A Quick History of the BBC

The BBC has been around as long as there has been radio. Today we salute the venerable institution that's as British as tea and crumpets. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
That's right. You got a quick announcement.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Huh, I do huh?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, if you're talking about our new playlist that's coming
out that one, that's right. Yeah, we have a new
playlist coming out, right, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah, this holiday season, I think coming out very soon. Actually,
we have the Twelve Days of Holiday Toys because we've
got lots of great toy episodes over the years and
we've compiled them together for the whole family to enjoy.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's right, we love those toy episodes. I think it
comes out on December twelfth.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Right, I think so. And that's what I mean in
real time. This's probably are not real time, but in
real podcast time this week.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I think I think so too. And what do you
have to do to get these episodes? You may ask nothing.
You don't have to lift a single finger. We're going
to put them in the feed like we have been
and hope you enjoy them.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, totally. And I have another announcement for this BBC episode.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Okay, is that how you say it the beb Yeah,
I've heard that too.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
What do you say?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
That's how I was going to say it?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
The whole episodes this one even more so than a
lot of our others that are you know, you could
potentially do one hundred episodes on. This is like serious
overview territory. When you're talking about something as far reaching
and long standing and sort of legendary culturally as the
BBC is, I don't want our our listeners across the

(01:50):
pond to be like, guys, you're gonna give us, you know,
forty five minutes on the BBC.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's exactly what we're going to do, and it's with love. Yeah,
and big thanks to our man in Britain Kyle, for
wrangling this huge, massive topic into something pretty pretty good
and understandable.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, because I gotta say I love the BBC. Always have. Yeah,
since I was a little kid watching really yeah, watching
their content on public television. Uh huh, you know, everything
from Flying Circus to Benny Hill to Faulty Towers and
then having a British roommate in college. He would tell
me about the east Enders and you know, all the

(02:31):
all the you know, stuff that he grew up with,
and it's just been near and dere. I read the
BBC news all the time. It's just, you know, I
love it.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I definitely watched Benny Hill a lot when I was
a kid too, so I guess I didn't realize it
was BBC content, But it totally was, wasn't it.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, you just thought it was some guy who talked
funny from Indiana, right, who liked bear breasts.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes, he was really into boobs, man, he was. If
there was ever a person into boobs, it was Benny Hill.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, twelve year old chuck.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
So yeah, that's cool. I guess I've loved the BBC
longer than I thought too, So this is it's a
hat tip, I guess, also a big thanks to the
BBC and also deeply critical of it.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, to this one hundred and three year old institution.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, just in time for it one hundred and third birthday.
So let's get started. You mentioned that it's called BIB.
I had not heard that before, but apparently it's quite accurate.
And the BIB you can liken it in the US
to MPR, where there's a lot of you know, accusations
of it being left leaning bias, and then people on

(03:42):
the left are like, no, it's right bias. It does
its best to stay middle ground if possible. It has
to do with public funding, but in a much different way.
It's a it's a venerable institution, but like way more
venerable than MPR. Public broadcasting is here in the United States.
It is a big chunk of British culture. And in

(04:04):
that sense, I get the sense that even people who
are like to hell with BBC still feel some sort
of like pride in the BBC in its existence.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, and you know that is all as we have
learned by design. That was no accident. It is the
world's largest broadcaster, has twenty one thousand plus employees, and
nobody knows it's the it's the oldest national broadcaster, and
nobody knows how many programs they put out. Kyle said
between ten and twenty million. So that's that's a lot

(04:34):
of stuff. And that's also a big cushion.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It really is as a margin. Yeah, that's called hedging.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, and that includes I think, you know, everything radio.
And because as we'll see, their little fingies are in
all the Figi puddings.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, and I mean, if you live in the UK,
there's some way, shape or form that you're taking in
BBC content almost certainly because they dominate or they they
did at one point dominate radio, dominate television, now that
they blaze the trail onto the Internet as far as
news sites go, they have a huge web presence and

(05:09):
then in the like across the world as well. They
have what's called the World Service where you can watch
BBC news all over the world, so it's appropriately named,
and they say that they have an audience of almost
half a billion people around the world, and.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
I believe it.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
I believe it too. I know probably two hundred and
fifty million people who watch the BBC myself.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Because should we go back to the beginning.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, let's go with the beginning, all right.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
So we got to go I said it was one
hundred and three years old. So if you carry the one,
you subtract that nineteen twenty two is where we're going
in our British wayback machine. Mind the gap, which you
know runs on coal and shepherd's pie and October eighteen,

(06:01):
nineteen twenty two is where we're going because that is
where the British Broadcasting Company was formed before they became
the corporation as a partnership between what they called the
post Office, which at the time was basically there they
ran the telegraph service over there, and the Marconi Company,
who said, I got a lot of radios. I'd like

(06:22):
to assail, but you got nothing to put on the radio.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Oh, we haven't heard that in a while.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
It's been a minute.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
So yeah. Remember in our AM radio episode we talked
about the Marconi Company setting up companies all over the world. Yeah,
this is a good example of that. And the British
government was like, hey, how about this. We will make
sure you have zero competition. That will give you a monopoly,
but you got to make some pretty good content here.

(06:49):
We want to hear good stuff. Right now, all we
hear is and we want to hear better stuff than that. Yeah,
And so the Marconi Company set us up. They established
this this station, like you said, in nineteen twenty two,
and I guess five years later the British government was like,
this is ours now, this is a state owned monopoly.

