Friday Jun 05, 2020
#001 Morse to Marconi: Pick of the Pioneers
The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa
100 Years of the BBC, Radio and Life as We Know It. Be informed, educated and entertained by the amazing true story of radio’s forgotten pioneers. With host Paul Kerensa, great guests and rare archive from broadcasting’s golden era. Original music by Will Farmer. www.paulkerensa.com/oldradio
Listen on:
Episodes
Episodes
Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
Happy 100th Birthday Radio! Welcome to the podcast that informs, educates + entertains on the origins of the BBC, radio and life as we know it.
(Oh, we've no affiliation with the BBC, to be clear.)
Original music by Will Farmer. All other clips are public domain, by our understanding, due to their vast age. If we're wrong and you own a clip, get in touch.
Be on the podcast: Email an audio clip of your early broadcasting memories, or send your questions/comments
Support the show at Patreon / Ko-fi
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Pip pip!
About this project
This is a 3-part project (at least)...
THE BOOK:
Intended as a trilogy, Auntie and Uncles comes out in 2023. Book 1 tells the BBC tale up to its launch, from the perspectives of four pioneers: Arthur Burrows, Peter Eckersley, Hilda Matheson and John Reith. Matheson only joins the BBC later - but she's somehow on hand for some key moments in British history. And she's awesome, so I had to include her.
But in researching the book, I was looking for a podcast about early broadcasting. I couldn't find one, so...
THE PODCAST:
When the pandemic hit, and my live performing work went, I saw the centenary approaching of Melba's famous 1920 broadcast. Not famous enough it seemed - I couldn't see anyone talking about it. No radio shows, no TV documentaries, and certainly no podcasts. So I started The British Broadcasting Century. The more I kept digging, the more stories I found, the more characters needing their day in the sun, the more old clips in need of rescue and a new audience... so here we are. And it's still growing. We've taken 50 episodes to reach the start of 1923. A LOT of stories to tell. The slow way. With a podcast, you can.
THE SHOW:
In 2022, for centenary year, I toured a show - The First Broadcast: The Battle for the Beeb in 1922. I'm a comedian, but wanted to put on a one-man show that told this story via two characters, Arthur Burrows and Peter Eckersley. It wasn't intended as a comedy. It came across that way, a bit.
That show's in storage for now, but ready to be dusted down if anyone wants it.
Meanwhile I have two other potential shows/talks: Auntie's First Year (a presentation on the landmarks of 1923) and The First Religious Broadcast (a re-enactment of what led to and what happened at Britain's first ever broadcast sermon, pre-BBC, in the summer of 1922).
Interested in either? Book me. Paul at paulkerensa dot com.
And buy the book.
More info on all this at paulkerensa.com/oldradio
Thanks for stopping by. Keep listening.