OTD in early British television: 15 January 1939
John Wyver writes: Television on the afternoon of Sunday 15 January 1939 featured a half-hour outside broadcast from Watford Junction railway station. This was the first of a series titled Television Surveys conceived to showcase activities in various workplaces in and around London. Hosted by film editor Tod Rich, it showed activities of the London Midland and Scottish Railway at the station. ‘E.H.R.’ in the Observer praised the broadcast as ‘a good and interesting start’.
The London Midland and Scottish Railway was the largest of the ‘big four’ companies formed by the amalgamation of some 120 enterprises by the Railway Act 1921. It operated nearly 7,000 miles of track (see map above) in and around London, the Midlands, the North West of England, Wales and Scotland. As Wikipedia informs us it was the world’s largest transport organisation, the largest commercial enterprise in the British Empire and after the Post Office the United Kingdom’s second largest employer.
The programme appears to have showcased a range of somewhat prosaic operations, including men working on the line, laying sleepers and a truck with a crane in action. Members of staff were interviewed, and both the express from Manchester and the Birmingham Express were seen ‘under steam’.
By the start of 1939 the Television service had two mobile units, each made up of three vehicles, and OBs were increasingly seen as the USP of the new medium. ‘When all is said and done,’ one writer asserted after only a year of the service, ‘outside events are what really matter in television. However skilful Alexandra Palace’s production of drama, however fascinating those studio programmes which combine entertainment with instruction, however light-hearted the interludes of variety and revue, all these things can be done elsewhere.’
The turn of the year had seen Sunday afternoon transmissions added to the schedule, and on alternate weekends a Television Survey took viewers ‘behind the scenes’ of a different location. Many of these, like this first, highlighted aspects of the modern world, with the railway followed the international telephone exchange at Faraday Buildings ‘with telephone conversations to various parts of the world’, and then the mobile police on the Barnet by-pass.
Autogiros were demonstrated from the London Air Park at Hanworth, and the Civil Air Guard was shown in action from the same location. In mid-March the mobile unit was at Clitheroe Lock on the Grand Union Canal, then dinghy sailing from Putney and the training of a police horse at Imber Court. In late April Television Surveys visited the Royal Academy for non-members varnishing day at the start of the Summer Exhibition, and Laura Knight, Eric Gill and Edwin Lutyens were among those interviewed.
Several of these later Surveys were written about by reviewers – unlike the first, apart from the E.H.R. passing comment. I’ll return to these more detailed responses in future OTDs as they are revealing about the ways in which the emerging form of the television outside broadcast were understood.
Image: a detail from the map of LMS services in the railway company’s 1939 Timetable, available via Internet Archive.
Leave a Reply