There was no single first broadcast
It is not possible to point to one “first commercial television broadcast” with confidence, because television grew through overlapping experiments and services in several countries. The best-known milestones are the opening of the BBC television service from Alexandra Palace in London in November 1936 and the grant of the first American commercial television licences, which took effect in July 1941. Neither happened in 1967. The 1967 link is colour: regular colour television began on the BBC’s second channel, BBC2, in July 1967.
From experiments to a public service
In the 1920s several inventors were working on ways to send moving pictures by wire or radio. The Scottish engineer John Logie Baird gave public demonstrations in London in 1926, using a mechanical system that scanned pictures through a spinning disc. The pictures were crude, with very few lines, but they were recognisable.
Mechanical systems were gradually overtaken by electronic ones, which used cathode-ray tubes and could produce clearer pictures. In the early 1930s the BBC broadcast experimental programmes using Baird’s system. When the BBC launched a public service, it was to serve a small audience in the London area.
Alexandra Palace, 1936
The BBC television service opened on 2 November 1936 from Alexandra Palace, a building on a hill in north London. For the first months it alternated between two rival systems, Baird’s and one from Marconi-EMI, so that engineers and officials could compare them. The Marconi-EMI electronic system, with 405 lines, was chosen in early 1937 and remained the British standard for decades.
The audience was small, since sets were expensive and the signal reached only part of the country. Television was suspended at the start of the Second World War in September 1939, and it resumed in June 1946. Some other countries, including Germany, also ran early television services in the 1930s, which is another reason to be careful about claiming a single “first”.
The American route, 1941
In the United States, television developed under a different model. Broadcasting there was funded by advertising, and the regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, had to decide on technical standards before allowing commercial operation. After a period of experimental broadcasting, the first commercial licences took effect on 1 July 1941, and stations in New York began commercial programming that day. Advertising was part of the picture from the start.
The war then slowed expansion, as manufacturing turned to military needs. After 1945 the number of stations and sets grew very rapidly, and television became a mass medium in American homes during the 1950s.
Commercial television in Britain
The word “commercial” can also confuse the story for British readers. The BBC was funded by a licence fee and carried no advertising. Advertising-funded television began in Britain with the ITV network, which started in the London area in September 1955. So the answer to “when did commercial television begin?” depends on whether the question concerns the United States or Britain, and on whether “commercial” means advertising-funded.
BBC2 and the arrival of colour in 1967
The 1967 connection is a specific one. BBC2 had launched in April 1964 as Britain’s third television channel, using a new 625-line standard that was better suited to colour. Colour transmissions on BBC2 began on 1 July 1967, and the first regular colour programming included coverage of the Wimbledon championships. Britain used the PAL colour system.
Early colour in Britain was limited. Few homes had colour sets, which were very expensive, and the amount of colour programming was small at first. BBC1 and ITV followed with colour in November 1969. The Beatles’ film Magical Mystery Tour, shown on Boxing Day 1967, was initially seen on BBC1 in black and white, even though it had been shot in colour, which gives a sense of how far the colour service still had to go.
In the United States the picture was different. Colour broadcasting there had been standardised in the early 1950s, and by the late 1960s the networks were moving most of their prime-time schedules to colour. Colour television was becoming the norm in American living rooms by 1967, while in Britain it was only beginning.
Public service alongside commerce
Another development from 1967 is worth noting. In the United States the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created a framework for non-commercial educational television and radio, reflecting a view that the commercial networks did not serve every need. Seen from the 1930s and 1940s, it showed how far the medium had moved from a novelty to something worth arguing over.
Summary of dates
- 1926: Baird gives public demonstrations in London.
- 2 November 1936: BBC television service opens from Alexandra Palace.
- 1 July 1941: first American commercial television licences take effect.
- June 1946: BBC television resumes after the war.
- September 1955: ITV, Britain’s first advertising-funded channel, starts in London.
- April 1964: BBC2 launches.
- 1 July 1967: colour begins on BBC2.