(07:09):
I don't know what happened to the Marconi Company, but
it sounds like they got hung out to dry. I
guess is the nicest way I can put it.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, I bet they did. Okay, So that was twenty
seven when it became the Broadcasting Corporation and very you know,
kind of right out of the gate, they were like,
here's what we're gonna do. We're not gonna it's gonna
be this weird hybrid of culture and entertainment kind of
ran through run through the government, but supposedly the government
doesn't intervene too much. It's kind of hard to reckon

(07:42):
how that all works, and sometimes it works really well.
Sometimes there's been a lot of controversy. But what they
did decide early on is we're not going to advertise
we're not going to tax people outwardly. At least, we're
going to have what's called a license fee, which is
this to us in the United States, a very strange
sort of arrangement wherein households pay a certain amount of

(08:05):
money starting in nineteen twenty three with ten shillings a
year to fund the BBC. And that's like your household
license to listen to and then later watch stuff on
television and listen on the radio, like.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
You have to have a license to watch TV in
the UK, is what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, but they don't say, all right, now here's the
codes to turn it on. I mean, I guess, is
it just like an honor system?

Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's what Kyle. So we had to follow up with
Kyle or like, we do not get this license thing
because it's just you Brits just take it as like
it's just the most normal thing in the world. It's not.
So it turns out that it does seem to be
on an honor system, and that most people follow that
in part because most people have honor. But also there's

(08:54):
apparently a very real threat that the BBC will send
out some government goons to show up at your door
step and be like, hey, are you do you have
a TV license? And I guess some people think that
it's it's incumbent upon them to open their door and
let the person in to see that they have a
TV and they can't produce a license and you can

(09:14):
get fined one thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
And apparently they have trucks.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
They say pounds thank you, which is more than one
thousand dollars. You should have also said the goon squad,
I should have let me just retake this whole Let's
just start at the beginning again.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
You have to put on your newsboy cap and get
out your cup of tea to really get in the zone,
you know.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Really my Lipton's BlackBerry tea. Yeah, but apparently they will
come to your house. So think about this, right. If
you are not in the UK and you subscribe to
Netflix and you get Netflix because you're using a friend's password,
imagine if Netflix showed up on your doorstep and said
are you getting Netflix for free?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (09:55):
And you say no, and they say prove it, let
me in, let me go, let me go check and
see if you have Netflix, because we know you don't
have your own account. That's essentially what they do with that.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah. I believe the Color TV license for twenty twenty
five is one hundred and seventy four pounds fifty twenty
two point eight million people pay this about twelve percent,
don't They just sort of evade that cost for a
total of about three point eight billion pounds that goes

(10:25):
to the BBC and the government. But this license expires
in twenty twenty seven, and there's a lot of himming
and howeing going on over what's going to happen next.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah. Over the course of its history, these ten year
charters that they get that get renewed and reviewed. Usually
the government wants something in return, or at the very
least rakes them over the coals publicly. But it does
seem from what I was reading that this does seem
like to be a particularly dire situation for the BBC
in their charter.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
So there's a lot of people who are like, no,
let's get rid of the ABC altogether, or let's let
them compete in the free market. They can sell ads.
It's an unfair, aggressive tax where the poorest people have
to pay the most percentage of their income for it,
whether they want to or not, just to watch TV.
There's a lot of competing ideas for what to do,

(11:17):
and the BBC's like, how about this, let's just not
change anything and increase the license fee a little bit.
And they're getting crickets back right now.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, they're getting crickets. So time will tell. In twenty
twenty seven, will report back what happened, right, Yeah, yeah,
a little follow up, But let's go back to the beginning,
because they had a guiding light at the beginning which
I was talking about, which was after the World War One,
the Great war. They really said, let's let's start this
thing to embody what it means to be a Britain

(11:51):
and to sort of get our common culture out there
to the world through you know, sports obviously would come along,
and music and interviews and documentaries and plays and things
at the time. And there were three dudes early on
that were the I guess the founders. Cecil Lewis, who
was a fighter pilot, former fighter pilot.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Man, you were nailing the British pronunciations here.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
He might have gone by Cecil, I don't know, a
broadcaster named Arthur Burrows. And their first director General, who
was the person in charge of the whole thing. His
name was John I think, right.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
I'm going with Wreath.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
You're going with Wreath and the director General is in charge.
But they also there's also a government board of governors
that they work with or maybe answer to.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Right. And one of the things about the BBC, one
of the reasons it's so venerated, it was a huge
trailblazer thanks to these three guys in their vision. I
saw that John Reith was described by the New World
Encyclopedia as a man of high intelligence, great ambition, and
rigid moral views and just like out of the gate,
they set the standard for broadcasting, for broadcast journey for

(13:01):
what it meant to kind of create a common culture.
Remember in our Saturday Morning Cartoon episode we talked about
how Saturday Morning Cartoons played like a bardic function. Yeah,
it gives a common culture to a bunch of people.
That was like part of their goal was to create
a common British culture and that happened right after World
War One. At the time, nobody had anything in common,

(13:24):
so it was a good thing that the BBC came along.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, and this was in the infancy of radio at
the time and such that Kyle dug up this kind
of fun thing. I guess there was a sign in
some of the recording studios and broadcasting studios where it
said you will all caps deafen thousands. So people didn't
know what they were doing, so they really had to
kind of figure this whole thing out. It was a

