From 0 to 500+ in 84 years!
02 Nov 2020
Dear LPG
Did you know that it was this day in 1936 that the BBC started the first regular TV broadcasting service in the world? The internet tells me that those broadcasts reached the then 100 TV sets which existed and nearly all the programmes were political. That was 84 years ago and look at what has happened since then.
By the time that Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1953 there was just one person I knew who owned a TV in the street where I lived and the living room of that house was as packed as a theatre that day. Apparently the viewing public was estimated to have been 27 million.
We were introduced to ITV in 1955 and we had to wait until 1964 for BBC2. When we were first introduced to Channel 4, I remember making a point of being in front of the screen on November 2nd 1982 in time for the historic first showing of Countdown. In March 1997 I, for one, thought we had it all when channel 5 arrived, but then, we followed the Americans into the madness of hundreds of stations, which some chose to pay for, and which arrived for the British masses at about the end of the last century. Finally, we discovered Freeview which allows everyone about 70 channels and we seem to have come full circle with those that feature many memories for us older people.
So now there are about 480 channels available to us even though we each only have one pair of eyes and ears, and one brain to take it all in; and I haven’t even got started on the computer games yet.
What next?
CL, Lewisham
LPG found a few facts….
