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The BBC National Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing the earlier

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...

's experimental station 5XX – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the

Home Service Home Service is a British folk rock group, formed in late 1980 from a nucleus of musicians who had been playing in Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band. Their career is generally agreed to have peaked with the album ''Alright Jack'', and has had an ...

, two days before the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Both the National Programme and the Regional Programme provided a mixed mainstream radio service. Whilst the two services provided different programming, allowing listeners a choice they were not streamed to appeal to different audiences, rather they were intended to offer a choice of programming to a single audience. While using the same transmitters, the National Programme broadcast significantly more speech and

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

than its successor, the

Light Programme The BBC Light Programme was a national radio station which broadcast chiefly mainstream light entertainment and light music from 1945 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 1. It opened on 29 July 1945, taking over the ...

. Similarly, the Regional Programme broadcast much more

light Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 tera ...

and

dance music Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded danc ...

than its successor, the Home Service.

History

Development

When the

British Broadcasting Company The British Broadcasting Company Ltd. (BBC) was a short-lived British commercial broadcasting company formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom. Licensed by the British Genera ...

(later to be nationalised as the

British Broadcasting Corporation #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

) began transmissions on 14 November 1922, the technology for both national coverage and joint programming between transmitters did not exist – transmitter powers were generally in the region of 1

kilowatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

(kW). From 9 July 1924, however the company began experimenting with higher power

longwave In radio, longwave, long wave or long-wave, and commonly abbreviated LW, refers to parts of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave broadcasting band. The term is historic, dating from the e ...

transmissions from the

Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 ...

's site near

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, using the call sign 5XX. The experiments proved successful and on 27 July 1925, the Chelmsford longwave transmitter was relocated to a more central site at

Borough Hill Borough Hill is a hill to the east of the town of Daventry in the English county of Northamptonshire. It is over above sea level and dominates the surrounding area. History Borough Hill has a history of human habitation dating into prehistor ...

near

Daventry Daventry ( , historically ) is a market town and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire unitary authority in Northamptonshire, England, close to the border with Warwickshire. At the 2021 Census Daventry had a population of 28,123, making ...

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

. This provided a "national service" of programmes originating in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, although it remained somewhat experimental and was supplementary to the BBC's locally based services including its main station, 2LO. Initially, it was transmitted on longwave; this was later changed, with the opening of a new high-power longwave transmitter site at

Droitwich Droitwich Spa (often abbreviated to Droitwich ) is an historic spa town in the Wychavon district in northern Worcestershire, England, on the River Salwarpe. It is located approximately south-west of Birmingham and north-east of Worcester. The ...

to on 7 October 1934. This remained the frequency for the National Programme, through its successors the

and Radio 4, which moved its frequency slightly to on 1 February 1988, where it currently remains.

Medium wave Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the daytime ...

transmitters were used to augment coverage.

Regional scheme

On 21 August 1927, the BBC opened a high-power medium wave transmitter at the Daventry 5GB site to replace the existing local stations in the

English Midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in the Ind ...

, that allowed the experimental longwave transmitter 5XX to provide a service programmed from

for the majority of the population, this came to be called the ''National Programme''. By combining the resources of the local stations into one regional station in each area with a basic sustaining service from London, the BBC hoped to increase programme quality whilst also centralising the management of the radio service known as the "regional scheme", and eventually resulted in the gradual extension throughout the decade of a separate Regional Programme. The local stations were gradually either converted to regional relays or closed entirely and replaced by high-power Regional Programme transmitters. Some local studios were retained to provide for programming from specific areas within each region. Most transmitters also carried the National Programme on a local frequency to supplement the longwave broadcasts from 5XX, initially these were on three separate frequencies in order to minimise interference. By 1939 as the Regional Programme network expanded, the three remaining medium wave transmitters – at

Brookmans Park Brookmans Park is a village in Hertfordshire, southeast England, known for its BBC transmitter station. Brookmans Park railway station, on the East Coast Main Line, is operated by Great Northern. It is also a waypoint used in air navigation ...

(for London and the South East), Moorside Edge (for the

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

), and Westerglen (for central Scotland) – were all using .

Broadcasting hours

The National Programme's broadcasting hours were from Mondays to Saturdays at around 10.15am until midnight, with Sundays commence broadcasting at 3.00pm. However by the mid-1930s, broadcasting on a Sunday was extended to commence at around 10.30am.

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

on the National Programme would not air until at least 6.00pm each day, this was in agreement with several

newspapers A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

to ensure people would buy a morning edition. Thus did not have a dedicated news department until 1934, and only then was it used to edit and broadcast news material from other wire agencies in the country and around the world. The start of

on 1 September 1939 would see the start of a proper news on the new

with morning news bulletins commencing at 7.00am each day.

Closure

Upon the outbreak of

, the BBC closed both existing National and Regional radio programmes to replaced with a single channel known as the

. The main transmitter network was synchronised between just two groups, using 668 and 767 kHz, each of which could be turned off during air raids to prevent their signals being used as navigational beacons (with listeners required to retune in such an event to a low-powered single-frequency network on ). On 29 July 1945, within 12 weeks of

Victory in Europe Day Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Easter ...

, the BBC reactivated the Regional Programme but retained the name "Home Service" (until 30 September 1967 as the station became Radio 4). On the same date, the

was launched by taking over the style and much of the function as a entertainment channel of the Forces Programme which had begun broadcasting on 7 January 1940, as well as the

longwave frequency which had been used by the pre-war National Programme.

History

Development

Regional scheme

Broadcasting hours

Closure

Sources

References

Further reading