Stuff You Should Know - A Quick History of the BBC

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

The BBC has been around as long as there has been radio. Today we salute the venerable institution that's as British as tea and crumpets. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, Harry Potter fans. Huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions, are all being released on Audible, on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed is Snape,

and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score, and the sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. The Hogwarts Express rumbling out of platform 9 and 3 quarters, and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical. Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released

every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper.

Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed. Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And she said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents, and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely.

know what happened. Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. That's right. You got a quick announcement, huh? I do, huh? I think so. Well, if you're talking about our new playlist that's coming out, that one?

That's right. Yeah, we have a new playlist coming out, right, Chuck? Yeah, this holiday season, I think coming out very soon, actually. We have the 12 days of holiday toys because we've got lots of great toy episodes over the years, and we've compiled them together for the whole family to enjoy. That's right. We love those toy episodes. I think it comes out on December 12th, right?

I think so. And that's what, like, I mean, in real time, this probably, or not real time, but in real podcast time, this week, I think. I think so, too. And what do you have to do to get these episodes, you may ask? Nothing. You don't have to lift a single finger. We're going to put them in the feed like we have been. And I hope you enjoy them.

Yeah, totally. And I have another announcement for this BBC episode. Okay. Is that how you say it? The Beeb? Yeah, I've heard that, too. What do you say? Boob.

That's how I was going to say it, the whole episode. This one, even more so than a lot of our others that are, you know, you could potentially do 100 episodes on. This is like serious overview territory when you're talking about something as far-reaching and long-standing and sort of legendary culturally as the BBC is. I don't want our listeners across the pond to be like, guys, you're going to give us, you know, 45 minutes on the BBC. That's exactly what we're going to do. And it's with love. Yeah, and big thanks to our man in Britain, Kyle, for wrangling this huge, massive topic into something pretty good and understandable. Yeah, because I've got to say, I love the BBC, always have.

Yeah. Since I was a little kid watching. Oh, really? Yeah, watching their content on public television. Uh-huh. You know, everything from Flying Circus to Benny Hill to Faulty Towers. And then having a British roommate in college, he would tell me about the EastEnders and, you know, all the, you know, stuff that he grew up with. And it's just been near and dear.

I read the BBC news all the time. It's just, you know, I love it. I definitely watched Benny Hill a lot when I was a kid, too. So I guess I didn't realize it was BBC content, but it totally was, wasn't it? Yeah, you just thought it was some guy who talked funny from Indiana. Right. Who liked bare breasts. Yes, he was really into boobs, man.

He was. If there was ever a person into boobs, it was Benny Hill. Yeah, and 12-year-old Chuck. So, yeah, that's cool. I guess I've loved the BBC longer than I thought, too. So this is, it's a hat tip, I guess. Also a big thanks to the BBC. and also deeply critical of it.

Yeah, to this 103-year-old institution. Yeah, just in time for its 103rd birthday. So let's get started. You mentioned that it's called Beebe. I had not heard that before, but apparently it's quite accurate. And the Beeb, you can liken it in the U.S. to NPR, where there's a lot of, you know, accusations of it being left-leaning bias, and then people on the left are like, no, it's right bias.

It does its best to stay middle ground, if possible. It has to do with public funding, but in a much different way. And it's a venerable institution, but like way more venerable than NPR or public broadcasting is here in the United States. It is a big chunk of British culture. And in that sense, I get the sense that even people who are like to hell with BBC still feel some sort of like pride in the BBC in its existence. Yeah, and, you know, that is all, as we have learned by design, that was no accident. It is the world's largest broadcaster. It has 21,000 plus employees, and nobody knows.

It's the oldest national broadcaster, and nobody knows how many programs they put out. Kyle said between 10 and 20 million, so that's a lot of stuff, and that's also a big cushion. It really is, that's a real margin. Yeah, that's called hedging. Yeah, and that includes, I think, you know, everything, radio and. Because as we'll see, they're little thingies or in all the figgy puddings. Yeah. And I mean, if you live in the UK, there's some way, shape, or form that you're taking in BBC content almost certainly because they dominate, or they did at one point dominate radio, dominate television.

