John Wyver writes: The schedule from Alexandra Palace on Wednesday 28 April 1937 was unremarkable. As was the schedule two years later on Friday 28 April 1939. Which is more or less the point of this post, prompted in part more
John Wyver writes: 'There were three, large, hearty failures in the television programmes last week and I propose to discuss them.' That was how the splendid television critic for The Listener, Grace Wyndham Goldie, began her 27 April 1939 column more
John Wyver writes: We take for granted live coverage and analysis of Budget speeches today, but television had to learn how to make such broadcasts, a process that began on Tuesday 26 April 1938. That evening from more
John Wyver writes: The first half-hour of the afternoon transmission on Tuesday 25 April 1939 was graced with the second performance of a production J.M. Barrie's one act, and according to the author 'unfinished', Shall We Join the more
John Wyver writes: Monday 24 April 1939 saw one of the BBC's pair of mobile control rooms parked outside Burlington House for an afternoon outside broadcast from Varnishing Day for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Above is the image Radio more
John Wyver writes: On St George’s Day 1938, Saturday 23 April, and on the following evening, a ‘local OB’ from the lake close by the AP studios transmitted a reconstruction of the First World War naval attack exactly twenty more
John Wyver writes: The afternoon of Saturday 22 April 1939 saw the first performance of Dallas Bower's production of Katharine and Petruchio, a radically shortened 'acting version' of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew that had originally been more
John Wyver writes: From 11.12pm on Friday 21 April 1933 viewers fortunate enough to own a 30-line television receiver could watch the half-hour Looking In, billed as ‘the first television revue’. Written by John Watt with music composed by more
John Wyver writes: On what from production photographs looks like a rainy Tuesday afternoon on 20 April 1937, the fledgling Television service at Alexandra Palace, ever in search of noteworthy elements to broadcast, elected to screen as a local OB more
John Wyver writes: Television's treat on the evening of Tuesday 18 April 1939 was the third Coliseum Night presenting the first half of the variety bill at Sir Oswald Stoll's flagship theatre in London's St Martin's Lane. Featured artists more