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A Quick History of the BBC · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
0:16
Speaker 2: should know.
0:18
Speaker 1: That's right. You got a quick announcement.
0:20
Speaker 2: Huh, I do huh?
0:24
Speaker 1: I think so.
0:25
Speaker 2: Well, if you're talking about our new playlist that's coming
0:28
Speaker 2: out that one, that's right. Yeah, we have a new
0:31
Speaker 2: playlist coming out, right, Chuck.
0:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, this holiday season, I think coming out very soon. Actually,
0:36
Speaker 1: we have the Twelve Days of Holiday Toys because we've
0:38
Speaker 1: got lots of great toy episodes over the years and
0:42
Speaker 1: we've compiled them together for the whole family to enjoy.
0:47
Speaker 2: That's right, we love those toy episodes. I think it
0:50
Speaker 2: comes out on December twelfth.
0:51
Speaker 1: Right, I think so. And that's what I mean in
0:55
Speaker 1: real time. This's probably are not real time, but in
0:57
Speaker 1: real podcast time this week.
0:59
Speaker 2: I think I think so too. And what do you
1:02
Speaker 2: have to do to get these episodes? You may ask nothing.
1:06
Speaker 2: You don't have to lift a single finger. We're going
1:08
Speaker 2: to put them in the feed like we have been
1:10
Speaker 2: and hope you enjoy them.
1:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And I have another announcement for this BBC episode.
1:17
Speaker 2: Okay, is that how you say it the beb Yeah,
1:21
Speaker 2: I've heard that too.
1:23
Speaker 1: What do you say?
1:26
Speaker 2: That's how I was going to say it?
1:28
Speaker 1: The whole episodes this one even more so than a
1:30
Speaker 1: lot of our others that are you know, you could
1:32
Speaker 1: potentially do one hundred episodes on. This is like serious
1:36
Speaker 1: overview territory. When you're talking about something as far reaching
1:41
Speaker 1: and long standing and sort of legendary culturally as the
1:45
Speaker 1: BBC is, I don't want our our listeners across the
1:50
Speaker 1: pond to be like, guys, you're gonna give us, you know,
1:53
Speaker 1: forty five minutes on the BBC.
1:56
Speaker 2: That's exactly what we're going to do, and it's with love. Yeah,
2:00
Speaker 2: and big thanks to our man in Britain Kyle, for
2:03
Speaker 2: wrangling this huge, massive topic into something pretty pretty good
2:08
Speaker 2: and understandable.
2:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I gotta say I love the BBC. Always have. Yeah,
2:13
Speaker 1: since I was a little kid watching really yeah, watching
2:17
Speaker 1: their content on public television. Uh huh, you know, everything
2:21
Speaker 1: from Flying Circus to Benny Hill to Faulty Towers and
2:25
Speaker 1: then having a British roommate in college. He would tell
2:28
Speaker 1: me about the east Enders and you know, all the
2:31
Speaker 1: all the you know, stuff that he grew up with,
2:33
Speaker 1: and it's just been near and dere. I read the
2:35
Speaker 1: BBC news all the time. It's just, you know, I
2:37
Speaker 1: love it.
2:38
Speaker 2: I definitely watched Benny Hill a lot when I was
2:41
Speaker 2: a kid too, so I guess I didn't realize it
2:43
Speaker 2: was BBC content, But it totally was, wasn't it.
2:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just thought it was some guy who talked
2:48
Speaker 1: funny from Indiana, right, who liked bear breasts.
2:53
Speaker 2: Yes, he was really into boobs, man, he was. If
2:56
Speaker 2: there was ever a person into boobs, it was Benny Hill.
2:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, twelve year old chuck.
3:03
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's cool. I guess I've loved the BBC
3:06
Speaker 2: longer than I thought too, So this is it's a
3:10
Speaker 2: hat tip, I guess, also a big thanks to the
3:13
Speaker 2: BBC and also deeply critical of it.
3:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, to this one hundred and three year old institution.
3:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, just in time for it one hundred and third birthday.
3:25
Speaker 2: So let's get started. You mentioned that it's called BIB.
3:29
Speaker 2: I had not heard that before, but apparently it's quite accurate.
3:32
Speaker 2: And the BIB you can liken it in the US
3:35
Speaker 2: to MPR, where there's a lot of you know, accusations
3:39
Speaker 2: of it being left leaning bias, and then people on
3:42
Speaker 2: the left are like, no, it's right bias. It does
3:45
Speaker 2: its best to stay middle ground if possible. It has
3:48
Speaker 2: to do with public funding, but in a much different way.
3:52
Speaker 2: It's a it's a venerable institution, but like way more
3:56
Speaker 2: venerable than MPR. Public broadcasting is here in the United States.
4:00
Speaker 2: It is a big chunk of British culture. And in
4:04
Speaker 2: that sense, I get the sense that even people who
4:06
Speaker 2: are like to hell with BBC still feel some sort
4:10
Speaker 2: of like pride in the BBC in its existence.
4:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know that is all as we have
4:15
Speaker 1: learned by design. That was no accident. It is the
4:19
Speaker 1: world's largest broadcaster, has twenty one thousand plus employees, and
4:25
Speaker 1: nobody knows it's the it's the oldest national broadcaster, and
4:28
Speaker 1: nobody knows how many programs they put out. Kyle said
4:31
Speaker 1: between ten and twenty million. So that's that's a lot
4:34
Speaker 1: of stuff. And that's also a big cushion.
4:36
Speaker 2: It really is as a margin. Yeah, that's called hedging.
4:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that includes I think, you know, everything radio.
4:43
Speaker 1: And because as we'll see, their little fingies are in
4:45
Speaker 1: all the Figi puddings.
4:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, if you live in the UK,
4:51
Speaker 2: there's some way, shape or form that you're taking in
4:54
Speaker 2: BBC content almost certainly because they dominate or they they
4:58
Speaker 2: did at one point dominate radio, dominate television, now that
5:03
Speaker 2: they blaze the trail onto the Internet as far as
5:06
Speaker 2: news sites go, they have a huge web presence and
5:09
Speaker 2: then in the like across the world as well. They
5:12
Speaker 2: have what's called the World Service where you can watch
5:15
Speaker 2: BBC news all over the world, so it's appropriately named,
5:18
Speaker 2: and they say that they have an audience of almost
5:20
Speaker 2: half a billion people around the world, and.
5:22
Speaker 1: I believe it.
5:23
Speaker 2: I believe it too. I know probably two hundred and
5:26
Speaker 2: fifty million people who watch the BBC myself.
5:33
Speaker 1: Because should we go back to the beginning.
5:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go with the beginning, all right.
5:38
Speaker 1: So we got to go I said it was one
5:39
Speaker 1: hundred and three years old. So if you carry the one,
5:41
Speaker 1: you subtract that nineteen twenty two is where we're going
5:45
Speaker 1: in our British wayback machine. Mind the gap, which you
5:56
Speaker 1: know runs on coal and shepherd's pie and October eighteen,
6:01
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two is where we're going because that is
6:03
Speaker 1: where the British Broadcasting Company was formed before they became
6:07
Speaker 1: the corporation as a partnership between what they called the
6:11
Speaker 1: post Office, which at the time was basically there they
6:14
Speaker 1: ran the telegraph service over there, and the Marconi Company,
6:19
Speaker 1: who said, I got a lot of radios. I'd like
6:22
Speaker 1: to assail, but you got nothing to put on the radio.
6:25
Speaker 2: Oh, we haven't heard that in a while.
6:27
Speaker 1: It's been a minute.
6:28
Speaker 2: So yeah. Remember in our AM radio episode we talked
6:31
Speaker 2: about the Marconi Company setting up companies all over the world. Yeah,
6:36
Speaker 2: this is a good example of that. And the British
6:39
Speaker 2: government was like, hey, how about this. We will make
6:42
Speaker 2: sure you have zero competition. That will give you a monopoly,
6:46
Speaker 2: but you got to make some pretty good content here.