(13:47):
very intimidating thing, you know, early on to sit in
front of a microphone when no one had done that
kind of thing before. And even Arthur Burrows as a broadcaster,
he said broadcasting to millions was awful and they were
worried about getting you know, quote some madman on the
microphone who could do a lot of damage. So it
was a it was a pretty intimidating thing at first

(14:08):
when they were getting their feet wet.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, And so for people outside of Britain too, the
BBC was it. They were the only radio station, not
because there were there was no competition. They had a
monopoly for years and years and years. They had a
monopoly on radio and then television. So just bear that
in mind. So it was really incumbent upon these guys,
and they realized their responsibility to be the provider of

(14:33):
mass communication for their entire nation, and they took that
responsibility seriously. And they started the whole thing out on
November fourteenth, nineteen twenty two, with the call sign TWOLO
that was their broadcast license from the Marconi Company, and
Arthur Burrows said, Hello, Hello, this is too low the

(14:56):
London station of the British Broadcasting Company call too WELLO calling,
and that was my Arthur Burroughs.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
It's pretty good. Keep in mind everyone, he was very
nervous on the first day. That's why Josh sounded liked that.
Then he went on to just sort of get the
content underway. He did a one minute weather and news
bulletin and this is adorable. Then he repeated it slower
so people could take notes to I guess, read back
to their family. And from the get go they didn't

(15:27):
call it BBC English at the time. What it was
called was received pronunciation. But it was this sort of
accent that they all agreed would be the accent. They
didn't like regional accents coming on and everyone sort of
doing their own thing. They opted for this middle class
southern English that like at the Eton School, where it

(15:49):
was just sort of the same.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, apparently have been generating among aristocrats since like the
eighteenth century. And at that same time there were colonists
who were setting up the call colonies in North America
who had separated from that, and so there are in
some ways a lot more similarities to how Americans talk
today to how people in Shakespeare's time would have spoken

(16:13):
than the people in Great Britain today and the UK
have with the people in Shakespeare's time, especially hard ours
like Shakespeare would have been like what is a car
or the h's instead of Henry Higgins, right, you would
say Henry Higgins. That's how Americans say it. So those

(16:35):
two big differences. That's how Brits used to speak before,
like I guess about the eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, and so they you know, they got the ball
rolling very fast on all kinds of content. In the
nineteen twenties, they had something called the Children's Hour, They
started playing live concerts at some of London's you know,
venerated halls. In nineteen twenty seven, they started sports broadcasting
with the FA Cup Final, which the very first ever
live commentary for any event, not just sports. And by

(17:05):
the end of the nineteen twenties, by the end of
that first decade, really just eight years, they had two
million license holders. Those were households, so they had a
lot more than that as active listeners, and they were
a venerated, respected institution kind of right out of the.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Gate, yes, But before that they ran into their first
major headbut with government. And I say, we take a
break and come back and talk about.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
That about chew chill.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
That's right, We'll be right back, so, Chuck. We talked
about them headbutting with government and the first time it
ever happened was with the nineteen twenty six general strike,

(17:53):
which is when a bunch of people go on strike
from all different kinds of professions, and they were doing
this in sympathy with coal miners. I think more than
a million coal miners were having their wages reduced, and
so a bunch of different people from different professions went
on strike, and that included print workers at the newspapers.

(18:13):
So the newspapers effectively shut down except for the British Gazette,
which was a government owned newspaper. And the government owned
newspapers like this strike sucks and everybody who likes it
sucks too. But that left the BBC is the only
form of mass communication reporting on this stuff. And apparently
Winston Churchill was not very happy with the idea that

(18:35):
the BBC, the government owned monopoly, was not just being
like this strike sucks and anybody likes it sucks. They
were reporting neutrally on it.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, he was Finance Minister at the time, but he
had a lot of sway, obviously, and he was like, hey,
I think we should declare an emergency and take over
the BBC. And the Director General resisted. Reith did and
he said, no, we're not gonna let that happen. But
they it seems like they were strong armed into not

(19:05):
airing the other side as much. One example is when
they had Prime Minister Stanley bald went on at one
point and this was at Rice's house. They were broadcasting
out of the leader of the opposition, Ramsey McDonald was like, well,
I'd get to come on now, too, right, and the
government refused that. So they remained, you know, through the
rest of the strike somewhat impartial. They didn't let McDonald on,

(19:30):
but they did block Churchill basically from being on the
BBC until he resigned in nineteen thirty eight. So they
were like, you're never coming on here.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
No, that's quite a coup actually, because Churchill talk and
give speeches, so throughout the forties or the beginning of
the forties through World War Two, they managed to hang
on and keep reporting as best as possible. The radio
definitely did. It became a government propagand it's outlet. Some

(20:00):
of the European powers that had been overrun by the
Nazis and it made their way to the UK used
the BBC to broadcast to their people back home, or
I think the Polish army in exile, a Polish government
in exile sent coded messages to Polish resistance forces. It
still kept going. Apparently their studio was bombed in nineteen

(20:24):
forty and it took out a lot of the top
few floors, but luckily they were broadcasting out of the
basement still, and I guess the guy who was reading
the news at the time dusted the script off and
kept reading. You heard kind of a boom in the background,
but the news reader basically didn't miss a beat.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, they kept going because they had that charge to
do so. In the nineteen thirties is when TV came along.
So at the beginning there was a Scotsman named John
Logi Baird. This was in nineteen twenty six where he
had this really archaic at you know, I guess it
was pretty advanced for the time, but archaic now a

(21:04):
mechanical system where they had rotating discs scanning and displaying images.
And so they said, all right, that's good enough for now.
It's nineteen thirty two. No one will know that this
isn't very good.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
I can't imagine.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
They put out a very experimental thirty line service to
demonstrate that it didn't look so great. But it didn't
take very long before they had Marconi came along again
and said that he had a better system along with EMI,
and in nineteen thirty six they had the first high
def television service launched from Alexandra Palace in North London.

