THERE will undoubtedly be a lot of coverage over the next couple of days about tomorrow’s centenary of the BBC broadcasting in Scotland.
I suspect most of the hype will be by BBC Scotland itself, with a lot of references to the Corporation’s proud history in Scotland, and I will be looking at that 100 years of broadcasting in Tuesday’s Back In The Day column in The National.
While there’s no doubt that its historic first radio broadcast from Glasgow on March 6, 1923, was instigated and guided by a Scot, John Reith, it was very much a British institution, and designed to be so, from the outset – as I will show on Tuesday.
First of all, however, let me point out the arrogance evinced by the BBC anent this centenary. I’ve seen nothing to the contrary from the Corporation, so I suspect the claim that the first Scottish radio broadcast was made by the BBC 100 years ago tomorrow will be repeated ad nauseam, yet it is the simple truth that it was not the BBC who made that first radio broadcast in Scotland.
The story begins in 1920, when the first radio broadcasts in the UK, mostly of music, were made from Chelmsford by engineers of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, founded by the great Italian inventor himself in 1897. In June 1920, Dame Nellie Melba was the star of the first broadcast, sponsored by the Daily Mail.
At that point in 1920, all radios and transmitters were licensed by the General Post Office (GPO) and there were only a few thousand of them. At one point, the GPO withdrew Marconi’s licence, but clamour by the amateur radio “hams” and more tellingly the intervention of the Daily Mail got the service, limited as it was, going again.
Some of the pioneering broadcasters, including Marconi, got together and formed the British Broadcasting Committee which lobbied for more licences to broadcast.
The authorities knew they were powerless to stop radio’s progress, and in May 1922, the Postmaster General, Frederick George (FG) Kellaway, announced in the House of Commons that the coalition government under prime minister David Lloyd George was going to permit regulated broadcasting. The six groups in the Committee decided to integrate their operations in a new British Broadcasting Company which was formed in October 1922.
The first radio station of the British Broadcasting Company was Marconi’s existing 2LO – the GPO insisted that all stations should have their own call sign – based in London and using Marconi’s studios and offices.
Under the dynamic leadership of John Reith, the company expanded to Manchester and Birmingham and scored an early triumph by broadcasting the General Election results in November, 1922 – Kellaway lost his Bedford seat and soon emerged as the managing director of the Marconi company, proving that the Westminster revolving door is not a new phenomenon.
By the end of that year, some 36,000 receiving licences had been issued by the GPO, and the British Broadcasting Company made its money mainly by the constituent companies selling wireless sets to accompany these licences. There was also sponsorship and the company gained a portion of the licence fee charged by the GPO – the beginnings of the state-controlled licence system.
After the company began transmissions in Newcastle and Cardiff, Reith was determined to start a station in his native Scotland, but two enterprising companies got there first.
The Marconi Company had a commercial tie-in with the Daimler motor car company and for the duration of the Scottish Motor Show in Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall from January 24 to February 3, 1923, the two firms were promoting their Daimler-Marconiphones, one of the earliest forms of car radio.
They decided on radio broadcasting to market their services and were allotted the call sign 2BP – the true first broadcasters in Scotland.
Marconi engineers arranged for two Daimler cars to be fitted with Marconiphone radio receivers, and one of them was fitted with a transmitter so they could talk to each other. The 2BP broadcasting studio was set up at Hughenden Road in the city’s West End and that is now recognised by experts and radio historians as the first Scottish radio station because, from the outset, 2BP was available to anyone with a receiver and licence.
It broadcast a range of programmes, including news and live music, between 5pm and 11pm, and on the Sunday, it was given over to religious programmes. Two popular pantomime stars, Mona Vivian and Lupino Lane, were nightly regulars on shows which were heard as far away as Arran and Inverness. The audience in and around Glasgow was estimated at around 3000 listeners.
The station was wound up as soon as the Motor Show finished, but into the gap stepped wireless dealer Frank Milligan and his friend George Garscadden, an accountant and amateur radio enthusiast. They gained a broadcasting licence and a call sign, 5MG.
The pair built a small but well-equipped studio in a top-floor flat in Bath Street and broadcast throughout February and into March, with their intention to be a “stop-gap” service because they knew that the British Broadcasting Company was setting up its first Scottish station, 5SC, which began broadcasting from Glasgow on March 6, 1923, seven weeks after 2BP made its historic broadcast.
So not one but two broadcasters beat the BBC to make the first Scottish radio broadcasts, and you would think the BBC would recognise that fact because the company bought 5MG’s apparatus and used it to help 5SC make its programmes.
5MG also gave 5SC one of the great pioneering broadcasters for the BBC in Scotland, namely Kathleen Garscadden, the daughter of George Garscadden, who made her first broadcast on 5MG before moving to 5SC and later became one of the mainstays of the BBC in Scotland, known as Auntie Kathleen to generations of children.