6:49
Speaker 2: We want to hear good stuff. Right now, all we
6:51
Speaker 2: hear is and we want to hear better stuff than that. Yeah,
6:55
Speaker 2: And so the Marconi Company set us up. They established
6:59
Speaker 2: this this station, like you said, in nineteen twenty two,
7:03
Speaker 2: and I guess five years later the British government was like,
7:06
Speaker 2: this is ours now, this is a state owned monopoly.
7:09
Speaker 2: I don't know what happened to the Marconi Company, but
7:12
Speaker 2: it sounds like they got hung out to dry. I
7:16
Speaker 2: guess is the nicest way I can put it.
7:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet they did. Okay, So that was twenty
7:21
Speaker 1: seven when it became the Broadcasting Corporation and very you know,
7:25
Speaker 1: kind of right out of the gate, they were like,
7:26
Speaker 1: here's what we're gonna do. We're not gonna it's gonna
7:28
Speaker 1: be this weird hybrid of culture and entertainment kind of
7:33
Speaker 1: ran through run through the government, but supposedly the government
7:37
Speaker 1: doesn't intervene too much. It's kind of hard to reckon
7:42
Speaker 1: how that all works, and sometimes it works really well.
7:44
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's been a lot of controversy. But what they
7:47
Speaker 1: did decide early on is we're not going to advertise
7:50
Speaker 1: we're not going to tax people outwardly. At least, we're
7:54
Speaker 1: going to have what's called a license fee, which is
7:57
Speaker 1: this to us in the United States, a very strange
8:01
Speaker 1: sort of arrangement wherein households pay a certain amount of
8:05
Speaker 1: money starting in nineteen twenty three with ten shillings a
8:09
Speaker 1: year to fund the BBC. And that's like your household
8:13
Speaker 1: license to listen to and then later watch stuff on
8:17
Speaker 1: television and listen on the radio, like.
8:19
Speaker 2: You have to have a license to watch TV in
8:21
Speaker 2: the UK, is what you're saying.
8:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they don't say, all right, now here's the
8:25
Speaker 1: codes to turn it on. I mean, I guess, is
8:29
Speaker 1: it just like an honor system?
8:31
Speaker 2: That's what Kyle. So we had to follow up with
8:34
Speaker 2: Kyle or like, we do not get this license thing
8:36
Speaker 2: because it's just you Brits just take it as like
8:39
Speaker 2: it's just the most normal thing in the world. It's not.
8:43
Speaker 2: So it turns out that it does seem to be
8:46
Speaker 2: on an honor system, and that most people follow that
8:50
Speaker 2: in part because most people have honor. But also there's
8:54
Speaker 2: apparently a very real threat that the BBC will send
8:57
Speaker 2: out some government goons to show up at your door
9:00
Speaker 2: step and be like, hey, are you do you have
9:02
Speaker 2: a TV license? And I guess some people think that
9:06
Speaker 2: it's it's incumbent upon them to open their door and
9:09
Speaker 2: let the person in to see that they have a
9:12
Speaker 2: TV and they can't produce a license and you can
9:14
Speaker 2: get fined one thousand dollars.
9:16
Speaker 1: And apparently they have trucks.
9:18
Speaker 2: They say pounds thank you, which is more than one
9:20
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. You should have also said the goon squad,
9:23
Speaker 2: I should have let me just retake this whole Let's
9:26
Speaker 2: just start at the beginning again.
9:28
Speaker 1: You have to put on your newsboy cap and get
9:30
Speaker 1: out your cup of tea to really get in the zone,
9:32
Speaker 1: you know.
9:33
Speaker 2: Really my Lipton's BlackBerry tea. Yeah, but apparently they will
9:38
Speaker 2: come to your house. So think about this, right. If
9:41
Speaker 2: you are not in the UK and you subscribe to
9:45
Speaker 2: Netflix and you get Netflix because you're using a friend's password,
9:50
Speaker 2: imagine if Netflix showed up on your doorstep and said
9:53
Speaker 2: are you getting Netflix for free?
9:54
Speaker 1: Yeah?
9:55
Speaker 2: And you say no, and they say prove it, let
9:57
Speaker 2: me in, let me go, let me go check and
9:58
Speaker 2: see if you have Netflix, because we know you don't
10:00
Speaker 2: have your own account. That's essentially what they do with that.
10:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. I believe the Color TV license for twenty twenty
10:09
Speaker 1: five is one hundred and seventy four pounds fifty twenty
10:14
Speaker 1: two point eight million people pay this about twelve percent,
10:18
Speaker 1: don't They just sort of evade that cost for a
10:21
Speaker 1: total of about three point eight billion pounds that goes
10:25
Speaker 1: to the BBC and the government. But this license expires
10:28
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty seven, and there's a lot of himming
10:30
Speaker 1: and howeing going on over what's going to happen next.
10:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. Over the course of its history, these ten year
10:36
Speaker 2: charters that they get that get renewed and reviewed. Usually
10:40
Speaker 2: the government wants something in return, or at the very
10:43
Speaker 2: least rakes them over the coals publicly. But it does
10:46
Speaker 2: seem from what I was reading that this does seem
10:49
Speaker 2: like to be a particularly dire situation for the BBC
10:53
Speaker 2: in their charter.
10:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
10:56
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of people who are like, no,
10:59
Speaker 2: let's get rid of the ABC altogether, or let's let
11:01
Speaker 2: them compete in the free market. They can sell ads.
11:05
Speaker 2: It's an unfair, aggressive tax where the poorest people have
11:08
Speaker 2: to pay the most percentage of their income for it,
11:11
Speaker 2: whether they want to or not, just to watch TV.
11:14
Speaker 2: There's a lot of competing ideas for what to do,
11:17
Speaker 2: and the BBC's like, how about this, let's just not
11:21
Speaker 2: change anything and increase the license fee a little bit.
11:24
Speaker 2: And they're getting crickets back right now.
11:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're getting crickets. So time will tell. In twenty
11:30
Speaker 1: twenty seven, will report back what happened, right, Yeah, yeah,
11:34
Speaker 1: a little follow up, But let's go back to the beginning,
11:37
Speaker 1: because they had a guiding light at the beginning which
11:40
Speaker 1: I was talking about, which was after the World War One,
11:43
Speaker 1: the Great war. They really said, let's let's start this
11:46
Speaker 1: thing to embody what it means to be a Britain
11:51
Speaker 1: and to sort of get our common culture out there
11:55
Speaker 1: to the world through you know, sports obviously would come along,
11:59
Speaker 1: and music and interviews and documentaries and plays and things
12:03
Speaker 1: at the time. And there were three dudes early on
12:05
Speaker 1: that were the I guess the founders. Cecil Lewis, who
12:09
Speaker 1: was a fighter pilot, former fighter pilot.
12:11
Speaker 2: Man, you were nailing the British pronunciations here.
12:15
Speaker 1: He might have gone by Cecil, I don't know, a
12:17
Speaker 1: broadcaster named Arthur Burrows. And their first director General, who
12:21
Speaker 1: was the person in charge of the whole thing. His
12:24
Speaker 1: name was John I think, right.
12:27
Speaker 2: I'm going with Wreath.
12:28
Speaker 1: You're going with Wreath and the director General is in charge.
12:31
Speaker 1: But they also there's also a government board of governors
12:34
Speaker 1: that they work with or maybe answer to.
12:36
Speaker 2: Right. And one of the things about the BBC, one
12:39
Speaker 2: of the reasons it's so venerated, it was a huge
12:42
Speaker 2: trailblazer thanks to these three guys in their vision. I
12:45
Speaker 2: saw that John Reith was described by the New World
12:48
Speaker 2: Encyclopedia as a man of high intelligence, great ambition, and
12:52
Speaker 2: rigid moral views and just like out of the gate,
12:56
Speaker 2: they set the standard for broadcasting, for broadcast journey for
13:01
Speaker 2: what it meant to kind of create a common culture.
13:04
Speaker 2: Remember in our Saturday Morning Cartoon episode we talked about
13:07
Speaker 2: how Saturday Morning Cartoons played like a bardic function. Yeah,
13:12
Speaker 2: it gives a common culture to a bunch of people.
13:14
Speaker 2: That was like part of their goal was to create
13:17
Speaker 2: a common British culture and that happened right after World
13:20
Speaker 2: War One. At the time, nobody had anything in common,
13:24
Speaker 2: so it was a good thing that the BBC came along.
13:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was in the infancy of radio at
13:29
Speaker 1: the time and such that Kyle dug up this kind
13:32
Speaker 1: of fun thing. I guess there was a sign in
13:35
Speaker 1: some of the recording studios and broadcasting studios where it
13:38
Speaker 1: said you will all caps deafen thousands. So people didn't
13:43
Speaker 1: know what they were doing, so they really had to
13:45
Speaker 1: kind of figure this whole thing out. It was a
13:47
Speaker 1: very intimidating thing, you know, early on to sit in
13:50
Speaker 1: front of a microphone when no one had done that
13:52
Speaker 1: kind of thing before. And even Arthur Burrows as a broadcaster,
13:56
Speaker 1: he said broadcasting to millions was awful and they were
14:00
Speaker 1: worried about getting you know, quote some madman on the
14:03
Speaker 1: microphone who could do a lot of damage. So it
14:05
Speaker 1: was a it was a pretty intimidating thing at first
14:08
Speaker 1: when they were getting their feet wet.
14:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so for people outside of Britain too, the
14:15
Speaker 2: BBC was it. They were the only radio station, not
14:18
Speaker 2: because there were there was no competition. They had a
14:21
Speaker 2: monopoly for years and years and years. They had a
14:24
Speaker 2: monopoly on radio and then television. So just bear that
14:27
Speaker 2: in mind. So it was really incumbent upon these guys,
14:30
Speaker 2: and they realized their responsibility to be the provider of
14:33
Speaker 2: mass communication for their entire nation, and they took that
14:37
Speaker 2: responsibility seriously. And they started the whole thing out on
14:40
Speaker 2: November fourteenth, nineteen twenty two, with the call sign TWOLO
14:46
Speaker 2: that was their broadcast license from the Marconi Company, and
14:50
Speaker 2: Arthur Burrows said, Hello, Hello, this is too low the
14:56
Speaker 2: London station of the British Broadcasting Company call too WELLO calling,
15:02
Speaker 2: and that was my Arthur Burroughs.
15:04
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Keep in mind everyone, he was very
15:08
Speaker 1: nervous on the first day. That's why Josh sounded liked that.
15:12
Speaker 1: Then he went on to just sort of get the
15:14
Speaker 1: content underway. He did a one minute weather and news
15:16
Speaker 1: bulletin and this is adorable. Then he repeated it slower
15:20
Speaker 1: so people could take notes to I guess, read back
15:23
Speaker 1: to their family. And from the get go they didn't
15:27
Speaker 1: call it BBC English at the time. What it was
15:30
Speaker 1: called was received pronunciation. But it was this sort of
15:36
Speaker 1: accent that they all agreed would be the accent. They
15:38
Speaker 1: didn't like regional accents coming on and everyone sort of
15:41
Speaker 1: doing their own thing. They opted for this middle class
15:44
Speaker 1: southern English that like at the Eton School, where it
15:49
Speaker 1: was just sort of the same.
15:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently have been generating among aristocrats since like the
15:56
Speaker 2: eighteenth century. And at that same time there were colonists
15:59
Speaker 2: who were setting up the call colonies in North America
16:01
Speaker 2: who had separated from that, and so there are in
16:05
Speaker 2: some ways a lot more similarities to how Americans talk
16:08
Speaker 2: today to how people in Shakespeare's time would have spoken
16:13
Speaker 2: than the people in Great Britain today and the UK
16:16
Speaker 2: have with the people in Shakespeare's time, especially hard ours
16:20
Speaker 2: like Shakespeare would have been like what is a car
16:25
Speaker 2: or the h's instead of Henry Higgins, right, you would
16:30
Speaker 2: say Henry Higgins. That's how Americans say it. So those
16:35
Speaker 2: two big differences. That's how Brits used to speak before,
16:38
Speaker 2: like I guess about the eighteen hundreds.
16:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so they you know, they got the ball
16:43
Speaker 1: rolling very fast on all kinds of content. In the
16:45
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, they had something called the Children's Hour, They
16:50
Speaker 1: started playing live concerts at some of London's you know,
16:54
Speaker 1: venerated halls. In nineteen twenty seven, they started sports broadcasting
16:58
Speaker 1: with the FA Cup Final, which the very first ever
17:01
Speaker 1: live commentary for any event, not just sports. And by
17:05
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen twenties, by the end of
17:07
Speaker 1: that first decade, really just eight years, they had two
17:10
Speaker 1: million license holders. Those were households, so they had a
17:14
Speaker 1: lot more than that as active listeners, and they were
17:17
Speaker 1: a venerated, respected institution kind of right out of the.
17:20
Speaker 2: Gate, yes, But before that they ran into their first
17:23
Speaker 2: major headbut with government. And I say, we take a
17:27
Speaker 2: break and come back and talk about.
17:29
Speaker 1: That about chew chill.
17:31
Speaker 2: That's right, We'll be right back, so, Chuck. We talked
17:47
Speaker 2: about them headbutting with government and the first time it
17:49
Speaker 2: ever happened was with the nineteen twenty six general strike,
17:53
Speaker 2: which is when a bunch of people go on strike
17:55
Speaker 2: from all different kinds of professions, and they were doing
17:58
Speaker 2: this in sympathy with coal miners. I think more than
18:03
Speaker 2: a million coal miners were having their wages reduced, and
18:07
Speaker 2: so a bunch of different people from different professions went
18:10
Speaker 2: on strike, and that included print workers at the newspapers.
18:13
Speaker 2: So the newspapers effectively shut down except for the British Gazette,
18:18
Speaker 2: which was a government owned newspaper. And the government owned
18:21
Speaker 2: newspapers like this strike sucks and everybody who likes it
18:25
Speaker 2: sucks too. But that left the BBC is the only
18:28
Speaker 2: form of mass communication reporting on this stuff. And apparently
18:32
Speaker 2: Winston Churchill was not very happy with the idea that
18:35
Speaker 2: the BBC, the government owned monopoly, was not just being
18:40
Speaker 2: like this strike sucks and anybody likes it sucks. They
18:43
Speaker 2: were reporting neutrally on it.
18:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was Finance Minister at the time, but he
18:48
Speaker 1: had a lot of sway, obviously, and he was like, hey,
18:51
Speaker 1: I think we should declare an emergency and take over
18:55
Speaker 1: the BBC. And the Director General resisted. Reith did and
18:59
Speaker 1: he said, no, we're not gonna let that happen. But
19:02
Speaker 1: they it seems like they were strong armed into not
19:05
Speaker 1: airing the other side as much. One example is when
19:08
Speaker 1: they had Prime Minister Stanley bald went on at one
19:10
Speaker 1: point and this was at Rice's house. They were broadcasting
19:14
Speaker 1: out of the leader of the opposition, Ramsey McDonald was like, well,
19:18
Speaker 1: I'd get to come on now, too, right, and the
19:21
Speaker 1: government refused that. So they remained, you know, through the
19:25
Speaker 1: rest of the strike somewhat impartial. They didn't let McDonald on,
19:30
Speaker 1: but they did block Churchill basically from being on the
19:33
Speaker 1: BBC until he resigned in nineteen thirty eight. So they
19:37
Speaker 1: were like, you're never coming on here.
19:39
Speaker 2: No, that's quite a coup actually, because Churchill talk and
19:42
Speaker 2: give speeches, so throughout the forties or the beginning of
19:48
Speaker 2: the forties through World War Two, they managed to hang
19:51
Speaker 2: on and keep reporting as best as possible. The radio
19:54
Speaker 2: definitely did. It became a government propagand it's outlet. Some
20:00
Speaker 2: of the European powers that had been overrun by the
20:04
Speaker 2: Nazis and it made their way to the UK used
20:06
Speaker 2: the BBC to broadcast to their people back home, or
20:11
Speaker 2: I think the Polish army in exile, a Polish government
20:14
Speaker 2: in exile sent coded messages to Polish resistance forces. It
20:20
Speaker 2: still kept going. Apparently their studio was bombed in nineteen
20:24
Speaker 2: forty and it took out a lot of the top
20:26
Speaker 2: few floors, but luckily they were broadcasting out of the
20:30
Speaker 2: basement still, and I guess the guy who was reading
20:33
Speaker 2: the news at the time dusted the script off and
20:37
Speaker 2: kept reading. You heard kind of a boom in the background,
20:41
Speaker 2: but the news reader basically didn't miss a beat.
20:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, they kept going because they had that charge to
20:47
Speaker 1: do so. In the nineteen thirties is when TV came along.
20:51
Speaker 1: So at the beginning there was a Scotsman named John
20:54
Speaker 1: Logi Baird. This was in nineteen twenty six where he
20:58
Speaker 1: had this really archaic at you know, I guess it
21:02
Speaker 1: was pretty advanced for the time, but archaic now a
21:04
Speaker 1: mechanical system where they had rotating discs scanning and displaying images.
21:10
Speaker 1: And so they said, all right, that's good enough for now.
21:12
Speaker 1: It's nineteen thirty two. No one will know that this
21:15
Speaker 1: isn't very good.
21:16
Speaker 2: I can't imagine.
21:16
Speaker 1: They put out a very experimental thirty line service to
21:20
Speaker 1: demonstrate that it didn't look so great. But it didn't
21:23
Speaker 1: take very long before they had Marconi came along again
21:27
Speaker 1: and said that he had a better system along with EMI,
21:29
Speaker 1: and in nineteen thirty six they had the first high
21:32
Speaker 1: def television service launched from Alexandra Palace in North London.
21:38
Speaker 1: And at the time, high deaf meant two hundred and
21:40
Speaker 1: forty lines of resolution or more.
21:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is nuts because TV high def today has
21:47
Speaker 2: something like two hundred and fifty. Yeah, at least at
21:51
Speaker 2: least so the BBC TV so BBC Radio continued broadcasting
21:57
Speaker 2: throughout the war, but BBC Television shutdown because apparently there
22:01
Speaker 2: was a lot of concern that the signal could be
22:04
Speaker 2: used to lock on as a target and bomb Alexandra Palace,
22:07
Speaker 2: where they were broadcasting from. So they're like, well, we
22:11
Speaker 2: don't want to risk that, we'll just stop broadcasting, and
22:13
Speaker 2: they did for seven years, from nineteen thirty nine and
22:16
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six.
22:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, right after they got this new thing in their households. Yeah,
22:22
Speaker 1: they were like all right for seven years. Can you
22:24
Speaker 1: imagine being a child? No, I mean there was the
22:27
Speaker 1: most kids content at the time, but still anything on
22:30
Speaker 1: a TV screen, imagine was hard to lose after you
22:32
Speaker 1: tasted it.
22:33
Speaker 2: I know. And it was around for three years, so
22:35
Speaker 2: that was enough time to get people pretty strong out
22:37
Speaker 2: on TV.
22:38
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you know, huh.
22:41
Speaker 2: So, remember, these guys are figuring this stuff out as
22:44
Speaker 2: they go along, Like the BBC were trailblazers in just
22:47
Speaker 2: about everything they ever dipped their toe into. And one
22:51
Speaker 2: of the ways that they did figure stuff out was
22:53
Speaker 2: basically being dropped into the middle of it. And a
22:57
Speaker 2: really good example of that came in the fifties in
23:00
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty three when Queen Elizabeth the Second the sequel,
23:06
Speaker 2: when she was coronated. But basically the BBC was like,
23:11
Speaker 2: this is one of the biggest things we've ever covered,
23:13
Speaker 2: if not the biggest thing we've ever covered so far.
23:15
Speaker 2: So we're gonna we're just gonna throw everything we can
23:18
Speaker 2: at it. So they started developing new technology, They figured
23:21
Speaker 2: out new ways of broadcasting. They figured out like rolling
23:25
Speaker 2: news coverage from you know, station to station, and it
23:28
Speaker 2: was quite successful from what I understand too. Plus also
23:31
Speaker 2: a lot of people bought TV sets as a result.
23:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they could see that thing.
23:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they could see what Queen Elizabeth looked like.
23:39
Speaker 1: Finally, yeah, they told us on the radio, we could
23:41
Speaker 1: see what she looked like on TV. So went out
23:44
Speaker 1: and bought one.
23:45
Speaker 2: She's got pretty nice hair. She's wearing a tiara. I
23:49
Speaker 2: think those are white gloves or else. She's quite pale.
23:52
Speaker 2: I can't see from here is that a corgie?
23:56
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the monopoly. That monopoly was eventually broken
24:00
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five when ITV into independent television was launched,
24:05
Speaker 1: the oldest commercial network in Britain. And then eventually in
24:09
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two Channel four would come along and you know,
24:13
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, programming started to get somewhat interesting
24:15
Speaker 1: in like the nineteen fifties, because you started to get
24:17
Speaker 1: a lot more. You know, it wasn't just let's do
24:22
Speaker 1: the coronation or this concert from Royal Albert Hall or
24:26
Speaker 1: something like that. They started to get into comedy and
24:29
Speaker 1: sort of true entertainment, for better or for worse. One
24:33
Speaker 1: example of for worse was a show called The Black
24:36
Speaker 1: and White Minstrel Show in nineteen fifty seven. They had
24:40
Speaker 1: sixteen million viewers for that show and it ran from
24:45
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven to nineteen seventy eight. A super super
24:51
Speaker 1: super racist minstrel show. We will say from nineteen sixty two.
24:56
Speaker 1: Starting in nineteen sixty two that the chief accountant of
24:59
Speaker 1: the VBSA was like, this is a disgrace and like
25:01
Speaker 1: really racist, and so it took another sixteen years for
25:06
Speaker 1: BBC one to say, yeah, maybe you're right.
25:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. That chief accountant's name was Barry Thorn, and he
25:12
Speaker 2: was quite vociferous about getting this thing off the air.
25:15
Speaker 2: And one of his memos that he sent, he got
25:18
Speaker 2: a reply from one of the higher ups that said,
25:22
Speaker 2: for heaven's sake, shut up. They just buried their heads
25:25
Speaker 2: in the sand. They would not accept that this was
25:28
Speaker 2: an offensive, racist show. And I read like even in
25:32
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, this was offensive and racist, let alone
25:35
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight. And if you go and watch it,
25:38
Speaker 2: it is jaw droppingly racist.
25:40
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, they're just not good.
25:43
Speaker 2: It isn't It's like Lawrence Welk terrible. That's essentially it was.
25:47
Speaker 2: Imagine Lawrence welkword. Every man is in blackface for no
25:50
Speaker 2: reason whatsoever. There's no context to it. They're just in
25:54
Speaker 2: blackface doing all these different things and doing all these
25:57
Speaker 2: different song performances. It's it's insane, Like you should definitely
26:01
Speaker 2: go check it out, Like if you're not just like
26:04
Speaker 2: completely staggered by it, I will be surprised.
26:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, there may be. You know, check in with yourself.
26:11
Speaker 2: That's a good litmus test watching the Black and White
26:14
Speaker 2: Minstrel Show and seeing what you think of it.
26:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that should be the test moving forward.
26:19
Speaker 2: I think it's so nuts, dude, just.
26:22
Speaker 1: Hook people up to a machine. Yep, it's nineteen sixties.
26:26
Speaker 1: Now we're really flying through the decades. BBC two has
26:30
Speaker 1: come along in nineteen sixty four, and Color TV with
26:33
Speaker 1: a U comes along in nineteen sixty seven, and this
26:37
Speaker 1: is when some of the legendary shows over there of
26:42
Speaker 1: all time came about in the sixties, not the least
26:44
Speaker 1: of which, from nineteen sixty three was the sci fi
26:48
Speaker 1: series Doctor Who Who exactly, a show that I've never
26:52
Speaker 1: watched me, but I know people love it.
26:55
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it's been a cult classic for
27:00
Speaker 2: seventy five years. Yeah, seventy years sixty something. That's a
27:04
Speaker 2: long time for a cult classic to be around, you know. Yeah,
27:08
Speaker 2: think about it. Freaks and Geeks was one season.
27:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, good point.