(21:38):
And at the time, high deaf meant two hundred and
forty lines of resolution or more.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, which is nuts because TV high def today has
something like two hundred and fifty. Yeah, at least at
least so the BBC TV so BBC Radio continued broadcasting
throughout the war, but BBC Television shutdown because apparently there
was a lot of concern that the signal could be

(22:04):
used to lock on as a target and bomb Alexandra Palace,
where they were broadcasting from. So they're like, well, we
don't want to risk that, we'll just stop broadcasting, and
they did for seven years, from nineteen thirty nine and
nineteen forty six.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, right after they got this new thing in their households. Yeah,
they were like all right for seven years. Can you
imagine being a child? No, I mean there was the
most kids content at the time, but still anything on
a TV screen, imagine was hard to lose after you
tasted it.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
I know. And it was around for three years, so
that was enough time to get people pretty strong out
on TV.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Right, Yeah, you know, huh.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
So, remember, these guys are figuring this stuff out as
they go along, Like the BBC were trailblazers in just
about everything they ever dipped their toe into. And one
of the ways that they did figure stuff out was
basically being dropped into the middle of it. And a
really good example of that came in the fifties in
nineteen fifty three when Queen Elizabeth the Second the sequel,

(23:06):
when she was coronated. But basically the BBC was like,
this is one of the biggest things we've ever covered,
if not the biggest thing we've ever covered so far.
So we're gonna we're just gonna throw everything we can
at it. So they started developing new technology, They figured
out new ways of broadcasting. They figured out like rolling
news coverage from you know, station to station, and it

(23:28):
was quite successful from what I understand too. Plus also
a lot of people bought TV sets as a result.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Yeah, so they could see that thing.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, so they could see what Queen Elizabeth looked like.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Finally, yeah, they told us on the radio, we could
see what she looked like on TV. So went out
and bought one.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
She's got pretty nice hair. She's wearing a tiara. I
think those are white gloves or else. She's quite pale.
I can't see from here is that a corgie?

Speaker 1 (23:56):
So you mentioned the monopoly. That monopoly was eventually broken
in nineteen fifty five when ITV into independent television was launched,
the oldest commercial network in Britain. And then eventually in
nineteen eighty two Channel four would come along and you know,
all of a sudden, programming started to get somewhat interesting
in like the nineteen fifties, because you started to get

(24:17):
a lot more. You know, it wasn't just let's do
the coronation or this concert from Royal Albert Hall or
something like that. They started to get into comedy and
sort of true entertainment, for better or for worse. One
example of for worse was a show called The Black
and White Minstrel Show in nineteen fifty seven. They had

(24:40):
sixteen million viewers for that show and it ran from
nineteen fifty seven to nineteen seventy eight. A super super
super racist minstrel show. We will say from nineteen sixty two.
Starting in nineteen sixty two that the chief accountant of
the VBSA was like, this is a disgrace and like

(25:01):
really racist, and so it took another sixteen years for
BBC one to say, yeah, maybe you're right.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah. That chief accountant's name was Barry Thorn, and he
was quite vociferous about getting this thing off the air.
And one of his memos that he sent, he got
a reply from one of the higher ups that said,
for heaven's sake, shut up. They just buried their heads
in the sand. They would not accept that this was
an offensive, racist show. And I read like even in

(25:32):
nineteen fifty seven, this was offensive and racist, let alone
nineteen seventy eight. And if you go and watch it,
it is jaw droppingly racist.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Like, yeah, they're just not good.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
It isn't It's like Lawrence Welk terrible. That's essentially it was.
Imagine Lawrence welkword. Every man is in blackface for no
reason whatsoever. There's no context to it. They're just in
blackface doing all these different things and doing all these
different song performances. It's it's insane, Like you should definitely
go check it out, Like if you're not just like

(26:04):
completely staggered by it, I will be surprised.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, there may be. You know, check in with yourself.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
That's a good litmus test watching the Black and White
Minstrel Show and seeing what you think of it.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, that should be the test moving forward.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think it's so nuts, dude, just.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Hook people up to a machine. Yep, it's nineteen sixties.
Now we're really flying through the decades. BBC two has
come along in nineteen sixty four, and Color TV with
a U comes along in nineteen sixty seven, and this
is when some of the legendary shows over there of
all time came about in the sixties, not the least

(26:44):
of which, from nineteen sixty three was the sci fi
series Doctor Who Who exactly, a show that I've never
watched me, but I know people love it.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Oh yeah, I mean it's been a cult classic for
seventy five years. Yeah, seventy years sixty something. That's a
long time for a cult classic to be around, you know. Yeah,
think about it. Freaks and Geeks was one season.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, good point.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
There was also one that I'd like to see. I
hadn't heard of it yet, but apparently it was enormous
and I can understand why. It's Kenneth Clark's Civilization For
me nine, this apparently was like the first Prestige series
that they ever came out with, and it was basically
like Kenneth Clark going over the Dark Ages up to
the twentieth century and talking about the philosophy of different

