Computer Science

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Headquartered at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, it is the world's oldest national broadcaster,[3] and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees.[4] It employs over 22,000 staff in total, more than 16,000 of whom are in public sector broadcasting.[5][6][7][8] The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.[9]

The BBC is established under a Royal Charter[10] and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.[11] Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee[12] which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts and iPlayer catch-up.[13] The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament,[14] and used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic and Persian.

Around a quarter of BBC's revenue comes from its commercial subsidiary BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide), which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and also distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC World News, and from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. In 2009, the company was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international achievements.[15]

From its inception, through the Second World War (where its broadcasts helped to unite the nation), to the popularisation of television in the post-WW2 era and the internet in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the BBC has played a prominent role in British life and culture.[16] It is also known colloquially as "The Beeb", "Auntie", or a combination of both (as "Auntie Beeb").[17][18]

The birth of British broadcasting, 1920 to 1922

Britain's first live public broadcast was made from the factory of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in Chelmsford in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mail's Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio.[19] However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office (GPO), was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.[20]

But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests[21] and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members.[22] Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufacturers, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast.[23] L. Stanton Jefferies was its first Director of Music.[24] The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers.[25] To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".[26]