OTD in early British television: 31 January 1935
John Wyver writes: The last day of January 1935 was publication day for one of the most consequential documents in British television history: the Report of the Television Committee chaired by Lord Selsdon. Among other matters, this determined that television should be further developed by the BBC and that a ‘high definition’ service should be set up operating with both the Baird and Marconi-EMI technologies.
By early 1934, the BBC was under increasing pressure, from the press and opinion-formers to engage much more robustly with television. Despite operating the 30-line service since 1932, the corporation’s interest had been only modest, and arguably only as a way to protect its monopoly of broadcasting and freeze out other parties from developing the new medium.
Following a suggestion by director-general John Reith, Post Office and BBC representatives recommended in April that the government should appoint a panel to advise on the future of the medium. With Lord Selsdon as Chair, the Television Committee met first at the end of May and took verbal evidence from 38 witnesses as well as receiving many written proposals.
From the start there was implicit agreement that any service would be run by the BBC, even if the way to finance this remained unclear. Similarly acknowledged was the obsolescence of ‘low-definition’ television, whether of the 30-line kind or the more recent 180-line systems.
Baird Television’s Major Church even spoke dismissively to the committee of 30-line technology, despite the Baird-supplied system operating for a further year at the BBC. Head and shoulders images were tolerable, he said, but full-length shots ‘became rather ridiculous.’
And when Reith addressed the committee in November, he confidently promised a high definition service, initially with a station in the South and another in the North, and with the expectation of a network of a dozen more. He also indicated that the Corporation was prepared to work, for a limited period at least, with a Television Advisory Committee.
Selsdon’s Report was published on 31 January 1935, confirming the BBC’s responsibility for a service, along with the TAC, which would have broad advisory but few executive powers. There was also a woolly recommendation that financing should be provided from the existing radio licence fee and be shared between the BBC and the Treasury.
Crucially for both Baird Television Ltd and EMI it was recommended that a single transmitting station be set up in London with the systems of both companies working in parallel. By this point EMI already had an effective electronic 405-line camera, to the development of which the company’s research scientist Isaac Shoenberg had boldly committed his team only a year or so before.
BTL were working with a variant of the spotlight scanner and the inflexible intermediate film camera, which produced a 240-line picture, and were exploring a system based on cathode-ray technology licensed from Farnsworth. Manufacturers would now have to make sets capable of receiving both transmissions, which Selsdon laid down would be used ‘alternately – and not simultaneously’ once the service went on air.
Strikingly, the Report had nothing to say about the form or content of broadcasts. Writing in 1950, Kenneth Baily observed, that ‘it is interesting, and I think important, that this first investigation of television was pre-eminently a technical one. The question of what programmes television should supply, with all the attendant implications as to its power in the home, culturally, educationally and as a medium of persuasion – these questions only began to receive attention much later.’
Thanks to Google Arts and the Alexandra Palace Television Society, the (almost) full report is available here, although frustratingly the spread of pp.24-25 is missing.
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