(27:34):
eras and what was going on and how things developed
and how people got along and interacted. It sounds really amazing.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, for sure, I want to see that too. Maybe
we should get an Eyeplayer. We'll get to what that
is later, okay, or sign up for Eyeplayer. I don't
think it's an object right, No, it's not. Satire came
along in nineteen sixty two with David Frost. That was
the week that was. I can only think that John
Oliver's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is just the

(28:06):
title itself might be a slight nod. Yeah, that was
the week that was.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
I mean, he's always struck me as pretty British, so
I'm sure he's aware of that show.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
And that was, of course the great David Frost.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, yeah, the one who got Nixon to basically admit
that he was a crook.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, that's the dude.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
There's another that was in nineteen seventy seven on CBS.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
I'm sure BBC was quite jealous Frost Nixon.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah or else they didn't care because it was Nixon
and he's American.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
That's right. But we also got Monty Path's Flying Circus
in Benny Hill in the late sixties.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
That's right. And then also the Foresight Saga, which I
hadn't heard of, but apparently it has quite a bit
of similarity to Dalton Abbey and they're about to reboot
it for the third time. So I guess Dalton Abbey
fans can move over to the Foresight Saga.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
I think that's already out. Actually, oh my god, the
new one?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Is it really?

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah? I mean it's been around since sixty seven. I
think there's a new six part series that's also that's
also out. If not now, then maybe coming into the holidays,
because it's definitely this year.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Okay, cool?

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Are you into Downton Abby? I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
I love Dunton, Abby. I'll watch it all good. Yeah,
it's not taxing on the brain or anything. It's just
it's exactly what it should be, which is that just
real easy to watch upstairs downstairs? Soapi drama?

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Nice?

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:27):
I like it okay. And then also what came along
in the sixties in nineteen sixty four was the music
show Top of the Pops. We've talked about that a
few times. You know, remember Queen made their Bohemian Rhapsody
video to get out of having the lip sync on
Top of the Pops.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, I mean legendary show hosted by noted awful person
Jimmy Sabil, who we're going to talk about later.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, for sure. Imagine if we just didn't mention him. Right,
So we you said we were blazing through the de
We're about to blaze so fast. We're going to combine
the seventies and eighties together because a couple of really
big things happened in well, starting in the late seventies
and early eighties. The first thing was nineteen seventy nine

(30:12):
when Life on Earth premiered, and that is David Attenborough's
first really big, massive wildlife documentary series. It took three
years to make. They went to over one hundred locations,
had a one million pound price tag and I was like, wow,
that's got to be a lot. That's only five million

(30:34):
pounds today. So imagine getting this groundbreaking series for a
mere five million pounds. That's quite a deal. But this
this thing just completely changed wildlife documentaries. Every wildlife documentary
you see traces itself in its style back to life
on Earth.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, you know, we can't go over all these shows,
and I know people are going to be like, what
about One Foot in the Grave and my favorite show?
But we should mention my favorites, one of which was
Faulty Towers. That was another that post college, when I
was living in New Jersey with my British friend from college.

(31:12):
He introduced me to Faulty Towers and The black Adder
and they were just a couple of the best shows ever.
I mean it was a comedy that I hadn't seen
before and just really really great stuff.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah. For some reason, I got introduced to Faulty Towers
before I ever watched Flying Circus too, so I was like, Oh,
that's the guy from Faulty Towers.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Oh really, m hm, Oh that's funny.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
And you mentioned the Goon Squad. I remember we talked
about them when we did an episode on I guess
Monty Python. Did we ever do an episode of My Python?
Because they came up we did?

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Okay, I think that was one of our La podfasts.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
It was totally yeah. Yeah, so they were deeply influenced
by The The Goon Show. Yeah I say Goon Squad,
didn't I.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, yeah, I think I said Goon Squad earlier, so
I think I probably influenced that.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Thank you, thanks for my fault jumping on that grenade
for me. But it's The Goon Show and it was
one of the first absurdist comedies that really influenced shows
to come, like Monty Python, but it was just on
the radio, which makes it even more creative if you
ask me.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah, amazing. Spike Milligan created it and it's probably most
notable these days for where Peter Seller's got his start.
He was in the first couple of series what we
call Seasons, along with Harry Seacombe, and I believe Michael
Benteen took over Peter Sellers. And like I said, there's
so many shows to mention, but we can't not mention

(32:40):
east Enders because my former roommate Justin talked about it
a lot. He was from East London and it was
It's one of the biggest shows in the history of
the BBC.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's basically like the British version of friends.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to comment on.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
That, but that was the TV show and still is.
East Enders is still on correct, I don't.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Know, is it.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
I'm pretty sure it is.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
That would be surprise me. It started in nineteen eighty
five and was a really big hit out of the gate,
and it's you know, it's melodrama. Kyle points out that
it hits all the sort of stereotypical like soap opera archetypes,
but they've also through the years, like I think most
good shows, I've gotten some applause for tackling things like

