Portal:BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,900 are in public-sector broadcasting.
The BBC was established under a royal charter, and operates under an agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use the BBC's streaming service, iPlayer. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and is 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.
Some of the 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 in business. (Full article...)
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Madhouse on Castle Street is a British television play, broadcast by BBC Television on the evening of 13 January 1963, as part of the Sunday Night Play strand. It was written by Evan Jones and directed by Philip Saville. The production featured the young American folk music singer Bob Dylan, who soon became a major musical star.
The play was made with electronic video cameras, although recorded onto film rather than tape. The only known copy of the play was junked in 1968, as was the standard practice of the time, despite the fact that Dylan and lead actor David Warner were by then famous. Although extensive searches have been made by the BBC, only partial audio recordings of four songs sung by Dylan survive. (Full article...)Selected image
Bernard Cribbins and Freema Agyeman feature as Old Jack and Shelly Periwinkle in the CBeebies series Old Jack's Boat.
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Helen Frances Rollason MBE (née Grindley; 11 March 1956 – 9 August 1999) was a British sports journalist and television presenter, who in 1990 became the first female presenter of the BBC's sports programme Grandstand. She was also a regular presenter of Sport on Friday, and of the children's programme Newsround during the 1980s.
Born in London, Rollason studied to become a PE teacher before entering radio broadcasting in 1980. After directing sport related content for Channel 4, where she helped to bring American football to British television, she anchored coverage of the 1987 World Student Games and 1988 Summer Olympics for ITV. Her work on Grandstand proved popular with viewers, and led to a number of other sports presenting roles for Rollason throughout the 1990s. As well as covering mainstream events such as the 1996 Summer Olympics, she became a champion of disability sports, helping to raise its profile and change its public and media perception. She presented sports bulletins for BBC Breakfast News and BBC News, and in 1996 was named as Sports Presenter of the Year. (Full article...)Selected building
The MediaCityUK development at Salford Quays, Greater Manchester, became a BBC production centre in 2011 with a number of BBC departments relocating there from London and other sites in the Manchester area. BBC Breakfast began broadcasting from the site in 2012.
Did you know
Highlights from Wikipedia's Did you know
- ... that the first series of British radio stand-up comedy show Mark Steel's in Town was recorded in Skipton, Boston, Lewes, Walsall, Merthyr Tydfil and the Isle of Portland?
- ... that the episodes of the BBC 7 sitcom Knocker have titles such as "Privinvasionacy", "Obselejectivitysence" and "Confidentialitydence"?
- ... that the BBC coat of arms was adopted in 1927 and uses heraldic symbols to depict the various qualities of broadcasting?
- ... that Private Passions, a weekly classical music programme on BBC Radio 3, has occasionally featured interviews with hoax characters played by comedian John Sessions?
- ... that crime novelist P. D. James listed the 2007 series Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested as one of the most embarrassing television programmes the BBC has ever produced?
- ... that the BBC commissioned a painting of a 1987 Bullingdon Club photograph featuring David Cameron and Boris Johnson to circumvent copyright protection?
- ... that throughout the Cold War, "subversive" persons at the BBC had their files marked with a "Christmas tree"?
- ... that Jauchzet dem Herren, alle Welt by Heinrich Schütz, a 1619 setting of Psalm 100 for double choir, was performed at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1972?
- ... that BBC radio broadcaster Venu Chitale taught listeners how to cook without meat when it was rationed during the Second World War?
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