Associated-Rediffusion’s success would be its ultimate downfall.

The licences to broadcast in the UK were not permanent. Every few years they were put up for review. In 1963, A-R swaggered into their interview and swaggered out again – justifiably feeling themselves to be the king of ITV.

But they offended the man in charge of the review, Lord (Charles) Hill of Luton, the man who, as Postmaster-General in 1955, had given birth to ITV in the first place and was now the head of the independent regulator, the Independent Television Authority. He was unable to act under a Conservative government (despite being a Tory himself). But by 1967, he was acting under the auspices of Labour, returned to power in 1964 for the first time since 1951. Labour wanted ITV controlled and disciplined; Hill wanted ITV to obey the Authority.

So when Rediffusion London – the name that Associated-Rediffusion had taken in 1964, finally recognising that Associated (Newspapers) were no longer significant shareholders – swaggered into the interview again and swaggered out again, Hill took action. In December 1967 he announced that, from July 1968, Rediffusion London would be merged with ABC in the north and midlands. Rediffusion London’s contract would be given to the new company, of which ABC would hold 51% – despite being far smaller, both on the network and in terms of profits and parent size, than Rediffusion.

In July 1968, Thames Television – essentially ABC plus the bits of Rediffusion that ABC wanted – was born.

On weekends, a new company calling itself London Weekend was born, with LWT being made up largely of former Rediffusion staff with a sprinkling of ex-ABC. In Yorkshire, former ABC staff helped create Yorkshire Television (YTV) with a sprinkling of ex-Rediffusion personnel.

Rediffusion Television Limited continued to exist as a separate entity (as did the Rediffusion rental chain, Rediffusion Cable systems and Overseas Rediffusion). Their last real production for British television was The Life and Times of Lord Louis Mountbatten, shown in the UK as a Thames presentation, and as a Rediffusion Television production.

Thames itself was removed from ITV at the end of 1992 on the orders of the then-government, though it retains its programme production capability and is now part of what was Radio Luxembourg (later RTL, then CLT, now Fremantle Media).

Having lost the creative side of their business, Rediffusion and BET were left with a 49% investment in the major ITV franchise, plus the other areas into which they had diversified.

These included air conditioning, office management, waste disposal (Biffa), background music (Reditune, the second largest company of its type in the world), telecommunications (Redifon), burglar alarms (Shorrock), aircraft flight simulators , bespoke CCTV systems, Rediffusion International Music, and of course the television rental arm, and local wired systems; and a whole host of things that – by a great stretch of the imagination – could be considered part of ‘broadcasting’ as an industry. Their 1975 slogan was “we know TV inside out”.

But the world was about to change – again.

Whilst companies with a lot of minority interests in many industries had been fashionable in the 1970s – walking Unit Trusts, really – by the 1980s, the financial markets wanted companies to specialise. Any company with a lot of fingers in a lot of pies was seen to be ripe for takeover by a venture capitalist who would sell off everything other than the ‘core business’, then sell off the asset-stripped remainder of the business for a profit.

Ironically, the pendulum has swung back now, and companies are encouraged to diversify into anything related – unless they are ‘underperforming’, in which case they should do the opposite. But in the 1980s, cash was king, and BET and Rediffusion owned a lot of cash, but controlled comparatively little.

The venture capitalists – like vultures – started to circle.

BET began immediately to sell off the ‘non-core activities’. Rediffusion Hong Kong and Rediffusion Singapore were sold to the local governments or their agents. Rediffusion Rentals disappeared from all but the High Streets of the Channel Islands (and soon not even there), and Rediffusion Television’s stake in Thames Television was floated. Soon, everything had gone except for what BET perceived as their new core market: Facilities Management. They were poised to ride the boom of commerce that transformed the UK in the late 1980s.

And then the Tories managed to burst their own false boom, bringing rapid recession to the entire economy. The new market that BET had hoped to tap burst at the same time as companies retrenched and the trend for ‘outsourcing’ rapidly disintegrated (it would return a decade later with renewed force). BET was left cash rich from the sell-offs, but without a market to appeal to – it was ripe for a takeover.

