18th September 2025
John Wyver writes: The ambition of producer Eustace Robb's 30-line television broadcasts is again witnessed by the 50-minute broadcast in the late evening of Tuesday 18 September 1934. In what was in fact a reprise of a broadcast from July,
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11th September 2025
John Wyver writes: The evening of Wednesday 11 September 1935 saw the final 30-line broadcast from the BBC studio in Portland Place. There had been regular BBC transmissions since August 1932, but now following the Selsdon Report's recommendation that a
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6th September 2025
John Wyver writes: Wednesday 6 September 1933 saw the second performance on the 30-line service of Rokoko, a musical comedy programme selected from operettas by Leo Fall, Millocker and Emmerich Kalman. Henrik Ege contributed original dialogue and there were additional
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22nd August 2025
John Wyver writes: At just after 11pm on Monday 22 August 1932, the BBC began a television service using Baird company 30-line technology. Baird Television Ltd had been broadcasting since November 1929, at times with limited BBC support, but now
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10th August 2025
John Wyver writes: In the line-up for the Baird 30-line transmission on the morning of 10 August 1931, along with jazz drummer L. Ash-Lyons and monologist Janet Barrow was Avril Coleridge-Taylor giving for the third time on television a
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2nd August 2025
John Wyver writes: Nearly a year on from the BBC having taken over 30-line television, producer Eustace Robb was keen to produce increasingly ambitious broadcasts. One example was Looking at London by Television, a 35-minute original revue screened in the
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1st August 2025
John Wyver writes: In the weeks just after The Man with the Flower in his Mouth (see earlier post), John Logie Baird’s campaign to extend awareness of the potential of television next took to the stage of the more
31st July 2025
John Wyver writes: The late-night 45-minute broadcast in the BBC's low-definition television service on Wednesday 31 July 1935 promised 'an illustrated natural history talk'. And indeed the Zoological Society's Dr David Seth-Smith, curator of mammals and birds, and already
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23rd July 2025
John Wyver writes: The line-up for the Baird Television transmission at 11am on the morning of Wednesday 23 July 1930 featured, as usual, a trio of entertainers. Scottish (although billed as 'Scotch') music hall comedian Tommy Lorne was up
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20th July 2025
John Wyver writes: On the afternoon of 20 July 1937 the BBC television service mounted a new presentation of Luigi Pirandello's oblique modernist dialogue The Man with the Flower in his Mouth. Just over seven years before, more