Broadcasting, British Style

As a child, I had grown up in America, in pre-television days – and radio was a major influence on my life. Since practically all the programs were commercially “sponsored,” their primary purpose was to attract and maintain customers in the form of listeners, which they did by providing entertainment, mainly in the form of comedy or different kinds of drama, with a big timeslot in the late afternoon directed at children.

But it was only because of World War II that I happened to be living in America, and when that War was over, my father – who was a British Government office-worker, or “Civil Servant” – had to go back to our home country of England, taking his family with him. As a result, I spent all of my teen-age years “over there.”

One of the biggest adjustments I had to make was to the entirely different radio system. Unlike that in the U.S., radio in the U.K. was non-commercial, and was entirely controlled by the Government, through an agency they had set up called the British Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC. Since no advertising was allowed, this system was funded by an annual fee charged to listeners (or later, to viewers) based on the number of receiver-sets they owned. There were only two stations. One, called the “Home Service,” was theoretically more formal. The other, the “Light Program,” was slightly more entertainment oriented. It was only on the Home Service that we heard what was considered the most important program of the day – the regular Evening News at 9 pm, nearly always with the same announcer (or “reader”), whose voice became very familiar. Practically every household in the country subscribed to a weekly paper called the “Radio Times,” which contained a listing of all the scheduled programs on both stations. One station had a regular “Children’s Hour,” which came on at 5 pm with a host named “Uncle Mac.”

The most important program of the year was the King’s Speech (later the Queen’s Speech) which was broadcast on Christmas Day. But, although all the programs at “Home” in Britain were government-controlled (and this was still in the days before television) there were various ways that a listener with a strong enough radio receiver could get programs from abroad. Of course, many of them were in foreign languages. But there were at least three ways you could hear programs in English. One was actually American. In those days, when American forces were still stationed in large numbers in Europe, they had their own radio channel called the American Forces Network, or AFN – and many of their programs were relayed from the U.S. – though cleansed of commercials. This was one way I could keep in touch with the Country I had been so sorry to leave behind.

Another alternative was called Radio Luxembourg, from the small country next to Belgium from which they broadcast. They were actually allowed to record programs in Britain before broadcasting them from overseas. I was once in the studio audience of their quiz program, on which it was possible to win 300 Pounds – an enormous sum for a poor University student like me. (The BBC was not allowed to give large prizes.) Participants were selected at random from the studio audience, based on their answers to one test question. I was given a chance, and had only to know “What King of England had the longest reign?” I made a wrong guess, so never got on, and had to stay poor. (The correct answer was George III.)

But the BBC had one other form of competition – “pirate” radio stations broadcasting from ships that were anchored outside the three-mile limit; that is, in international waters. In a strange way, this led me to another kind of journalistic success.

In those days, the New Yorker magazine featured odd items – especially amusing mistakes from the pages of other publications, and sent in by readers. I happened to be living in London at the time and saw in the Daily Mail newspaper a report about one of those pirate stations, which had given as its mailing address a box number in “Graham Central Station, New York.” It was obviously written by some British reporter very unfamiliar with that City. I clipped it out and sent it in – and, to my delight, it was used in the magazine. Although I received a $10 payment, my name was never mentioned.

However, that was as close as I have ever come (so far) to true Fame and Fortune.