Jonathan Bignell

British television re-started after the Second World War on 7 June 1946,
with programmes that included adaptations of theatre dramas, and relays
of public ceremonies and sporting events. It relied heavily of
remediation, [Jay Bolter and Richard
Grusin's](https://www.amazon.com/Remediation-Understanding-Jay-David-Bolter/dp/0262522799){target="_blank"}
(1999) concept of remaking or repurposing meanings from one text into
another but also the extension of a text across multiple mediums and
platforms. Remediation can be thought of as a movement of return to an
antecedent source, repeating it but in a different form. This implies a
temporal sequence, of going back and starting again. The result can
never be a pure return to the original, but instead repetition displaces
the original and makes it function differently. We can think of each
movement back to start again as a kind of looping or spiraling, which
creates a temporal structure of then and now, and a spatial structure
that positions one thing in relation to what it recapitulates or
displaces.

I decided to blog about British television in 1946 because it is when
television started again, rather than when it started first. Britain had
the first television service in the world, launched by the BBC on 2
November 1936. The early programmes were broadcast to the tiny number of
households in the London area that owned television sets. Most people
viewed in private homes, and watching meant gathering together, in a
semi-circle around the television set (and probably also around the
fireplace). There is my motif of the loop or circle again, this time in
the material space of the living-room.

Early television was characterised by a geographical notion of radial
extension, where a central source radiates out to a heterogeneous
hinterland. The television service had closed down on 1 September 1939
because of the outbreak of war, and among the reasons cited was that
radiating signals from the Alexandra Palace transmitter provided a fixed
compass point that could be used by enemy bombers. After the end of the
Second World War in 1945, more than a million homes and many public
buildings had been destroyed or damaged in London. Reconstruction
involved restarting television broadcasting operations, alongside the
much more established radio services, as part of the effort to
reconstitute national culture. Television, like radio, was intended to
draw Britons back together within the circles formed by their signals.

::: {#attachment_5006 .wp-caption .alignright style="width: 330px"}
[![BBC TV: Alexandra Palace
studios](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AlexandraPalace.jpeg){.wp-image-5006
.size-full loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5006" width="320" height="240"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AlexandraPalace.jpeg 320w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AlexandraPalace-300x225.jpeg.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AlexandraPalace-140x105.jpeg.webp 140w"
sizes="(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AlexandraPalace.jpeg)

BBC TV: Alexandra Palace studios
:::

At the centre of BBC TV were Alexandra Palace studios, equipped for
programme production and also dissemination from the huge rooftop
aerial. In 1946, months of effort went into repairing and refurbishing
cameras and transmission equipment, costumes and scenery, and surviving
staff from before the war were reappointed. The *BBC Year Book* of 1947
reflected that the apparatus worked better than in 1939; this was a
return, but with a difference.

Programmes began with a varied schedule that included a formal opening
ceremony, ballet with Margot Fonteyn, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, music from
Geraldo and his orchestra, and an adaptation by the head of drama
Michael Barry of a French short story, *The Silence of the Sea*, about
the French wartime Resistance. Next day, much of the schedule was taken
up with live coverage of the Victory Parade, in which military personnel
marched through London in the presence of the King, Queen and
Princesses.

Television radiated out across London, in a circle of about 40 miles
radius. To go beyond the studio, the BBC used two Outside Broadcast
units. Within the city, a direct physical connection with the studio
could be established by plugging the OB unit into a huge co-axial cable
that had been laid, encircling London's West End. This ring of cable
demonstrated physically how London-centric the television service still
was; television would be most interested in the things that could be
seen within that metropolitan space. The circle encompassed the premier
locations associated with government, royalty, religion, theatre, ballet
and opera, and of course the BBC's own headquarters. This was the
charmed circle at the heart of Britain and its Empire.

Television was expected to relay things that would have happened anyway
(like parades, West End plays or tennis matches), but remediation would
transform them because of their new-found accessibility ([Scannell,
1990](https://www.academia.edu/3235456/Public_service_broadcasting_the_history_of_a_concept){target="_blank"}).
BBC Television physically placed its cameras within the audiences that
encircled major events. In West End theatres, cameras were positioned on
the Dress Circle at the Garrick and His Majesty's theatres, for example,
to relay current shows. OB cameras followed the circling couples at the
Hammersmith Palais de Danse and in the circular auditorium of the Royal
Albert Hall. BBC transmitted pictures by remote radio links between its
OB vans and Alexandra Palace, to watch the motorcycles repeatedly
roaring around the circuit of Wimbledon Speedway and to see matches at
the Oval cricket ground. At Alexandra Palace itself, dancers from the
New York Ballet spun around the small studio. More and more circles.

::: {#attachment_5007 .wp-caption .alignleft style="width: 330px"}
[![Ballet Theatre of New York at Alexandra
Palace](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/BalletTheatreOfNYork.jpeg){.wp-image-5007
.size-full loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5007" width="320" height="240"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/BalletTheatreOfNYork.jpeg 320w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/BalletTheatreOfNYork-300x225.jpeg.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/BalletTheatreOfNYork-140x105.jpeg.webp 140w"
sizes="(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/BalletTheatreOfNYork.jpeg)

Ballet Theatre of New York at Alexandra Palace
:::

The sending-out that broadcasting involves is matched by the intention
for society to get something back. The action of broadcasting is a loop,
reaching out to the audience and embracing it. In 1946, television
transmission and reception had a single form. Centrally-generated
broadcast signals were received by a mass audience situated in a
different physical space. The audience was imagined as a large public
group, and [John Durham
Peters](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3656803.html){target="_blank"}
(1999: 210-11) describes the ideals of broadcasting as 'visions of the
agora, the town meeting, or the "public sphere"'. But the audience was
nevertheless atomized, comprising small groups watching their television
sets in the 40-mile circle surrounding London. Spatially, viewers were
positioned as a destination or receiver but they could not speak back;
television was one-way and the loop of communication could not be
closed. I think there are so many rings, circles, loops and spirals
woven into the history of early television because television
unconsciously thematized the tensions at the heart of broadcasting.
Broadcasting entails both inclusion and exclusion, sending and
receiving, creating and remediating. As it sought to find itself, it
moved forward by going around in circles.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Jonathan Bignell** is Professor of Television and Film at the
University of Reading. His writing about television, film and toys is
listed on [this web
page](https://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/about/staff/j-bignell.aspx){target="_blank"}.
Some of it can be downloaded freely in Open Access from there and other
material is available
from [Academia.edu](https://reading.academia.edu/JonathanBignell){target="_blank"}.
A longer version of this blog was presented at the 2015 Association of
Adaptation Studies conference in the School of Advanced Study,
University of London, in 2015.


British television re-started after the Second World War on 7 June 1946, with programmes that included adaptations of theatre dramas, and relays of public ceremonies and sporting events. It relied heavily of remediation, Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s (1999) concept of remaking or repurposing meanings from one text into another but also the extension of a text across multiple mediums and platforms.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

RINGS AROUND LONDON: TELEVISION IN 1946