The company tried mergers and takeovers of its own, coupled with rebrands and refocusing. But the share price remained in the doldrums – the company, put simply, was unfashionable. It wound up as nothing really more than a contract facilities company – cleaners for offices, in other words – under the name ‘Initial’.

Under that name, the smaller but more fashionable Rentokil, best known for the extermination of rats and insects in homes and offices, made a bid – and Initial succumbed. The new company was called InitialRentokil and continued to use the Rediffusion Adastral. Eventually, it became Rentokil Initial with a new logo, and is set to become simply Rentokil shortly.

And there, perhaps, would end the story… but not quite.

Because the tram, the maker of BET’s fortune and so long unfashionable in the UK, is now on its way back. Already south London, Manchester and Sheffield have well-developed tram systems. Birmingham’s is now open. Newcastle/Gateshead is growing along disused and ceded British Railways lines. Leeds is next to put trams back on the old BET routes. Birkenhead and then Liverpool will follow, with European Union money already allocated.

Rediffusion Television, so long forgotten – or at least dismissed because of the hour a day of (remembered) popular shows they transmitted to fund more, now forgotten, hours of quality programming – is now the darling of the British Film Institute, with the BFI actively seeking lost Rediffusion and Associated-Rediffusion programming. The name of the 40-year-old organisation behind this web site “Transdiffusion” is at least in part a tribute to that television company. And most recently, television producer and critic Victor Lewis-Smith has secured the use of the name Associated-Rediffusion Television Productions for his production company, along with the signature adastral, so the familiar A-R endcaps are visible once again at the close of fine and varied television programming, as they were almost fifty years ago.

British Electric Traction, Rediffusion and their associated companies over a century deserved to be remembered and the facts known. Rediffusion and its employees were part of an organisation that helped make domestic transport easy for working people; helped pioneer popular mass entertainment; helped win World War II; helped bring information, entertainment and enlightenment to the UK, the Dominions, the Colonies and the Commonwealth for over 50 years; and produced some of the best television programmes and popularised some of the best music the world has ever known.

For that, former employees can be proud of Rediffusion and its familiar star.

The post A short history appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The first to go was Wales (West and North) Television, falling into bankruptcy and being taken over by its neighbour TWW. They were next to go, famously losing their contract in 1967 and flouncing out of ITV in March 1968. They had many investments – from theatres to opticians – and were offered a 40% slice of their successor, but declined both the Harlech investment and continuing in business, selling themselves off and ceasing to exist before the decade was out.

Next out were Westward and Southern. The Independent Broadcasting Authority saw to it that they exited quickly and quietly by requiring their successors, Television South West and Television South respectively, to buy the remains of the companies.

Television South West was next to go, and it committed corporate suicide via a reverse takeover – a company in an unrelated business lent TSW the money to buy them, then took over their stock market listing and renamed TSW to their own name. Even this didn’t last, the company falling into administration some years later.

Television South had famously over-extended itself by buying the American MTM Enterprises and was bought for a song by televangelist Pat Robertson; from there the company was sold to Fox and later Disney.

Thames Television’s afterlife is well known. Its “Plan B” for the almost certain loss of its franchise was to convert to being an independent production company. After much shifting ownership, the name still survives as producer of The X-Factor, although the constituent parts of the original Thames, the studios at Teddington and Euston Road and so forth, have long been sold off separately.

For ABC and Rediffusion, things are slightly different. While they were notionally “merged” to form Thames in 1968, in reality both companies did have something of an afterlife. ABC’s main afterlife was Thames itself – the company was clearly ABC under a new name. ABC’s parent, the Associated British Picture Corporation, would later be bought by EMI and turned into EMI Films.

Rediffusion was a joint venture between British Electric Traction (BET) and BET’s subsidiary Broadcast Relay Services. The BET conglomerate was huge, with interests in laundries, construction companies, plant hire, printing, flight simulators, record publishing, waste disposal and washroom facilities. They saw no need to get out of the television business. With interests in wired broadcasting relay (early cable) and international broadcasting from Barbados to Hong Kong, they could continue to operate even without their UK outlet.

