This chapter will examine the period of low-definition, 30-line television service, provided by Baird Television on the BBC's transmitters from 30 September 1929. During these years, television developed from being an experiment hosted by a reluctant, or, in Ronald Coase's words, ‘niggardly’, BBC, to the point where the Corporation provided a more regular television service from 1932 onwards, one that was watched by an increasing number of television enthusiasts. The key issues which dominated this period of television's development were: the often-complex dynamics between the Baird television companies and the BBC; developments inter-nationally, in particular in Germany and the USA; the negotiation of the relationship between television, cinema, theatre and radio; and a notion of ‘Britishness’ which emerged within the context of a discourse around fears of Americanisation.

Baird Television and the BBC

On 30 September 1929 an experimental television service from the studio of the Baird Television Company in Long Acre began broadcasting using the BBC's London transmitter (2LO). The Radio Times entry for 11.00 a.m.–11.30 a.m. on the day showed that it was billed as an ‘Experimental Television Transmission by the Baird Process’ nestled between a wireless talk on ‘How I Planned my Kitchen’ and a programme of gramophone records. This somewhat insignificant billing belied an important event – a culmination of years of experimentation, press interest and political lobbying (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3). The opening broadcast consisted of a number of items, including speeches by John Logie Baird, Sydney Moseley and Sir Ambrose Fleming, a letter from Sir William Graham, the government's President of the Board of Trade (which was read out), and light entertainment provided by comedian Sydney Howard, singer Lulu Stanley and Connie King, Baird's secretary. Unfortunately, sound and vision could not be transmitted simultaneously, as only one BBC transmitter – 2LO – was available. Therefore, each contributor had to speak or perform (sound only on the radio) and then repeat the speech or performance in order to be televised. While not ideal, the fact that pictures were being transmitted in real time, ‘live’, and were being viewed as they happened at a distance was enough to capture the imagination of a writer in Amateur Wireless, who stated that while there was yet much to be done in terms of television transmission, ‘the present stage is highly creditable’ and the fact that the BBC was now permitting broadcasts would ‘undoubt-edly hasten progress’.