(work in progress)

All our working week we look forward to the weekend, and Saturday is often the liveliest day. Maybe you visit friends or relatives, or take the kids to the seaside? Maybe you go to the football or go shopping? Alternatively, do you catch up on all those home improvement projects or dig the garden? In short, it's a day for your favourite activity, and when the evening comes, you've earned a break. So when you've slumped into your comfy chair, dinner on your lap¹, you grab the remote control and spend a happy evening vegging out in front of the telly.

The entertainment on offer has changed over the years, of course. This is a short history of this popular pastime from the 1930s right up to the present day.

The Early Days

You may think that clustering around the TV is a very modern activity in the history of mankind, but there's something deeply primordial in it. In prehistoric times, man would have sat around the fire with his family, watching the glowing flames and embers, fascinated by the flickering images. Maybe this was accompanied with stories, or folk music with singing. In short, this was the entertainment at the end of a hard day's toil on the land.

As we developed into a civilised society, we advanced in many ways. We had comfortable homes and modern conveniences. We could travel around. We were educated and knowledgeable about the world around us. Yet, we still had roaring fireplaces in our homes to come home to. Then in the latter half of the 20th Century, when these started to be superseded by central heating, one extraordinary invention drew us magnetically back to that glowing source of entertainment at the end of the working day.

Sunday had long been our day of rest, but for centuries our religion forebade entertainment. We wore our sunday best and went to church. We abstained from alcohol and most forms of physical activity. From the outset, Sunday broadcasting was always comparatively low-key and reflective. It was only after we incorporated Saturday into a longer weekend that we had a day that we could devote to ourselves. Saturday night was the night of showbiz, variety and glamour. It had something for everyone, and we looked forward to it immensely.

The Beginnings of Broadcasting

The wireless came first, of course. Early receivers were around from the 1920s. You could pop into Selfridges and buy one for six guineas, and with an annual licence for ten shillings you were away, so long as you were content listening to items such as the Paris time signal broadcast from the Eiffel Tower, or communications from ships in the English Channel.

The first official UK radio service was provided by the British Broadcasting Company on 14 November, 1922. The BBC chairman, Sir William Noble outlined his plans for social broadcasting: a news synopsis², two weather reports from the Meteorological Department of the Air Ministry, and...

In addition to this news there will be concerts, instrumental and vocal, and it may be that later we shall arrange for speeches written by popular people to be broadcast.

(work in progress)