One of the assets they held was a giant collection of film and early video programming. There was, at the time of this advert in 1976, thought to be no market for such black-and-white repeats. Nevertheless, Rediffusion Television Limited held on, ready and waiting for the chance to become a UK broadcaster again.

It never happened.

The post Afterlife appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

One thing must be said immediately. In 365 days’ time, Independent Television – if all goes well – will have been with us for a year. So far, it has been with us for a bare hand-count of hours, and although the conclusions are crying to be jumped to, the temptation to jump must be resisted. The broader judgment must wait until the end of the year – or, say, until the middle of next week.

Speaking empirically, then, what wonders did we see last night? The first was a black cross on a white ground which, accompanied by a high-pitched scream, persisted for some minutes. This vanished and was followed by a card bearing the legend. “Opening Night Independent Television Service Channel 9.” Then the familiar tones of Mr. Leslie Mitchell, who nineteen years ago spoke the very same words at the inauguration of the B.B.C. Television Service, declared: “This is London.”

It was indeed. Historic scene succeeded historic scene as Mr. Mitchell, [A mistake here: it was actually Cecil Lewis, A-R’s deputy controller – Ed.] with scarcely a tremor in his voice, intoned a commentary which appeared at times to be in verse (“A new city would have been built, had Wren but had his way”). With a last quick word about the history so far and future of the Independent Television Service, Mr. Mitchell passed us over to Guildhall, where Mr. John Connell was waiting to introduce the guests at the inaugural banquet.

The first guest was Pitt the Younger, looking down from his niche in unmixed astonishment. Pitt was followed by Gog and Magog, and these by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Lord and Lady Kilmuir, Dr. Charles Hill (Mr. Connell’s voice sank to a reverent whisper), the Bishop of London, Sir Kenneth Clark, and Mr. Norman Collins, looking as if London did indeed, this night, belong to him.

When the guests were met it was the turn of Sir John Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra. Sir John, who looked so composed that he could hardly have heard of Sir Thomas Beecham’s exclusive agreement with the Manchester programme contractor, led the Hallé through Elgar’s “Cockaigne” Overture.

Then came the speeches. The Lord Mayor, in admirably clear close-up, looked nervous, spoke up, and sat down within four minutes. Dr. Hill followed him, looking and sounding, as one would expect, pugnacious. “An immensely powerful and ever-growing medium” was what he called television, and insisted that it was here to stay. Adding that man was many-sided, he wished the I.T.A. well and came to an end.

Then it was the turn of Sir Kenneth Clark (his were the first eyes of the evening to look directly into the camera). For Sir Kenneth, too, the picture was wonderfully clear, as he told us that television had a terrifying power for good and evil, paid tribute to Lord De La Warr, and came to a graceful close exactly at the advertised time.

Over now to “Channel 9” for variety, opening with a huge smile from Mr. Jack Jackson, who proceeded to shut Mr. Hughie Green into a soundproof box. On the whole, the variety show which followed was well up (or some would say down) to B.B.C. standards. But the producers clearly believed in stimulating appetites rather than satisfying them. “A smile, a song, and a cigar” was about all some of the artists had time for.

At ten minutes past eight came – and it came as a surprise – the first advertisement of the new service. A charming young lady brushed her teeth, while a charming young gentleman told us of the benefits of the toothpaste with which she was doing it.

Variety came to an end, and it was drama’s turn. Mr. Robert Morley, his startled-goldfish expression well to the fore and his magnificent eyebrows semaphoring vigorously, told us in a few homely words how surprised he was that Independent Television had ever appeared at all. But now it was here he was clearly going to make the best of it. And the best, for this evening at any rate, was to be the proposal and interrogation scenes from The Importance of Being Earnest. (This of course had already been recorded on film, and one watched with interest to see how it compared with the “live” broadcasts we had already watched. It compared very well.)