Now that they blaze the trail onto the internet as far as news sites go, they have a huge web presence. And then across the world as well, they have what's called the world. service, where you can watch BBC news all over the world. So it's appropriately named. And they say that they have an audience of almost half a billion people around the world. I believe it. I believe it, too. I know probably 250 million people who watch the BBC myself.

Should we go back to the beginning? Yeah, let's go with the beginning. All right. So we got to go. I said it was 103 years old. So if you carry the one, you subtract that. 1922 is where we're going in our British wayback machine, which, you know, runs on coal and Shepard's Pie.

And October 18, 1922 is where we're going, because that is where the British Broadcasting Company was formed before they became the corporation as a partnership between what they called the post office, which at the time was basically their, they ran the telegraph service over there. And the Marconi company, who said, I got a lot of radios I'd like to a sell, but you got a nothing to put on the radio. Ooh, we haven't heard that in a while. Yeah, it's been a minute.

So, yeah, remember in our AM radio episode, we talked about the Marconi company setting up companies all over the world? Yeah. This is a good example of that. And the British government was like, hey, how about this? We will make sure you have zero competition that will give you a monopoly. But you've got to make some pretty good content here. We want to hear good stuff.

Right now all we hear is... And we want to hear better stuff than that. And so the Marconi company set this up. They established this station. Like you said, in 1922. And I guess five years later, the British government was like, this is ours now. This is a state-owned monopoly. I don't know what happened to the Marconi.

company, but it sounds like they got hung out to dry, I guess, is the nicest way I can put it. Yeah, I bet they did. Okay. So that was 27 when it became the Broadcasting Corporation. And very, you know, kind of right out of the gate, they were like, here's what we're going to do. We're not going to, it's going to be this weird hybrid of culture and entertainment kind of ran through, run through the government. But supposedly the government doesn't intervene too much. it's kind of hard to reckon how that all works

and sometimes it works really well sometimes there's been a lot of controversy but what they did decide early on is we're not going to advertise we're not going to tax people outwardly at least we're going to have what's called a license fee which is this to us in the United States a very strange sort of arrangement

wherein households pay a certain amount of money starting in 1923 with 10 shillings a year to fund the BBC. And that's like your household license to listen to and then later watch stuff on television and listen on the radio. Like you have to have a license to watch TV in the UK is what you're saying.

Yeah, but they don't say, all right, now here's the code to turn it on. I mean, I guess is it just like an honor system? That's what Kyle. So we had to follow up with Kyle. We do not get this license thing because it's just you Brits just take it is like it's just the most normal thing in the world.

It's not. So it turns out that it does seem to be on an honor system and that most people follow that, in part because most people have honor, but also there's apparently a very real threat that the BBC will send out some government goons to show up at your doorstep and be like, hey, are you, do you have a TV license? And I guess some people think that it's incumbent upon them to open their door and let the person in to see that they have a TV and they can't produce a license. And you can get fined $1,000.

And apparently they have trucks, they say, pounds, thank you, which is more than $1,000. You should have also said the Goon Squad. I should have. Let me just retake this whole, let's just start at the beginning again. You have to put on your newsboy cap and get out your cup of tea to really get in the zone, you know. They really, my Lipton's Blackberry tea. Yeah. But apparently they will come to your house.

So think about this, right? If you are not in the UK and you subscribe to Netflix and you get Netflix because you're using a friend's password, imagine if Netflix showed up on your doorstep and said, are you getting Netflix for free? Yeah. And you say no. And they say, prove it. Let me in. Let me go check and see if you have Netflix. Because we know you don't have your own account.

That's essentially what they do with that. Yeah, I believe the color TV license for 2025 is 174 pounds, 50. 22.8 million people pay this, about 12% don't. They just sort of evade that cost for a total of about 3.8 billion pounds that goes to the BBC and the government. But this license expires in 2027, and there's a lot of himming and hauling going on over what's going to happen next. Yeah, over the course of its history, these 10-year charters that they get that get renewed and reviewed, usually the government wants something in return or at the very least rakes them over the coals publicly. But it does seem, from what I was reading, that this does seem like to be a particularly dire situation for the BBC in their charter. Yeah, for sure.