27:12
Speaker 2: There was also one that I'd like to see. I
27:14
Speaker 2: hadn't heard of it yet, but apparently it was enormous
27:17
Speaker 2: and I can understand why. It's Kenneth Clark's Civilization For
27:20
Speaker 2: me nine, this apparently was like the first Prestige series
27:25
Speaker 2: that they ever came out with, and it was basically
27:28
Speaker 2: like Kenneth Clark going over the Dark Ages up to
27:31
Speaker 2: the twentieth century and talking about the philosophy of different
27:34
Speaker 2: eras and what was going on and how things developed
27:38
Speaker 2: and how people got along and interacted. It sounds really amazing.
27:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I want to see that too. Maybe
27:45
Speaker 1: we should get an Eyeplayer. We'll get to what that
27:47
Speaker 1: is later, okay, or sign up for Eyeplayer. I don't
27:50
Speaker 1: think it's an object right, No, it's not. Satire came
27:56
Speaker 1: along in nineteen sixty two with David Frost. That was
27:59
Speaker 1: the week that was. I can only think that John
28:02
Speaker 1: Oliver's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is just the
28:06
Speaker 1: title itself might be a slight nod. Yeah, that was
28:09
Speaker 1: the week that was.
28:10
Speaker 2: I mean, he's always struck me as pretty British, so
28:12
Speaker 2: I'm sure he's aware of that show.
28:14
Speaker 1: And that was, of course the great David Frost.
28:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the one who got Nixon to basically admit
28:20
Speaker 2: that he was a crook.
28:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the dude.
28:23
Speaker 2: There's another that was in nineteen seventy seven on CBS.
28:27
Speaker 1: I'm sure BBC was quite jealous Frost Nixon.
28:30
Speaker 2: Yeah or else they didn't care because it was Nixon
28:32
Speaker 2: and he's American.
28:33
Speaker 1: That's right. But we also got Monty Path's Flying Circus
28:36
Speaker 1: in Benny Hill in the late sixties.
28:38
Speaker 2: That's right. And then also the Foresight Saga, which I
28:41
Speaker 2: hadn't heard of, but apparently it has quite a bit
28:43
Speaker 2: of similarity to Dalton Abbey and they're about to reboot
28:46
Speaker 2: it for the third time. So I guess Dalton Abbey
28:49
Speaker 2: fans can move over to the Foresight Saga.
28:52
Speaker 1: I think that's already out. Actually, oh my god, the
28:55
Speaker 1: new one?
28:56
Speaker 2: Is it really?
28:57
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean it's been around since sixty seven. I
28:59
Speaker 1: think there's a new six part series that's also that's
29:04
Speaker 1: also out. If not now, then maybe coming into the holidays,
29:07
Speaker 1: because it's definitely this year.
29:08
Speaker 2: Okay, cool?
29:10
Speaker 1: Yeah?
29:10
Speaker 2: Are you into Downton Abby? I don't remember.
29:13
Speaker 1: I love Dunton, Abby. I'll watch it all good. Yeah,
29:17
Speaker 1: it's not taxing on the brain or anything. It's just
29:20
Speaker 1: it's exactly what it should be, which is that just
29:22
Speaker 1: real easy to watch upstairs downstairs? Soapi drama?
29:26
Speaker 2: Nice?
29:27
Speaker 1: Yeah?
29:27
Speaker 2: I like it okay. And then also what came along
29:30
Speaker 2: in the sixties in nineteen sixty four was the music
29:33
Speaker 2: show Top of the Pops. We've talked about that a
29:35
Speaker 2: few times. You know, remember Queen made their Bohemian Rhapsody
29:41
Speaker 2: video to get out of having the lip sync on
29:43
Speaker 2: Top of the Pops.
29:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean legendary show hosted by noted awful person
29:49
Speaker 1: Jimmy Sabil, who we're going to talk about later.
29:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Imagine if we just didn't mention him. Right,
29:56
Speaker 2: So we you said we were blazing through the de
30:00
Speaker 2: We're about to blaze so fast. We're going to combine
30:02
Speaker 2: the seventies and eighties together because a couple of really
30:05
Speaker 2: big things happened in well, starting in the late seventies
30:08
Speaker 2: and early eighties. The first thing was nineteen seventy nine
30:12
Speaker 2: when Life on Earth premiered, and that is David Attenborough's
30:16
Speaker 2: first really big, massive wildlife documentary series. It took three
30:23
Speaker 2: years to make. They went to over one hundred locations,
30:28
Speaker 2: had a one million pound price tag and I was like, wow,
30:31
Speaker 2: that's got to be a lot. That's only five million
30:34
Speaker 2: pounds today. So imagine getting this groundbreaking series for a
30:39
Speaker 2: mere five million pounds. That's quite a deal. But this
30:43
Speaker 2: this thing just completely changed wildlife documentaries. Every wildlife documentary
30:48
Speaker 2: you see traces itself in its style back to life
30:51
Speaker 2: on Earth.
30:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we can't go over all these shows,
30:56
Speaker 1: and I know people are going to be like, what
30:58
Speaker 1: about One Foot in the Grave and my favorite show?
31:03
Speaker 1: But we should mention my favorites, one of which was
31:05
Speaker 1: Faulty Towers. That was another that post college, when I
31:09
Speaker 1: was living in New Jersey with my British friend from college.
31:12
Speaker 1: He introduced me to Faulty Towers and The black Adder
31:16
Speaker 1: and they were just a couple of the best shows ever.
31:19
Speaker 1: I mean it was a comedy that I hadn't seen
31:21
Speaker 1: before and just really really great stuff.
31:24
Speaker 2: Yeah. For some reason, I got introduced to Faulty Towers
31:27
Speaker 2: before I ever watched Flying Circus too, so I was like, Oh,
31:31
Speaker 2: that's the guy from Faulty Towers.
31:33
Speaker 1: Oh really, m hm, Oh that's funny.
31:36
Speaker 2: And you mentioned the Goon Squad. I remember we talked
31:39
Speaker 2: about them when we did an episode on I guess
31:42
Speaker 2: Monty Python. Did we ever do an episode of My Python?
31:45
Speaker 2: Because they came up we did?
31:47
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that was one of our La podfasts.
31:51
Speaker 2: It was totally yeah. Yeah, so they were deeply influenced
31:55
Speaker 2: by The The Goon Show. Yeah I say Goon Squad,
31:58
Speaker 2: didn't I.
31:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I said Goon Squad earlier, so
32:01
Speaker 1: I think I probably influenced that.
32:03
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for my fault jumping on that grenade
32:05
Speaker 2: for me. But it's The Goon Show and it was
32:08
Speaker 2: one of the first absurdist comedies that really influenced shows
32:13
Speaker 2: to come, like Monty Python, but it was just on
32:15
Speaker 2: the radio, which makes it even more creative if you
32:18
Speaker 2: ask me.
32:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing. Spike Milligan created it and it's probably most
32:23
Speaker 1: notable these days for where Peter Seller's got his start.
32:27
Speaker 1: He was in the first couple of series what we
32:29
Speaker 1: call Seasons, along with Harry Seacombe, and I believe Michael
32:33
Speaker 1: Benteen took over Peter Sellers. And like I said, there's
32:37
Speaker 1: so many shows to mention, but we can't not mention
32:40
Speaker 1: east Enders because my former roommate Justin talked about it
32:44
Speaker 1: a lot. He was from East London and it was
32:48
Speaker 1: It's one of the biggest shows in the history of
32:51
Speaker 1: the BBC.
32:52
Speaker 2: It's basically like the British version of friends.
32:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to comment on.
32:59
Speaker 2: That, but that was the TV show and still is.
33:02
Speaker 2: East Enders is still on correct, I don't.
33:05
Speaker 1: Know, is it.
33:05
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it is.
33:07
Speaker 1: That would be surprise me. It started in nineteen eighty
33:10
Speaker 1: five and was a really big hit out of the gate,
33:13
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's melodrama. Kyle points out that
33:16
Speaker 1: it hits all the sort of stereotypical like soap opera archetypes,
33:21
Speaker 1: but they've also through the years, like I think most
33:23
Speaker 1: good shows, I've gotten some applause for tackling things like
33:29
Speaker 1: some of the realities of the East End of London
33:32
Speaker 1: through history.
33:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, like HIV, unemployment, just stuff that you don't always
33:37
Speaker 2: see on the TV. It was kind of groundbreaking in
33:39
Speaker 2: that sense for sure. Don't call it a soap opera though, Chuck.
33:45
Speaker 2: If you want to go soap opera is you got
33:46
Speaker 2: to get back to the radio and just find the Archers,
33:49
Speaker 2: which is the world's longest running soap opera. They have
33:52
Speaker 2: over twenty thousand episodes, so almost as many as we
33:55
Speaker 2: can now, and it's set out in rural England. Apparently
34:00
Speaker 2: it's great, or it has been from time to time,
34:03
Speaker 2: so I've never heard of it and never heard it,
34:06
Speaker 2: but I may pick up an Archer's habit. I'm not
34:09
Speaker 2: sure then, yeah, or you.
34:11
Speaker 1: Could just watch Archer instead on FX.
34:14
Speaker 2: It's great. It's basically the same thing.
34:18
Speaker 1: The radio was still going on. You know, I know
34:20
Speaker 1: we're talking a lot about TV, but you mentioned the Archers.
34:23
Speaker 1: The quality of radios. You know, if you listen to
34:25
Speaker 1: our AM Radio episode, everything just on. It kind of
34:28
Speaker 1: started getting better technologically in the sixties and seventies. They
34:32
Speaker 1: were more ubiquitous, so it reached more ears. But you know,
34:37
Speaker 1: this touches on a lot of our episodes because if
34:39
Speaker 1: you listen to our Pirate Radio episode, you'll know that
34:43
Speaker 1: pirate radio was a legitimate threat to the BBC Radio
34:48
Speaker 1: Radio Caroline and Radio London. It wasn't just you know,
34:51
Speaker 1: like a few hundred people listening like they were playing
34:54
Speaker 1: popular music and sort of dominating that scene in the
34:57
Speaker 1: mid to late sixties, and the BBC is like, we
34:59
Speaker 1: got a better Yeah.
35:01
Speaker 2: The reason why there were pirate radio stations is again
35:03
Speaker 2: because it was illegal to run a radio station because
35:06
Speaker 2: BBC had the monopoly on it. So they were like, well,
35:10
Speaker 2: like like you said, we need to keep up, so
35:12
Speaker 2: they launched Radio one in nineteen sixty seven. Apparently it's
35:16
Speaker 2: the most listened to radio station in the entire world
35:20
Speaker 2: for no small reason, in part to Pete Tong and
35:23
Speaker 2: his Essential Selection show that ran in the nineties. Did
35:26
Speaker 2: you ever listen to that?
35:28
Speaker 1: I know the name, but I don't know if I
35:29
Speaker 1: ever listened to that.
35:30
Speaker 2: It was like DJ sets that he hosted. They were
35:33
Speaker 2: really good. It was a good show.
35:35
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, they eventually would end that monopoly five years
35:38
Speaker 1: later in nineteen seventy two on the radio when they
35:42
Speaker 1: passed legislation that commercial radio could be a thing. And
35:45
Speaker 1: that's when the LBC, the London Broadcasting Company, was the
35:49
Speaker 1: first one to hit the legitimate airwaves. Is not pirate radio,
35:53
Speaker 1: And apparently it was. You know, things moved along okay
35:56
Speaker 1: through the seventies and eighties, but it was really a
35:58
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties where local independent radio like super took off
36:02
Speaker 1: over there.
36:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think by that time. By nineteen ninety five,
36:05
Speaker 2: the BBC had a smaller audience than some of its
36:09
Speaker 2: competitors for the very first time. Yeah, but the BBC
36:13
Speaker 2: plotted along. Don't feel bad for them, as we'll see
36:15
Speaker 2: they know how to pick themselves up and dust themselves
36:18
Speaker 2: off and say what's next for the BBC? I say,
36:22
Speaker 2: we take a break and we come back and find
36:23
Speaker 2: out what's next.
36:24
Speaker 1: Chuck, let's do it all right, We're back and we
36:39
Speaker 1: promised what's next for the BBC? And what was next?
36:42
Speaker 1: Was Margaret Thatcher saying I hate you BBC. Yeah, she
36:47
Speaker 1: was elected in nineteen seventy nine, had a strong I guess,
36:52
Speaker 1: aversion to the BBC and their privileged status right out
36:55
Speaker 1: of the gate. She wanted she was all about the
36:58
Speaker 1: free market. She was like, nap, this should be in
36:59
Speaker 1: the free market with everyone else. The editorial editorializing should
37:05
Speaker 1: align with the national interest of basically what I think
37:08
Speaker 1: is a national interest.
37:09
Speaker 2: That's right.
37:10
Speaker 1: And there were a number of things that happened in
37:12
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties that I guess you could call them
37:16
Speaker 1: either missteps or just honest broadcasting that Thatcher did not like.
37:19
Speaker 2: No, especially covering the Falklands War or the troubles in
37:24
Speaker 2: Northern Ireland. They weren't just like screw Northern Ireland, screw
37:28
Speaker 2: the IRA or screw the Argentinians like they like you said,
37:34
Speaker 2: reported fairly and in some cases we're accused of treachery.
37:37
Speaker 2: Apparently Peter Snow on Newsnight called the troops the British
37:42
Speaker 2: when they were invading the Falklands rather than our troops,
37:45
Speaker 2: and he was accused of treachery. And they once interviewed
37:50
Speaker 2: IRA member for a I think a Panorama episode. Yeah.
37:55
Speaker 2: Panorama's kind of like Frontline from what I can tell,
37:58
Speaker 2: It's like a hard hit investigative documentary show. And you
38:03
Speaker 2: just couldn't do that. You couldn't talk to the IRA,
38:05
Speaker 2: you couldn't give them any kind of airtime, you couldn't
38:08
Speaker 2: air their viewpoints, and they tried to in the mid
38:11
Speaker 2: eighties with that Panorama episode, but I guess I never
38:15
Speaker 2: saw the light a day because of the government.
38:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that the whole situation would eventually lead to
38:20
Speaker 1: the oulster of the Director General at the time, Alistair Milne.
38:26
Speaker 1: And you know, he was everything I read about him
38:29
Speaker 1: said that he was doing a pretty good job. But
38:31
Speaker 1: it was you know, Thatcher was in power. She wanted
38:34
Speaker 1: him out and in nineteen eighty seven he was basically
38:39
Speaker 1: kind of strong earned doubt and Thatcher's you know, choice person,
38:43
Speaker 1: Marmaduke Hussey was installed and you know, just to be
38:48
Speaker 1: more government friendly.
38:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently, I was reading about Marmaduke Hussey. He was
38:52
Speaker 2: described in his obituary as cleverer than he looked, but
38:56
Speaker 2: almost certainly not as clever as he thought. He said
39:00
Speaker 2: that when he was appointed to the BBC, he was
39:02
Speaker 2: so unfamiliar with it that he and his wife had
39:04
Speaker 2: to look up the address and the phone book to
39:06
Speaker 2: see where he should be going. So he was not
39:09
Speaker 2: like an obvious choice, and he was clearly the choice
39:12
Speaker 2: that was like, this guy's going to listen to everything
39:16
Speaker 2: I want, thought Thatcher.
39:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I read some about what Melne thought
39:21
Speaker 1: of like kind of the board after that and the
39:24
Speaker 1: management after that, and he was like, it's just it's
39:27
Speaker 1: a bunch of amateurs, people that don't know what they're doing,
39:29
Speaker 1: like beyond the fact that they're just cronies for Thatcher,
39:33
Speaker 1: like they're not good at this job.
39:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, apparently he Hussey was known to this point
39:39
Speaker 2: for having almost run the Daily Mail into the ground
39:42
Speaker 2: and then almost run the Telegraph into the ground too,
39:46
Speaker 2: so he was definitely not an obvious choice.
