OTD in early British television: 4 September 1938
John Wyver writes: Perhaps this is a bit of a stretch but I want an excuse to return to 1938’s Radiolympia which closed ‘yesterday’. So I’m speculating that Sunday 4 September would have been the day when a crew dismantled the BBC’s elaborate Peter Bax-designed glass-walled temporary studio from which the BBC had been televising for some eight hours a day for the duration of the fair. Which gives me licence to feature the above truly remarkable photograph (taken by William Davis) from a spread in the Illustrated London News.
This is the only image I’ve seen which gives a clear sense of the windows, on the left, through which the public looked at the television operation, which were both praised for their transparent modernity. But this set-up was also criticised for excluding Radiolympia attendees from the shows, like Cabaret Cruise (see yesterday) that were broadcast from there.
The image also offers a vivid sense of a studio crew in action, in this case displanted from their usual surroundings at AP, and on the right it shows the cameras clustered around the interview set where, seemingly, Elizabeth Cowell is hosting an edition of each morning’s Come and Be Televised show.
Here’s a detail from the ILN image:
And here’s a BBC publicity photograph with the same focus:
What I am now uncertain about is how this niche was positioned in relation to the main set which at times was dressed with the extravagant frontage of Cabaret Cruise but which was also used for fashion shows and other variety performances.
Radiolympia a year later was a more subdued affair, and indeed closed early because of the declaration of war. The fair returned in the post-war years but 1938 was seen as a highspot that significantly raised the profile of television and was held to have contributed to a meaningful, and very welcome, uptick in sales of receivers.
[OTD post no. 261; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication on 8 January 2026 of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, which can now be pre-ordered from Bloomsbury here.]
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