So there's a lot of people who are like, no, let's get rid of the BBC altogether or let's let's let them compete in the free market. can sell ads. It's an unfair, aggressive tax where the poorest people have to pay the most percentage of their income for it, whether they want to or not just to watch TV. There's a lot of competing ideas for what to do, and the BBC's like, how about this? Let's just not change anything and increase the license fee a little bit. And they're getting crickets back right now. Yeah, they're getting crickets. So time will tell. In 2027, we'll report back what happened. right okay yeah yeah a little follow-up uh but let's go back to the beginning because they had a guiding light at the beginning uh which i was talking about which was after the world war one uh the great war

they really said let's let's start this thing to embody what it means to be a britain and uh to sort of um uh get our common culture out there to the world through you know sports obviously would come along and music and interviews and documentaries and plays and things at the time. And there were three dudes early on that were the, I guess, the founders, Cecil Lewis, who was a fighter pilot, former fighter pilot. Man, you were nailing the British pronunciations here. He might have gone by Cecil, I don't know. A broadcaster named Arthur Burroughs and their first director general who was the person in charge

of the whole thing. His name was John, I think, Wright. I'm going with Reese. You're going with Reith? And the Director General is in charge, but there's also a government board of governors that they work with or maybe answer to. Right. And one of the things about the BBC, one of the reasons it's so venerated, it was a huge trailblazer thanks to these three guys and their vision. I saw that John Reith was described by the New World Encyclopedia as a man of high intelligence, great ambition, and rigid moral views. And just like out of the gate, they set the standard for broadcasting,

for broadcast journalism, for what it meant to kind of create a common culture. Remember in our Saturday morning cartoon episode? We talked about how Saturday morning cartoons played like a bardic function. Yeah. Where it gives a common culture to a bunch of people. That was like part of their goal was to create a common British culture. And that happened right after World War I.

At the time, nobody had anything in common. So it was a good thing that the BBC came along. Yeah. And this was in the infancy of the... radio at the time and such that Kyle dug up this kind of fun thing. I guess there was a sign in some of the recording studios and broadcasting studios where it said, you will, all caps, deafen thousands. So people didn't know what they were doing. So they really had to kind of figure this whole thing out. It was a very intimidating thing, you know, early on to sit in front of a

microphone when no one had done that kind of thing before. Yeah. And even Arthur Burroughs as a broadcaster. He said broadcasting to millions was awful. And they were worried about getting, you know, quote, some madman on the microphone who could do a lot of damage. So it was a pretty intimidating thing at first when they were getting their feet wet. Yeah. And so for people outside of Britain, too, the BBC was it. They were the only radio station, not because they were, there was no competition. They had a monopoly. For years and years and years, they had a monopoly on radio and then television. So just bear that in mind. So it was really incumbent upon these guys, and they realized their responsibility to be the provider of mass communication for

their entire nation. And they took that responsibility seriously. And they started the whole thing out on November 14th, 1922, with the call sign 2LO. That was their broadcast license from the Marconi Company. And Arthur Burroughs said, hello, hello. This is a call sign. This This is 2LO, the London Station of the British Broadcasting Company calling. Do L.O. calling. And that was my Arthur Burroughs. It's pretty good. Keep in mind, everyone, he was very nervous on the first day.

That's why Josh sounded like that. Then he went on to just sort of get the content underway. He did a one-minute weather and news bulletin, and this is adorable. Then he repeated it slower so people could take notes to, I guess, read back to their family. And from the get-go, they didn't call it BBC English at the time. What it was called was received pronunciation. But it was this sort of accent that they all agreed would be the accent. They didn't like regional accents coming on

and everyone sort of doing their own thing. They opted for this middle class Southern English that like at the Eton School where it was just sort of the same. Yeah, apparently have been generating among a. aristocrats since like the 18th century. And at that same time, there were colonists who were setting up the colonies in North America who had separated from that. And so there are, in some ways, a lot more similarities to how Americans talk today

to how people in Shakespeare's time would have spoken than the people in Great Britain today in the UK have with the people in Shakespeare's time, especially hard ours. Like Shakespeare would have been like, what is a car? Or the H's instead of... Henry Higgins? Right. You would say Henry Higgins. That's how Americans say it.