39:48
Speaker 1: Like I said, yeah, fast forward a lot, actually, if
39:53
Speaker 1: you want to go all the way up to Tony
39:55
Speaker 1: Blair in the twenty first century. One of their big
39:59
Speaker 1: first sort of controversies of that era was the Iraq Dossier.
40:04
Speaker 1: And May two thousand and three there was a defense
40:06
Speaker 1: correspondent named Andrew Gilligan who got on Radio four and
40:10
Speaker 1: alleged that the Iraq WMD dossier had been quote sexed up,
40:16
Speaker 1: something that everyone understands as being the truth now, and
40:21
Speaker 1: Blair's press chief, Alistair Campbell, went on the counter and
40:25
Speaker 1: a big feud sort of erupted between the BBC and
40:28
Speaker 1: the government and director general there, Greg Dyke was well,
40:34
Speaker 1: I guess he was sacked as well while he resigned
40:36
Speaker 1: but kind of another strong arm.
40:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a huge, huge deal. And one of
40:40
Speaker 2: the most shocking things that came out of all of
40:43
Speaker 2: this is that Andrew Gilligan's source on this matter was
40:46
Speaker 2: a guy named David Kelly, who was a UN weapons expert,
40:50
Speaker 2: so he really knew what he was talking about, but
40:52
Speaker 2: he had been an anonymous whistleblower up to this point.
40:55
Speaker 2: It leaked out somehow that he was the source. Yeah,
40:58
Speaker 2: this huge government contray that basically said the UK faked
41:04
Speaker 2: all of the stuff that helped America invade Iraq, and
41:08
Speaker 2: David Kelly was found dead, apparently by suicide in the
41:12
Speaker 2: woods by his house. Yeah, it's very sad too. Apparently
41:16
Speaker 2: there's a certain amount of people who are like, I
41:18
Speaker 2: don't think he took his life.
41:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. As soon as I read that, I was like,
41:23
Speaker 1: I mean there was an investigation apparently, and the government
41:27
Speaker 1: was cleared of wrongdoing.
41:28
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, but I mean that'd be pretty
41:31
Speaker 2: vindictive if you think about it, Like, I can really
41:34
Speaker 2: buy the government killing this guy to silence and before
41:37
Speaker 2: he can share this information, but to do it in
41:40
Speaker 2: retribution seems even Wow.
41:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The late nineties come along and the
41:47
Speaker 1: digital revolution is upon us, and Director of General at
41:50
Speaker 1: that time John Burt, started BBC Online. He had visited
41:55
Speaker 1: the States and kind of realized that that was the future,
41:58
Speaker 1: and it really took off. They had at the time
42:01
Speaker 1: just sort of a piecemeal network of web pages, and
42:05
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven they really kicked it off in
42:07
Speaker 1: ernest with BBC Online with a general election and a
42:11
Speaker 1: rolling news website for the first time was established after
42:15
Speaker 1: the death of Princess Diana, so it was hotly trafficked obviously.
42:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently nineteen million people watched her funeral, the largest
42:22
Speaker 2: ever broadcast for them. And one of the things that
42:27
Speaker 2: came out of this, and again this was really forward thinking.
42:31
Speaker 2: We're talking nineteen ninety seven and they're like, we're going
42:33
Speaker 2: to put a substantial amount of money in creating our
42:35
Speaker 2: web presence. One of the things that came out of
42:37
Speaker 2: it was that iPlayer you were mentioning, yeah, Yeah, which
42:41
Speaker 2: was launched in two thousand and seven and initially it
42:44
Speaker 2: was like did you miss EastEnders this week, Well, come
42:48
Speaker 2: watch it on iPlayer, And this was not a thing
42:52
Speaker 2: at the time, like this was a really groundbreaking thing
42:55
Speaker 2: for the BBC to come up with.
42:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of lobbying by rivals, like
43:00
Speaker 1: commercial rivals, so they had a lot of constraints at
43:03
Speaker 1: first that you know, hey you can watch the Senators.
43:06
Speaker 1: It was just for seven days at first, but it
43:10
Speaker 1: was free. Kyle said it was very easy to use.
43:13
Speaker 1: I cannot attest to that, but Kyle said it was.
43:16
Speaker 1: And by twenty twelve, eye Player was voted the UK's
43:19
Speaker 1: best brand and that was when they had the London
43:22
Speaker 1: Olympics going on, and that's a great time to have
43:24
Speaker 1: something like Eyeplayer so you can catch the Olympics if
43:27
Speaker 1: you're not watching it live. But then Netflix would come
43:31
Speaker 1: along in twenty twelve overseas and they were free from
43:36
Speaker 1: those regulations and they could mine all the top shows
43:38
Speaker 1: they wanted that they could, you know, cut deals with
43:41
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I think the BBC had
43:44
Speaker 1: a restriction on their best shows for like seven years.
43:47
Speaker 1: So Netflix really put a herding on Eyeplayer for a while.
43:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess their audience share in the UK went
43:54
Speaker 2: from forty percent to fifteen percent once Netflix showed up
43:58
Speaker 2: and I saw the adolescent. This is the most watched
44:01
Speaker 2: show in the UK, I believe in history. It's pretty good.
44:07
Speaker 2: And I guess the BBC's like, we can't, we can't
44:09
Speaker 2: compete with this, like our Eeplayer. Even the Netflix chief
44:13
Speaker 2: executive said the Eyeplayer really blazed the trail for video
44:17
Speaker 2: on demand. Yeah, but they're like we can't, we can't
44:20
Speaker 2: keep up with this. And it doesn't really matter because
44:23
Speaker 2: everybody loves Eyeplayer, and I guess you would not necessarily
44:28
Speaker 2: choose between Netflix and Eyeplayer. Maybe some do. I'm not
44:32
Speaker 2: quite sure what the competition problem is.
44:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you, because it's.
44:37
Speaker 2: Not like BBC's like, give me some money for Eyeplayer,
44:40
Speaker 2: like that's included in your license that you pay every year.
44:43
Speaker 2: Maybe they just don't like to look bad.
44:45
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you don't want a dying product on
44:48
Speaker 1: your company, you know.
44:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it is dying. But yeah, Netflix
44:51
Speaker 2: took a huge bite out of it.
44:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But BBC is still around. BBC one
44:57
Speaker 1: still reaches millions of people on just on the t
45:01
Speaker 1: Radio four reaches about ten million people weekly. The sort
45:06
Speaker 1: of knock against or the crack against BBC, I guess
45:09
Speaker 1: crack in the American sense, not the Irish sense. I
45:13
Speaker 1: guess you would say the knock over there is that
45:16
Speaker 1: it's like for you know, for the senior set, like
45:19
Speaker 1: you know, there are people that watch the BBC or
45:21
Speaker 1: in their sixties and you know it's sort of not
45:25
Speaker 1: not the way forward it was our past. Yeah that's right, Chuck,
45:32
Speaker 1: you play funeral music.
45:34
Speaker 2: Or something so well, I don't know yet that actually
45:37
Speaker 2: remains to be seen. I don't. I can't imagine that
45:40
Speaker 2: the BBC is going to just be done away with,
45:42
Speaker 2: but it is quite possible that they're going to face
45:44
Speaker 2: some some real change changes because in the twenty tens,
45:49
Speaker 2: the BBC it was just missed up and scandal and
45:53
Speaker 2: problem after problem. Apparently they worked on one hundred million
45:58
Speaker 2: pound digital media initiative where they were going to come
46:01
Speaker 2: up with a great archive that's going to be super searchable,
46:03
Speaker 2: and it just went nowhere. So they just wasted you know,
46:08
Speaker 2: I think ninety seven million pounds on it, and Brits
46:11
Speaker 2: were outraged, which shows you, you know, that sense of
46:15
Speaker 2: ownership that the average British person has for the BBC,
46:19
Speaker 2: whereas like, if you found out, you know, Nickelodeon spent
46:22
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars in a failed initiative, even though
46:25
Speaker 2: you're paying through your cable subscription in part for Nickelodeon,
46:29
Speaker 2: you wouldn't it would It would matter not. It's like Nickelodeon,
46:31
Speaker 2: do whatever you want with the money. But Brits feel
46:34
Speaker 2: like that about the BBC. That's the impression I have
46:36
Speaker 2: from that response.
46:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, it's tied. Nickelodeon's not tied to the government.
46:41
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the big differences.
46:44
Speaker 2: Okay. Sure.
46:47
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, the Conservative government said hey, we need
46:51
Speaker 1: to start publishing these salaries and they revealed a gender
46:55
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial gender pay gap, and people were also
46:59
Speaker 1: not happy that dear arding executives got big payoffs and
47:02
Speaker 1: I was like, ooh, what's big. Yeah. Deputy Deputy Director
47:06
Speaker 1: General Mark Bifer got a nine hundred and forty nine
47:09
Speaker 1: thousand pound payment in twenty eleven, and David Zaslov said,
47:14
Speaker 1: hold my pint, guys, right, he made fifty two million
47:18
Speaker 1: bucks last year. Yeah, And they said, oh no, no, no,
47:22
Speaker 1: you can't make that much money, and so they're cutting
47:24
Speaker 1: it back to like thirty something million this year.
47:26
Speaker 2: That's funny. There's like that's too much money. Sorry, you
47:30
Speaker 2: don't get that much. And he's like, okay, how much
47:32
Speaker 2: do I get?
47:33
Speaker 1: Thirty something?
47:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I can make do. There was then
47:37
Speaker 2: like all sorts of terrible sex scandals too. Jimmy Seville
47:41
Speaker 2: kicked it all off when he died in twenty eleven,
47:44
Speaker 2: and the a floodgate opened where people just started coming
47:48
Speaker 2: forward being like, he sexually abused me in the sixties,
47:50
Speaker 2: he sexually abused me in the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands.
47:54
Speaker 2: He apparently had possibly hundreds of victims, a lot of
47:59
Speaker 2: them chilled, some of them under like age sixteen, a
48:03
Speaker 2: pretty substantial number. And it turned out that a lot
48:07
Speaker 2: of people in the BBC were well aware of this
48:10
Speaker 2: and essentially spent their time covering this up because Jimmy
48:15
Speaker 2: Seville was just so revered in such a VIP that
48:18
Speaker 2: he was treated with that much deference and like your
48:21
Speaker 2: career would end if you went had to head with
48:23
Speaker 2: him or even thought about it out loud.
48:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how much power he had as the host
48:29
Speaker 1: of Top of the Pops. Very sad.
48:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine like Dick Clark doing that. You can't you
48:35
Speaker 2: can't do it.
48:37
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, just a couple of years ago,
48:40
Speaker 1: Hugh Edwards, who was the lead presenter BBC News at
48:42
Speaker 1: ten for twenty years since two thousand and three, played
48:46
Speaker 1: guilty to sex offenses as well, and a Master Chef
48:50
Speaker 1: host Greg Wallace this year was sacked after dozens of
48:55
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct allegations were upheld. So yeah, they had a
48:59
Speaker 1: long run of bad headlines leading all the way up
49:04
Speaker 1: into like very very recently with the Trump administration.
49:06
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there's a current scandal going on where Panorama again,
49:12
Speaker 2: their investigative documentary series. They just released an episode, I
49:16
Speaker 2: think it's the most recent one as of today, on
49:21
Speaker 2: Trump and the technocrats and in it, they spliced together
49:25
Speaker 2: his speech that he gave on January sixth, which makes
49:28
Speaker 2: it look like he directly called for violence, and the
49:32
Speaker 2: I guess BBC was like, we regret this error. And
49:35
Speaker 2: Trump's response was that he was going to sue for
49:37
Speaker 2: no less than one billion dollars. Yeah, that's the first
49:41
Speaker 2: part of it. The second part is that at the
49:43
Speaker 2: same time this is like, these are just body blows
49:46
Speaker 2: coming one after the other.
49:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
49:49
Speaker 2: An internal memo is leak that was basically said, I
49:53
Speaker 2: think outright that the BBC is two left wing biased
49:57
Speaker 2: and gave examples of it. That memo got and it's like, okay,
50:01
Speaker 2: not only do the conservatives think that the it's left
50:04
Speaker 2: wing biased, you think that it's left wing bias BBC,
50:08
Speaker 2: or that you're left wing biased. So this is what's
50:10
Speaker 2: going on as they're negotiating the charter that renews in
50:13
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven.
50:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the stage is set for, you know, a
50:18
Speaker 1: pretty big battle is brewing on what that charter is
50:20
Speaker 1: going to or what that yeah license fee is going
50:22
Speaker 1: to look like and if it's even you know, like
50:25
Speaker 1: we mentioned, people are calling it a regressive tax. I
50:28
Speaker 1: believe that the BBC used to cover or the government
50:31
Speaker 1: used to cover it for people over seventy. Now the
50:32
Speaker 1: BBC is responsible for that. But yeah, I mean it's
50:37
Speaker 1: gonna be really interesting to see how it all plays out.
50:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. I fear for the BBC a little bit.
50:42
Speaker 1: I love you BBC. Get your act together, is what
50:45
Speaker 1: I say.
50:46
Speaker 2: Sure, why not you got anything else about the BBC
50:50
Speaker 2: or the biblic or the BEB.
50:53
Speaker 1: I got nothing else.
50:55
Speaker 2: Okay I don't either, which means everybody, it's time for
50:59
Speaker 2: listener mail.
51:03
Speaker 1: We got lots of good pop chart response one of
51:06
Speaker 1: our more beloved episodes of Late and a lot of
51:09
Speaker 1: people said eat them frozen, and here's one. Hey guys,
51:11
Speaker 1: longtime listener from Santa Rosa, California. You guys have been
51:15
Speaker 1: the soundtrack to so many moments of my life and
51:16
Speaker 1: it brought so much joy and moments and times to
51:19
Speaker 1: tell fun facts. So thank you. The recent pop tart episode,
51:22
Speaker 1: I was waiting to see if you had mentioned the
51:23
Speaker 1: ultimate all caps way to enjoy pop tarts, and that
51:26
Speaker 1: is frozen. However you did mention it, and Chuck shuddered
51:30
Speaker 1: with what seemed to be terror at the thought. I
51:32
Speaker 1: don't remember doing that, but I guess I did. Okay,
51:35
Speaker 1: strongly urge you to both try it. It's the pop chart,
51:38
Speaker 1: you know, in love, but in frozen treat form. Do
51:40
Speaker 1: your taste buds of favor and go pop a couple
51:42
Speaker 1: in the freezer, then pop them in your mouths. And
51:45
Speaker 1: that is from Matt f and Matt you'll be glad
51:48
Speaker 1: to know, because they're urging of another listener who said
51:50
Speaker 1: cut those crust off first. I went and got a
51:53
Speaker 1: couple of those brown sugar simons. I cut the crust off,
51:56
Speaker 1: put them back in the package, and I threw him
51:57
Speaker 1: in the freezer, and I'll enjoy them at some point
51:59
Speaker 1: this week.
52:00
Speaker 2: Oh you haven't enjoyed them yet.
52:02
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I just put him in this afternoon,
52:04
Speaker 1: and so I'm gonna before we record it. And I'm
52:06
Speaker 1: not an afternoon pop charter.
52:08
Speaker 2: Okay, you're a morning guy or evening.
52:11
Speaker 1: Oh late night, my friend.
52:12
Speaker 2: Okay, so you need to report back.
52:14
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, this means I can't butter them, but I'm
52:17
Speaker 1: willing to forgo that.
52:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could use cold pats of butter, that would
52:22
Speaker 2: be good.
52:23
Speaker 1: Or ooh, do you know I could do is melt
52:25
Speaker 1: some butter and just dip that frozen in there bite
52:27
Speaker 1: by bite.
52:28
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's kind of like a reverse fried Snickers.
52:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll report back.
52:35
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll see Okay, And who is that from?
52:38
Speaker 1: That was from Matt F.
52:40
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Matt F. That was a great email
52:42
Speaker 2: and we'll let you know what Chuck thinks. And in
52:44
Speaker 2: the meantime, if you want to be like Matt F
52:46
Speaker 2: and send us a great email, you can send it
52:49
Speaker 2: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:54
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
52:57
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
53:01
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.