(33:29):
some of the realities of the East End of London
through history.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, like HIV, unemployment, just stuff that you don't always
see on the TV. It was kind of groundbreaking in
that sense for sure. Don't call it a soap opera though, Chuck.
If you want to go soap opera is you got
to get back to the radio and just find the Archers,
which is the world's longest running soap opera. They have
over twenty thousand episodes, so almost as many as we

(33:55):
can now, and it's set out in rural England. Apparently
it's great, or it has been from time to time,
so I've never heard of it and never heard it,
but I may pick up an Archer's habit. I'm not
sure then, yeah, or you.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Could just watch Archer instead on FX.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
It's great. It's basically the same thing.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
The radio was still going on. You know, I know
we're talking a lot about TV, but you mentioned the Archers.
The quality of radios. You know, if you listen to
our AM Radio episode, everything just on. It kind of
started getting better technologically in the sixties and seventies. They
were more ubiquitous, so it reached more ears. But you know,
this touches on a lot of our episodes because if

(34:39):
you listen to our Pirate Radio episode, you'll know that
pirate radio was a legitimate threat to the BBC Radio
Radio Caroline and Radio London. It wasn't just you know,
like a few hundred people listening like they were playing
popular music and sort of dominating that scene in the
mid to late sixties, and the BBC is like, we
got a better Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
The reason why there were pirate radio stations is again
because it was illegal to run a radio station because
BBC had the monopoly on it. So they were like, well,
like like you said, we need to keep up, so
they launched Radio one in nineteen sixty seven. Apparently it's
the most listened to radio station in the entire world
for no small reason, in part to Pete Tong and

(35:23):
his Essential Selection show that ran in the nineties. Did
you ever listen to that?

Speaker 1 (35:28):
I know the name, but I don't know if I
ever listened to that.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
It was like DJ sets that he hosted. They were
really good. It was a good show.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah. Well, they eventually would end that monopoly five years
later in nineteen seventy two on the radio when they
passed legislation that commercial radio could be a thing. And
that's when the LBC, the London Broadcasting Company, was the
first one to hit the legitimate airwaves. Is not pirate radio,
And apparently it was. You know, things moved along okay

(35:56):
through the seventies and eighties, but it was really a
nineteen nineties where local independent radio like super took off
over there.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Yeah. I think by that time. By nineteen ninety five,
the BBC had a smaller audience than some of its
competitors for the very first time. Yeah, but the BBC
plotted along. Don't feel bad for them, as we'll see
they know how to pick themselves up and dust themselves
off and say what's next for the BBC? I say,
we take a break and we come back and find

(36:23):
out what's next.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Chuck, let's do it all right, We're back and we
promised what's next for the BBC? And what was next?
Was Margaret Thatcher saying I hate you BBC. Yeah, she

(36:47):
was elected in nineteen seventy nine, had a strong I guess,
aversion to the BBC and their privileged status right out
of the gate. She wanted she was all about the
free market. She was like, nap, this should be in
the free market with everyone else. The editorial editorializing should
align with the national interest of basically what I think

(37:08):
is a national interest.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
And there were a number of things that happened in
the nineteen eighties that I guess you could call them
either missteps or just honest broadcasting that Thatcher did not like.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
No, especially covering the Falklands War or the troubles in
Northern Ireland. They weren't just like screw Northern Ireland, screw
the IRA or screw the Argentinians like they like you said,
reported fairly and in some cases we're accused of treachery.
Apparently Peter Snow on Newsnight called the troops the British

(37:42):
when they were invading the Falklands rather than our troops,
and he was accused of treachery. And they once interviewed
IRA member for a I think a Panorama episode. Yeah.
Panorama's kind of like Frontline from what I can tell,
It's like a hard hit investigative documentary show. And you

(38:03):
just couldn't do that. You couldn't talk to the IRA,
you couldn't give them any kind of airtime, you couldn't
air their viewpoints, and they tried to in the mid
eighties with that Panorama episode, but I guess I never
saw the light a day because of the government.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah, and that the whole situation would eventually lead to
the oulster of the Director General at the time, Alistair Milne.
And you know, he was everything I read about him
said that he was doing a pretty good job. But
it was you know, Thatcher was in power. She wanted
him out and in nineteen eighty seven he was basically

(38:39):
kind of strong earned doubt and Thatcher's you know, choice person,
Marmaduke Hussey was installed and you know, just to be
more government friendly.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, apparently, I was reading about Marmaduke Hussey. He was
described in his obituary as cleverer than he looked, but
almost certainly not as clever as he thought. He said
that when he was appointed to the BBC, he was
so unfamiliar with it that he and his wife had
to look up the address and the phone book to
see where he should be going. So he was not
like an obvious choice, and he was clearly the choice

(39:12):
that was like, this guy's going to listen to everything
I want, thought Thatcher.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah. Well, and I read some about what Melne thought
of like kind of the board after that and the
management after that, and he was like, it's just it's
a bunch of amateurs, people that don't know what they're doing,
like beyond the fact that they're just cronies for Thatcher,
like they're not good at this job.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, yeah, apparently he Hussey was known to this point
for having almost run the Daily Mail into the ground
and then almost run the Telegraph into the ground too,
so he was definitely not an obvious choice.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Like I said, yeah, fast forward a lot, actually, if
you want to go all the way up to Tony
Blair in the twenty first century. One of their big
first sort of controversies of that era was the Iraq Dossier.
And May two thousand and three there was a defense
correspondent named Andrew Gilligan who got on Radio four and