So those two big differences, that's how Brits used to speak before, like, I guess about the 1800s. Yeah. And so they, you know, they got the ball rolling very fast on all kinds of content in the 1920s. They had something called a children's hour.

They started playing live concerts at some of London's, you know, venerated hall. In 1927, they started sports broadcasting with the F.A. Cup final, which is the very first ever live commentary for any event, not just sports. And by the end of the 1920s, by the end of that first decade, really just eight years, they had two million license holders. Those were households, so they had a lot more than that as active listeners. And they were a venerated, respected institution, kind of right out of the gate. Yes. But before that, they ran into their

first major headbut with government. And I say we take a break and come back and talk about that. About Churchill? That's right. We'll be right back. Hey, go, send you know, talk to come, let you go. Hey, Harry Potter fans, huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions are all being released on Audible on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect.

Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy in his Baltimore, Riz Ahmed as Snape, and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score. And the sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. The Hogwarts Express rumbling out of platform 9 and 3 quarters,

and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical. Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu,

my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons? Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests.

The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll.

I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Fu with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm I Belongoria. And I'm Maitego, Mr. Kuhn. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things. Food and History.

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My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. So Chuck, we talked about them headbutting with government, and the first time it ever happened was with the 1926 General Strike, which is when a bunch of people go on strike

from all different kinds of professions, and they were doing this in sympathy with coal miners. I think more than a million coal miners were having their wages reduced. And so a bunch of different people from different professions went on strike. And that included print workers at the newspapers. So the newspapers effectively shut down, except for the British Gazette, which was a government-owned newspaper. And the government-owned newspaper was like, this strike sucks. And everybody who likes it sucks, too.

But that left the BBC as the only form of mass communication reporting on this stuff. And apparently Winston Churchill was not very happy with the idea that the BBC, The government-owned monopoly was not just being like, this strike sucks, and anybody who likes it sucks. They were reporting neutrally on it. Yeah, he was a finance minister at the time, but he had a lot of sway, obviously. And he was like, hey, I think we should declare an emergency

and take over the BBC. And the director general resisted. Reith did. And he said, no, we're not going to let that happen. But it seems like they were strong-armed into not airing the other side as much. One example is when they had Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin on at one point, and this was at Wright's House they were broadcasting out of.

The leader of the opposition, Ramsey McDonald, was like, well, I'd get to come on now, too, right? And the government refused that. So they remained, you know, through the rest of the strike, somewhat impartial. They didn't let McDonald on, but they did block Churchill basically from being on the BBC until he resigned in 1938. So they were like, you're never coming on here. No, that's quite a coup, actually,

because Churchill liked to talk and give speeches. So throughout the 40s or the beginning of the 40s through World War II, they managed to hang on and keep reporting as best as possible. The radio definitely did. It became a government propaganda outlet. Some of the European powers that had been overrun by the Nazis

and it made their way to the UK used the BBC to broadcast to their people back home or I think the Polish Army in exile or Polish government in exile sent coded messages to Polish resistance forces. Like it's still kept going. Apparently their studio was bombed in 1940 and it took out a lot of the top few floors

but luckily they were broadcasting out of the basement still And I guess the guy who was reading the news at the time dusted the script off and kept reading. You heard kind of a boom in the background, but the newsreader basically didn't miss a beat. Yeah, they kept going because they had that charge to do so. In the 1930s, is when TB came along. So at the beginning, there was a Scotsman named John Logie Baird.

This was in 1926 where he had this really archaic, you know, I guess it was pretty advanced for the time, but archaic now a mechanical system where they had rotating disks, scanning and displaying images. And so they said, all right, that's good enough for now. It's 1932. No one will know that this isn't very good. I can't imagine.

They put out a very experimental 30-line service to demonstrate that. It didn't look so great, but it didn't take very long before they had. Marconi came along again and said that he had a better system along with EMI. and in 1936 they had the first high-deaf television service launched from Alexandra Palace in North London and at the time high-deaf met 240 lines of resolution or more. Yeah, which is nuts because TV, high-deaf today has something like 250. Yeah.