Sir John Gielgud proposed very charmingly to his Gwendoline (Miss Margaret Leighton), but it was Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell that he was clearly waiting for – and so, indeed, were we. Nor were we disappointed. It is many years since Dame Edith played Lady Bracknell (that film hardly counts), and she was clearly determined to make up for loss of time. She roared her battle-cry – “A handbag?” – like an indignant foghorn telling its mate that it had just been insulted, and the rest of her magnificent performance was pitched in the same key. The film around her, in so far as one was conscious of it, was admirably, indeed beautifully, composed.

It was the boxing that showed us for the first time in the evening the I.T.A. avoiding a major B.B.C. fault. How often we have been infuriated by a description of something we could perfectly well see for ourselves. There is no need to mention names here, except that of Mr. Richard Dimbleby, but anybody who has ever watched, say, a sporting programme on B.B.C. television will be able to add half a dozen. But Mr. Len Harvey and Mr. Tony Van den Bergh confined themselves almost entirely to inter-round summaries – Mr. Harvey sounding infinitely wistful at finding himself outside a boxing ring – and let the cameramen tell the story for us.

With the hair-trigger timing that characterised all the programmes of the evening, the boxing finished (not, alas, for those who must have drama in everything, with a knock-out), and it was time, after some more advertisements, for the news. I surely cannot be the first to have made a joke about Mr. Christopher Chataway and a running commentary? But for Mr. Chataway it was clearly no joke. Sitting in a dark lounge suit, and obviously too worried to smile, he followed Mr. Aidan Crawley’s introduction with four and a half minutes of news.

After the labouring in the field, came the feast. The cameras, to end the evening, looked in at the party in the May Fair Hotel, where appropriately enough our compere was Mr. Leslie Mitchell, whose voice had ushered in the new era all those hours ago. (Only three? Impossible!) Everybody looked happy, calm, and carefree. And on the whole, and with reservations, and other things being equal, well they might be.

So far, then, what we have seen of Independent Television has certainly not confirmed the worst fears (or hopes?) of its enemies. Television, Sir Kenneth Clark reminded us earlier in the evening, has a terrifying power for good or evil; speaking subjectively, I feel neither uplifted nor depraved by what I have seen. But perhaps the deeper moral effects will make themselves felt only over a period of years.

The post ITV Makes Its Bow appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

Elida Gibbs had paid 50% above the rate card for having the first commercial shown on British television, but thought that the entire premium would be going to charity. Instead, the accountants had a shock for management.

The night had made a loss. A large loss. Something was terribly wrong.

The costs of television – especially live television, the only real economic choice before telecine and video became a reality – were far higher than expected. And AC Nielsen revealed that the number of viewers was far less than expected. Even those with adapted sets were not guaranteed to tune in for opening night. Perhaps, it was suggested, they had been lured away by the death of Grace Archer on the BBC Light Programme, just a few minutes before the Independent Television opened for the first time.

The Lord Mayor of London, having been promised a large amount for his nominated charities, had named a grand total of twelve beneficiaries. With no money in the pot, A-R and ATV sent each charity a token amount of 100 guineas.

Was this simply the costs of the first night’s spectacle? A-R management certainly hoped so. But the next day’s expenditure was also more than income. For ATV (or “ABC” as it was known initially) over the weekend, the situation was worse – their big-name stars took a programme’s profits away before the costs of the programme itself was even considered.

A-R was in the most exposed position. Despite having a set of parents with deep pockets (although Associated Newspapers got cold feet and began to look for ways to escape very quickly) the threat of bankruptcy was clear. ITV simply was not profitable, and after capital expenditure had been taken into account, it was downright suicidal to be involved. And AR had to carry five days of programming on its own without help from any other producer.

ITV was evidently a mistake, and A-R could pay a high price for getting involved.

The post Disaster appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The Captain chose as the location the Guildhall, recently rebuilt and refurbished after having been gutted by the Luftwaffe over a decade before, and even helped choose, with connoisseur Sir Kenneth Clark, what would be offered on the menu for the accompanying banquet.