(40:10):
alleged that the Iraq WMD dossier had been quote sexed up,
something that everyone understands as being the truth now, and
Blair's press chief, Alistair Campbell, went on the counter and
a big feud sort of erupted between the BBC and
the government and director general there, Greg Dyke was well,

(40:34):
I guess he was sacked as well while he resigned
but kind of another strong arm.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, that was a huge, huge deal. And one of
the most shocking things that came out of all of
this is that Andrew Gilligan's source on this matter was
a guy named David Kelly, who was a UN weapons expert,
so he really knew what he was talking about, but
he had been an anonymous whistleblower up to this point.
It leaked out somehow that he was the source. Yeah,

(40:58):
this huge government contray that basically said the UK faked
all of the stuff that helped America invade Iraq, and
David Kelly was found dead, apparently by suicide in the
woods by his house. Yeah, it's very sad too. Apparently
there's a certain amount of people who are like, I

(41:18):
don't think he took his life.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah. As soon as I read that, I was like,
I mean there was an investigation apparently, and the government
was cleared of wrongdoing.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
But you know, yeah, but I mean that'd be pretty
vindictive if you think about it, Like, I can really
buy the government killing this guy to silence and before
he can share this information, but to do it in
retribution seems even Wow.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, for sure. The late nineties come along and the
digital revolution is upon us, and Director of General at
that time John Burt, started BBC Online. He had visited
the States and kind of realized that that was the future,
and it really took off. They had at the time
just sort of a piecemeal network of web pages, and

(42:05):
in nineteen ninety seven they really kicked it off in
ernest with BBC Online with a general election and a
rolling news website for the first time was established after
the death of Princess Diana, so it was hotly trafficked obviously.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, apparently nineteen million people watched her funeral, the largest
ever broadcast for them. And one of the things that
came out of this, and again this was really forward thinking.
We're talking nineteen ninety seven and they're like, we're going
to put a substantial amount of money in creating our
web presence. One of the things that came out of
it was that iPlayer you were mentioning, yeah, Yeah, which

(42:41):
was launched in two thousand and seven and initially it
was like did you miss EastEnders this week, Well, come
watch it on iPlayer, And this was not a thing
at the time, like this was a really groundbreaking thing
for the BBC to come up with.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, there was a lot of lobbying by rivals, like
commercial rivals, so they had a lot of constraints at
first that you know, hey you can watch the Senators.
It was just for seven days at first, but it
was free. Kyle said it was very easy to use.
I cannot attest to that, but Kyle said it was.
And by twenty twelve, eye Player was voted the UK's

(43:19):
best brand and that was when they had the London
Olympics going on, and that's a great time to have
something like Eyeplayer so you can catch the Olympics if
you're not watching it live. But then Netflix would come
along in twenty twelve overseas and they were free from
those regulations and they could mine all the top shows
they wanted that they could, you know, cut deals with

(43:41):
and all of a sudden, I think the BBC had
a restriction on their best shows for like seven years.
So Netflix really put a herding on Eyeplayer for a while.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Yeah. I guess their audience share in the UK went
from forty percent to fifteen percent once Netflix showed up
and I saw the adolescent. This is the most watched
show in the UK, I believe in history. It's pretty good.
And I guess the BBC's like, we can't, we can't
compete with this, like our Eeplayer. Even the Netflix chief

(44:13):
executive said the Eyeplayer really blazed the trail for video
on demand. Yeah, but they're like we can't, we can't
keep up with this. And it doesn't really matter because
everybody loves Eyeplayer, and I guess you would not necessarily
choose between Netflix and Eyeplayer. Maybe some do. I'm not
quite sure what the competition problem is.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, I'm with you, because it's.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Not like BBC's like, give me some money for Eyeplayer,
like that's included in your license that you pay every year.
Maybe they just don't like to look bad.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Well, I mean, you don't want a dying product on
your company, you know.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, I don't think it is dying. But yeah, Netflix
took a huge bite out of it.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yeah, for sure. But BBC is still around. BBC one
still reaches millions of people on just on the t
Radio four reaches about ten million people weekly. The sort
of knock against or the crack against BBC, I guess
crack in the American sense, not the Irish sense. I
guess you would say the knock over there is that

(45:16):
it's like for you know, for the senior set, like
you know, there are people that watch the BBC or
in their sixties and you know it's sort of not
not the way forward it was our past. Yeah that's right, Chuck,
you play funeral music.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Or something so well, I don't know yet that actually
remains to be seen. I don't. I can't imagine that
the BBC is going to just be done away with,
but it is quite possible that they're going to face
some some real change changes because in the twenty tens,
the BBC it was just missed up and scandal and
problem after problem. Apparently they worked on one hundred million

(45:58):
pound digital media initiative where they were going to come
up with a great archive that's going to be super searchable,
and it just went nowhere. So they just wasted you know,
I think ninety seven million pounds on it, and Brits
were outraged, which shows you, you know, that sense of
ownership that the average British person has for the BBC,

(46:19):
whereas like, if you found out, you know, Nickelodeon spent
one hundred million dollars in a failed initiative, even though
you're paying through your cable subscription in part for Nickelodeon,
you wouldn't it would It would matter not. It's like Nickelodeon,
do whatever you want with the money. But Brits feel
like that about the BBC. That's the impression I have
from that response.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, well, yeah, it's tied. Nickelodeon's not tied to the government.
I think that's one of the big differences.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Okay. Sure.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
In twenty seventeen, the Conservative government said hey, we need
to start publishing these salaries and they revealed a gender
a pretty substantial gender pay gap, and people were also
not happy that dear arding executives got big payoffs and
I was like, ooh, what's big. Yeah. Deputy Deputy Director
General Mark Bifer got a nine hundred and forty nine

(47:09):
thousand pound payment in twenty eleven, and David Zaslov said,
hold my pint, guys, right, he made fifty two million
bucks last year. Yeah, And they said, oh no, no, no,
you can't make that much money, and so they're cutting
it back to like thirty something million this year.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
That's funny. There's like that's too much money. Sorry, you
don't get that much. And he's like, okay, how much
do I get?

