This focus of this chapter is on the period leading up to the launch of the regular high-definition television public television service provided by the BBC from the studios at Alexandra Palace in north London between the beginning of November 1936 and the beginning of September 1939. The next chapter will then examine the programme output and the audience engagement with television before concluding with an assessment of some of the critical issues of the period. This chapter begins with a brief section on the state of television in other leading countries at this point, notably Germany and the USA, before considering the preparations which were being undertaken at Alexandra Palace. This included appointing staff and producing programmes for the annual Radiolympia exhibition at the end of the summer. The chapter ends with the services opening ceremony.

Developments in Germany and the USA

By the mid-1930s, television was being developed in a number of countries, including Germany, the USA and France. Just as experimental broadcasting using the Baird mechanical system had been ongoing in Britain since 1929, so in Germany and the USA experimental programmes were broadcast during the first years of the 1930s to test image quality and transmission. On 22 March 1935, partly as a response to the announcement of the Selsdon Committee that a regular British television service would be authorised in the near future, the German Post Office opened a public television service in Berlin, with programmes scheduled for around two hours each weekday. The service operated on a 180-line mechanical system and programmes were broadcast not directly into people's homes but in viewing theatres or parlours (which held between 40 and 400 people) around Berlin. The reason for this was that only between 200 and 1,000 television sets were manufactured, and so this precluded any widespread individual or household ownership. Uricchio also notes that the German authorities had decided that the 180-line service was a temporary measure while a higher-definition service was being developed. With domestic sets not being rolled out, the public would not be affected when a change came. A limited number of sets were made available for domestic use to party officials and ministerial appointments, but for the majority of Berlin viewers the experience of television was a communal one. Programmes consisted of the transmitting of film as well as programmes using the Intermediate Film System (IFS).