Invited guests included the Postmaster-General, Dr Charles Hill, as responsible minister, plus many in his department; other ministers in the Conservative government; the local mayors from the London boroughs; and important agents, advertisers and stars; as well as journalists and potential investors. Brownrigg also invited – in the name of the ITA – the board of governors, management and senior staff of the BBC who, to their shame declined to attend.

The BBC’s chairman, Sir Alexander Cadogan, was pressed in writing by his friend Sir Kenneth to attend, but apparently never replied. Nevertheless, Cadogan and his Director-General both attended on the night after all – Sir K’s legendary powers of persuasion having worked again. They worked so well, in fact, that the BBC almost joined the Television Contractors Association, chairing its meeting of 30 September.

At 7pm on 22 September, as the guests enjoyed pre-dinner drinks and ambled to their seats, the final countdown was underway. The transmitter, broadcasting a test card for most of the day, gave way to a tuning signal and then, at 7.14, faded to black.

The post Curtain up appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The former office of the Air Ministry in Holborn, Adastral House on Kingsway, was purchased and renamed ‘Television House’ – though the Rediffusion symbol, a starburst, was almost immediately dubbed the ‘Adastral’ by staff members, thus continuing the name.

The first move was to gut the ornate office block internally and create offices for the company, two studios, film processing laboratories, editing suites, dubbing studios, a local newsroom, an office and studio space for Independent Television’s news company ITN, and, late in the day, provide office and production space for the temporarily homeless weekend contractor ATV.

Bovis Limited began work early in 1955, working vast amounts of overtime whilst staff attempted to create a whole company around them. A fascinating – if probably apocryphal – story involves a departmental secretary finding herself bricked up in her office and spending some time shouting for help before Bovis workers demolished the wall, rescued the secretary and rebuilt the wall, all in a matter of minutes.

To supplement the two studios at Television House, Associated-Rediffusion purchased a plot in Wembley to house four more studios, and took options on space at the Granville Theatre in Walham Green and a sound stage at Viking Film Studios.

In less then six months, A-R recruited 1000 staff members – from secretaries to Roland Gillett, the programme controller of the new company.

Despite the hurried nature of the build-up of the service, A-R were ready for launch in good time, and set their minds to the gala opening of the service on a date in late September to be set by the ITA. The transmitter began test broadcasts on 13 September, and A-R were given the final go-ahead by the Authority.

Launch date would be 22 September 1955.

The post London Calling appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The speed at which the ITA moved to create a whole new system was breathtaking. Within a month, the first chairman, Sir Kenneth Clark, and his newly-appointed officers had chosen from the myriad of different options available under the Act and decided upon the exact split between different contractors.

With the decision made, on 25 August they advertised two contracts in London, two in the Midlands and two in the North, based on a 5-day/2-day split of the week. Leaving little more than a month for applications, they began interviewing the 25 potential contractors on 28 September, completing the process just under a month later, on 20 October.

Their decisions on who would become contractors out of the many groups to apply was announced on 26 October – a truly amazing date given the Authority’s creation less than three months before.

It appears that Broadcast Relay Services (BRS) – a division of British Electric Traction and the supplier of ‘piped radio’ services in areas without a good signal – originally sought the London weekends contract. To back their considerable experience in colonial television and domestic relay services, they brought the newspaper group Associated, publishers of the Daily Mail, who had the financial and political muscle that a new television company would need.

The consortium was named ‘Associated-Rediffusion Limited’, combining the name of the newspaper group with that of BRS subsidiary ‘Rediffusion’, and the ITA offered them the 5-day weekday contact in London. They accepted without hesitation, and thus took on the bulk of the responsibility for the look and feel of the new independent television service. The ITA announced that construction of a new transmitter on Beulah Hill in Upper Norwood, Croydon, would begin as soon as possible with a view to starting programme service in September 1955.

Associated-Rediffusion had less than a year to turn itself from an idea into the UK’s first domestic commercial broadcaster.

The post First to the top appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.