OTD in early British television: 21 June 1937
John Wyver writes: On Monday 21 June 1937, at 3.03pm for just 15 minutes, and then again at 3.42pm for a further 10 minutes, the Television service broadcast a live OB from the Wimbledon Championships for the very first time.
Once true OBs were technically and creatively possible the choice of lawn tennis as the first major sport to be televised was largely pragmatic. The Wimbledon Championships followed less than six weeks after the Coronation, allowing just sufficient time for necessary training with the new equipment.
The south London courts complex, opened in 1922, was a long way from the coaxial cable route, but with no high ground between SW17 and AP, a radio link across 17 miles to the re-transmitting studio could be tested for the first time (see below for the aerial, set alongside the mobile control room).
The event stretched over a number of days, offering multiple programme hours, and in contrast to, say, football, the action took place in a defined and relatively small area. At the same time, there was a comfortable fit with the class composition of the still-tiny audience, with tennis being, as Ross McKibbin observed, ‘an ideal sport for the newish middle class.’
Affordable by most middling families, tennis could be played enjoyably without great prowess, and amongst amateurs there was something close to gender equality. Indeed, the sport was a desirable social competency for aspirational middle-class couples, and in the interwar period it had grown alongside the new suburbs. It might almost have been made for the new medium.
Radio broadcasts from Centre Court began in July 1927, when coverage via 2LO was interspersed with contributions from the Daventry String Quartet. A decade later, on this afternoon of 21 June, the first lookers-in saw part of the match in which English ace H.W. ‘Bunny’ Austin beat Irishman George Rogers. Austin had reached the men’s singles final in 1931 and with Fred Perry was part of the England team that from 1933 to 1935 had won the Davis Cup three times.
So a strain of nationalism inflecting the BBC’s tennis coverage was established from the first day, and was underlined during a later broadcast when Queen Mary was pictured entering the Royal Box.
In this first year, one camera, moderately elevated and placed centrally at one end of Centre Court, provided a general wide view, and a second picked up closer shots of the server, the scoreboard, and spectators, whose faces, one report marvelled, ‘could be seen clearly’. A third was placed alongside the commentators’ box (see header image).
Correspondents noted that during play the ball could not often be made out but the strokes of the players came through exceptionally well. ‘Telephoto lenses were used when lighting conditions permitted,’ one observer recorded, ‘and rapid and frequent “panning” was avoided, the intention being to give a more stable picture by concentrating on the play first at one end of the court and then at the other.’
For the first broadcasts the television service ran the National programme radio coverage against the pictures, but it was quickly clear that the sound was irritatingly late. Freddie Grisewood was soon providing a synchronised commentary, and its comparative sparseness was appreciated. For later broadcasts, Grisewood offered only ‘the sort of remarks about play and style which we ourselves might have made to a friend sitting next to us in a Wimbledon seat.’
Overall, the coverage was regarded as immensely successful, and when the whole service controversially shut down for a three week summer break in late July, the only programmes were OBs from Wimbledon of Davis Cup matches.
Coverage of the main tournament was undertaken in 1938, but because of conflicting demands for the OB unit, it was shown on only three days, and then extended in 1939, when the men’s singles and doubles finals were broadcast. The fit between the Championships and the BBC has been such that, while the Corporation has been priced out of competing for rights to many other events, it continues today to provide, as from Monday, extensive free-to-air coverage for British viewers.
[OTD post no. 186; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication in January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, from which this is as extract.]
Leave a Reply