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 broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage. The service maintains 50 foreign news bureaus with more than 250 correspondents around the world. Deborah Turness has been the CEO of news and current affairs since September 2022.

In 2019, it was reported in an Ofcom report that the BBC spent £136m on news during the period April 2018 to March 2019. BBC News' domestic, global and online news divisions are housed within the largest live newsroom in Europe, in Broadcasting House in central London. Parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in London. Through BBC English Regions, the BBC also has regional centres across England and national news centres in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. All nations and English regions produce their own local news programmes and other current affairs and sport programmes.

The BBC is a quasi-autonomous corporation authorised by royal charter, making it operationally independent of the government.

History

Early years

The British Broadcasting Company broadcast its first radio bulletin from radio station 2LO on 14 November 1922. Wishing to avoid competition, newspaper publishers persuaded the government to ban the BBC from broadcasting news before 7:00 pm, and to force it to use wire service copy instead of reporting on its own. The BBC gradually gained the right to edit the copy and, in 1934, created its own news operation. However, it could not broadcast news before 6 PM until World War II. In addition to news, Gaumont British and Movietone cinema newsreels had been broadcast on the TV service since 1936, with the BBC producing its own equivalent ''Television Newsreel'' programme from January 1948. A weekly ''Children's Newsreel'' was inaugurated on 23 April 1950, to around 350,000 receivers. The network began simulcasting its radio news on television in 1946, with a still picture of Big Ben. Televised bulletins began on 5 July 1954, broadcast from leased studios within Alexandra Palace in London.

The public's interest in television and live events was stimulated by Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. It is estimated that up to 27 million people viewed the programme in the UK, overtaking radio's audience of 12 million for the first time. Those live pictures were fed from 21 cameras in central London to Alexandra Palace for transmission, and then on to other UK transmitters opened in time for the event. That year, there were around two million TV Licences held in the UK, rising to over three million the following year, and four and a half million by 1955.

1950s

Television news, although physically separate from its radio counterpart, was still firmly under radio news' control in the 1950s. Correspondents provided reports for both outlets, and the first televised bulletin, shown on 5 July 1954 on the then BBC television service and presented by Richard Baker, involved his providing narration off-screen while stills were shown. This was then followed by the customary ''Television Newsreel'' with a recorded commentary by John Snagge (and on other occasions by Andrew Timothy).

On-screen newsreaders were introduced a year later in 1955 Kenneth Kendall (the first to appear in vision), Robert Dougall, and Richard Baker–three weeks before ITN's launch on 21 September 1955.

Mainstream television production had started to move out of Alexandra Palace in 1950 to larger premises mainly at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush, west London taking Current Affairs (then known as Talks Department) with it. It was from here that the first ''Panorama'', a new documentary programme, was transmitted on 11 November 1953, with Richard Dimbleby becoming anchor in 1955.

In 1958, Hugh Carleton Greene became head of News and Current Affairs.

1960s

On 1 January 1960, Greene became Director-General. Greene made changes that were aimed at making BBC reporting more similar to it competitor ITN, which had been highly rated by study groups held by Greene.

A newsroom was created at Alexandra Palace, television reporters were recruited and given the opportunity to write and voice their own scripts–without having to cover stories for radio too.

On 20 June 1960, Nan Winton, the first female BBC network newsreader, appeared in vision. 19 September 1960 saw the start of the radio news and current affairs programme ''The Ten O'clock News''.

BBC2 started transmission on 20 April 1964 and began broadcasting a new show, ''Newsroom''.

'' The World at One'', a lunchtime news programme, began on 4 October 1965 on the then Home Service, and the year before ''News Review'' had started on television. ''News Review'' was a summary of the week's news, first broadcast on Sunday, 26 April 1964 on BBC 2 and harking back to the weekly ''Newsreel Review of the Week'', produced from 1951, to open programming on Sunday evenings–the difference being that this incarnation had subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. As this was the decade before electronic caption generation, each superimposition ("super") had to be produced on paper or card, synchronised manually to studio and news footage, committed to tape during the afternoon, and broadcast early evening. Thus Sundays were no longer a quiet day for news at Alexandra Palace. The programme ran until the 1980s by then using electronic captions, known as Anchor to be superseded by Ceefax subtitling (a similar Teletext format), and the signing of such programmes as '' See Hear'' (from 1981).

On Sunday 17 September 1967, '' The World This Weekend'', a weekly news and current affairs programme, launched on what was then Home Service, but soon-to-be Radio 4.

