Portal:BBC
The BBC Portal
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,200 are in public-sector broadcasting.
The BBC was established under a royal charter, and operates under an agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use the BBC's streaming service, iPlayer. The fee is set by the British government, agreed by Parliament, and is used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic and Persian.
Some of the BBC's revenue comes from its commercial subsidiary BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide), which sells BBC programmes and services internationally and also distributes the BBC's international 24-hour English-language news services BBC News, and from BBC.com, provided by BBC Global News Ltd. In 2009, the company was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international achievements in business. (Full article...)
Selected article
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television during the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first crewed flight into space, supervised by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group.
When the spaceship that carries the first successful crew returns to Earth, two of the three astronauts are missing, and the third – Victor Carroon – is behaving strangely. It eventually becomes apparent that an alien presence entered the rocket during its flight, and Quatermass and his associates must prevent the alien from destroying the world. (Full article...)
Selected image
Nicholas Parsons during a recording of BBC Radio 4's Just a Minute. First aired in 1967, the comedy panel game was chaired by Parsons for over 50 years and it won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003.
Selected list article
BBC Young Musician is a televised national music competition broadcast biennially on BBC Television and BBC Radio 3. Originally BBC Young Musician of the Year, its name was changed in 2010.
The competition, a former member of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY), is open to UK-resident percussion, keyboard, string, brass and woodwind players, who are eighteen years of age or under on 1 January in the relevant year. (Full article...)
Related portals
Selected biography
Nicholas Anthony Robinson (born 5 October 1963) is a British journalist who has been a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Today programme since 2015. Before this, he spent ten years as political editor for BBC News and has had many other roles with the broadcaster.
Robinson was interested in politics from an early age. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford, where he was also president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. Starting out in broadcasting at Piccadilly Radio, after a year as president of the Conservative Party youth group, he worked his way up as a producer, eventually becoming deputy editor of Panorama before becoming a political correspondent in 1996. (Full article...)
List of selected biographies
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Selected building
Specially built for the BBC and opened in 1960, BBC Television Centre in London was home to much of the BBC's television output until 2013. Studio TC1, at 995 square metres, is the second largest television studio in Britain.
Did you know
Highlights from Wikipedia's Did you know
- ... that Anita West, one of the presenters of Blue Peter, was on the show for such a short period that no footage of her exists in the BBC archives?
- ... that Blackadder Goes Forth, the final series of the BBC situation comedy Blackadder, is noted for its sensitive depiction of World War I trench warfare and was placed 16th in the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes by the British Film Institute?
- ... that Newman and Baddiel in Pieces was the final show on which the comic partnership of Robert Newman and David Baddiel worked together before going their separate ways?
- ... that the composer Zbigniew Preisner wrote the title music for the monumental BBC documentary People's Century, which spans 26 parts?
- ... that crime novelist P. D. James listed the 2007 series Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested as one of the most embarrassing television programmes the BBC has ever produced?
- ... that the first song played on That's 60s was the same song Tony Blackburn had played on BBC Radio 1 more than 55 years earlier?
- ... that in 2014, BBC Three cancelled a debate on being gay and Muslim featuring Asifa Lahore, a Muslim drag queen, citing security concerns at the mosque where it was filmed?
- ... that BBC Breakfast's resident doctor Nighat Arif has advocated for more women to be given vibrators for medical reasons?
- ... that technical issues in the minute before their November 2024 BBC Radio 1 performance meant that South Arcade had to set up while the presenter was announcing them?
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