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Thirty something?

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Yeah, I guess I can make do. There was then
like all sorts of terrible sex scandals too. Jimmy Seville
kicked it all off when he died in twenty eleven,
and the a floodgate opened where people just started coming
forward being like, he sexually abused me in the sixties,
he sexually abused me in the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands.

(47:54):
He apparently had possibly hundreds of victims, a lot of
them chilled, some of them under like age sixteen, a
pretty substantial number. And it turned out that a lot
of people in the BBC were well aware of this
and essentially spent their time covering this up because Jimmy

(48:15):
Seville was just so revered in such a VIP that
he was treated with that much deference and like your
career would end if you went had to head with
him or even thought about it out loud.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, that's how much power he had as the host
of Top of the Pops. Very sad.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah, imagine like Dick Clark doing that. You can't you
can't do it.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
In twenty twenty three, just a couple of years ago,
Hugh Edwards, who was the lead presenter BBC News at
ten for twenty years since two thousand and three, played
guilty to sex offenses as well, and a Master Chef
host Greg Wallace this year was sacked after dozens of
sexual misconduct allegations were upheld. So yeah, they had a

(48:59):
long run of bad headlines leading all the way up
into like very very recently with the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Right, Yeah, there's a current scandal going on where Panorama again,
their investigative documentary series. They just released an episode, I
think it's the most recent one as of today, on
Trump and the technocrats and in it, they spliced together
his speech that he gave on January sixth, which makes

(49:28):
it look like he directly called for violence, and the
I guess BBC was like, we regret this error. And
Trump's response was that he was going to sue for
no less than one billion dollars. Yeah, that's the first
part of it. The second part is that at the
same time this is like, these are just body blows
coming one after the other.

Speaker 1 (49:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
An internal memo is leak that was basically said, I
think outright that the BBC is two left wing biased
and gave examples of it. That memo got and it's like, okay,
not only do the conservatives think that the it's left
wing biased, you think that it's left wing bias BBC,
or that you're left wing biased. So this is what's

(50:10):
going on as they're negotiating the charter that renews in
twenty twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah, so the stage is set for, you know, a
pretty big battle is brewing on what that charter is
going to or what that yeah license fee is going
to look like and if it's even you know, like
we mentioned, people are calling it a regressive tax. I
believe that the BBC used to cover or the government
used to cover it for people over seventy. Now the
BBC is responsible for that. But yeah, I mean it's

(50:37):
gonna be really interesting to see how it all plays out.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Yeah. I fear for the BBC a little bit.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
I love you BBC. Get your act together, is what
I say.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Sure, why not you got anything else about the BBC
or the biblic or the BEB.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
I got nothing else.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Okay I don't either, which means everybody, it's time for
listener mail.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
We got lots of good pop chart response one of
our more beloved episodes of Late and a lot of
people said eat them frozen, and here's one. Hey guys,
longtime listener from Santa Rosa, California. You guys have been
the soundtrack to so many moments of my life and
it brought so much joy and moments and times to
tell fun facts. So thank you. The recent pop tart episode,
I was waiting to see if you had mentioned the

(51:23):
ultimate all caps way to enjoy pop tarts, and that
is frozen. However you did mention it, and Chuck shuddered
with what seemed to be terror at the thought. I
don't remember doing that, but I guess I did. Okay,
strongly urge you to both try it. It's the pop chart,
you know, in love, but in frozen treat form. Do
your taste buds of favor and go pop a couple
in the freezer, then pop them in your mouths. And

(51:45):
that is from Matt f and Matt you'll be glad
to know, because they're urging of another listener who said
cut those crust off first. I went and got a
couple of those brown sugar simons. I cut the crust off,
put them back in the package, and I threw him
in the freezer, and I'll enjoy them at some point
this week.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Oh you haven't enjoyed them yet.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
No, no, no, I just put him in this afternoon,
and so I'm gonna before we record it. And I'm
not an afternoon pop charter.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Okay, you're a morning guy or evening.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Oh late night, my friend.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Okay, so you need to report back.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Okay, Yeah, this means I can't butter them, but I'm
willing to forgo that.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yeah, you could use cold pats of butter, that would
be good.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Or ooh, do you know I could do is melt
some butter and just dip that frozen in there bite
by bite.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Oh yeah, it's kind of like a reverse fried Snickers.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah, I'll report back.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Okay, we'll see Okay, And who is that from?

Speaker 1 (52:38):
That was from Matt F.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Thanks a lot, Matt F. That was a great email
and we'll let you know what Chuck thinks. And in
the meantime, if you want to be like Matt F
and send us a great email, you can send it
off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.