Preparations for colour began in the autumn of 1967 and on Thursday 7 March 1968 ''Newsroom'' on BBC2 moved to an early evening slot, becoming the first UK news programme to be transmitted in colour from Studio A at Alexandra Palace. ''News Review'' and ''Westminster'' (the latter a weekly review of Parliamentary happenings) were "colourised" shortly after.

However, much of the insert material was still in black and white, as initially only a part of the film coverage shot in and around London was on colour reversal film stock, and all regional and many international contributions were still in black and white. Colour facilities at Alexandra Palace were technically very limited for the next eighteen months, as it had only one RCA colour Quadruplex videotape machine and, eventually two Pye plumbicon colour telecines–although the news colour service started with just one.

Black and white national bulletins on BBC 1 continued to originate from Studio B on weekdays, along with '' Town and Around'', the London regional "opt out" programme broadcast throughout the 1960s (and the BBC's first regional news programme for the South East), until it started to be replaced by '' Nationwide'' on Tuesday to Thursday from Lime Grove Studios early in September 1969. ''Town and Around'' was never to make the move to Television Centre instead it became ''London This Week'' which aired on Mondays and Fridays only, from the new TVC studios.

The BBC moved production out of Alexandra Palace in 1969. BBC Television News resumed operations the next day with a lunchtime bulletin on BBC1 in black and white from Television Centre, where it remained until March 2013.

This move to a smaller studio with better technical facilities allowed ''Newsroom'' and ''News Review'' to replace back projection with colour-separation overlay. During the 1960s, satellite communication had become possible; however, it was some years before digital line-store conversion was able to undertake the process seamlessly.

1970s

On 14 September 1970, the first '' Nine O'Clock News'' was broadcast on television. Robert Dougall presented the first week from studio N1
described by ''The Guardian'' as "a sort of polystyrene padded cell"—the bulletin having been moved from the earlier time of 20.50 as a response to the ratings achieved by ITN's '' News at Ten'', introduced three years earlier on the rival ITV. Richard Baker and Kenneth Kendall presented subsequent weeks, thus echoing those first television bulletins of the mid-1950s.

Angela Rippon became the first female news presenter of the ''Nine O'Clock News'' in 1975. Her work outside the news was controversial at the time, appearing on ''The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show'' in 1976 singing and dancing.

The first edition of '' John Craven's Newsround'', initially intended only as a short series and later renamed just ''Newsround'', came from studio N3 on 4 April 1972.

Afternoon television news bulletins during the mid to late 1970s were broadcast from the BBC newsroom itself, rather than one of the three news studios. The newsreader would present to camera while sitting on the edge of a desk; behind him staff would be seen working busily at their desks. This period corresponded with when the ''Nine O'Clock News'' got its next makeover, and would use a CSO background of the newsroom from that very same camera each weekday evening.

Also in the mid-1970s, the late night news on BBC2 was briefly renamed ''Newsnight'', but this was not to last, or be the same programme as we know today that would be launched in 1980 and it soon reverted to being just a news summary with the early evening BBC2 news expanded to become ''Newsday''.

News on radio was to change in the 1970s, and on Radio 4 in particular, brought about by the arrival of new editor Peter Woon from television news and the implementation of the ''Broadcasting in the Seventies '' report. These included the introduction of correspondents into news bulletins where previously only a newsreader would present, as well as the inclusion of content gathered in the preparation process. New programmes were also added to the daily schedule, '' PM'' and ''The World Tonight'' as part of the plan for the station to become a "wholly speech network". ''Newsbeat'' launched as the news service on Radio 1 on 10 September 1973.

On 23 September 1974, a teletext system which was launched to bring news content on television screens using text only was launched. Engineers originally began developing such a system to bring news to deaf viewers, but the system was expanded. The Ceefax service became much more diverse before it ceased on 23 October 2012: it not only had subtitling for all channels, it also gave information such as weather, flight times and film reviews.

By the end of the decade, the practice of shooting on film for inserts in news broadcasts was declining, with the introduction of ENG technology into the UK. The equipment would gradually become less cumbersome the BBC's first attempts had been using a Philips colour camera with backpack base station and separate portable Sony U-matic recorder in the latter half of the decade.

1980s

In 1980, the Iranian Embassy Siege had been shot electronically by the BBC Television News Outside broadcasting team, and the work of reporter Kate Adie, broadcasting live from Prince's Gate, was nominated for BAFTA actuality coverage, but this time beaten by ITN for the 1980 award.

''Newsnight'', the news and current affairs programme, was due to go on air on 23 January 1980, although trade union disagreements meant that its launch from Lime Grove was postponed by a week. On 27 August 1981 Moira Stuart

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