At least. At least. So the BBC TV, so BBC radio continued broadcasting throughout the war, but BBC television shut down because apparently there was a lot of concern that the signal could be used to lock on as a target and bomb Alexandria Palace where they were broadcasting from. So they're like, well, we don't want to risk that. We'll just stop broadcasting. And they did for seven years from 1939 to 1946. Yeah, right after they got this new thing in their households.

Yeah. They were like, all right, for seven years, can you imagine being a child? No. I mean, there wasn't the most kids' content at the time, but still, anything on a TV screen, I imagine, was hard to lose after you tasted it. I know, and it was around for three years, so that was enough time to get people pretty strong out on TV. Right. Yeah. You know?

Uh-huh. So, remember, these guys are figuring the stuff out as they go along. Like, the BBC were trailblazers in just about everything they ever dipped their toe into. And one of the ways that they did figure stuff out was basically being dropped into the middle of it. And a really good example of that came in the 50s in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth, the second, the sequel, when she was coronated, basically the BBC was like, this is one of the biggest things we've ever covered, if not the biggest thing we've ever covered so far. So we're just going to throw everything we can in it. So they started developing new technology. They figured out new ways of broadcasting.

They figured out, like, rolling news coverage from, you know, station to station. And it was quite successful from what I understand, too. Plus, also a lot of people bought TV sets as a result. Yeah, so they could see that thing? Yeah, so they could see what Queen Elizabeth looked like finally. Yeah, they told us on the radio, we could see what she looked like on TV. So we went out and bought one. She's got pretty nice hair.

She's wearing a tiara. I think those are white gloves or else she's quite pale. I can't see from here. Is that a corgi? So you mentioned the monopoly. That monopoly was eventually broken in 1955 when ITB independent television was launched, the oldest commercial network in Britain. And then eventually in 1982, Channel 4 would come along. Yeah.

And, you know, all of a sudden programming started to get somewhat interesting in like the 1950s because you started to get a lot more. You know, it wasn't just, let's do the coronation or this concert from Royal Albert Hall or something like that. They started to get into comedy and sort of true entertainment. For better or for worse, one example of for worse was a show called The Black and White Menstrual show. In 1957, they had 16 million viewers for that show. And it ran from 1957 to 1978, a super, super, super racist minstrel show. We will say from 1962, starting in 1962, the chief accountant of the BBC was like, this is a disgrace and like really racist.

And so it took another 16 years for BBC one to say, yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah, that chief accountant's name was Barry Thorne. and he was quite vociferous about getting this thing off the air. And one of his memos that he sent, he got a reply from one of the higher-ups that said, for heaven's sake, shut up. They just buried their heads in the sand. They would not accept that this was an offensive, racist show. And I read, like, even in 1957, this was offensive and racist, let alone 1978.

And if you go and watch it, it is jaw-droppingly racist. Like, yeah. And they're just not good. It isn't. It's like Lawrence Welk terrible. That's essentially, it was, imagine Lawrence Welk where every man is in blackface. For no reason whatsoever, there's no context to it.

They're just in blackface doing all these different things and doing all these different song performances. It's insane. Like, you should definitely go check it out. Like, if it, if you're not just, like, completely staggered by it, I will be surprised. Yeah. Or maybe, you know, check in with yourself.

That's a good litmus test watching the black and white minstrel show and seeing what you think of it. Yeah, that should be the test moving forward, I think. It's so nuts, dude. Just hook people up to a machine. Yeah. It's 1960s now.

We're really flying through the decades. BBC 2 has come along in 1964, and color TV with a U comes along in 1967. And this is when some of the legendary shows over there of all time came about in the 60s, not the least of which from 1963 was the sci-fi series Dr. Who? Who? Exactly.

A show that I've never watched. No me either. But I know people love it. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's been a cult classic for, I think, coming up on 75 years. Yeah. 70 years, 60 something? That's a long time for a cult classic to be around, you know?

Yeah. Think about it. Freaks and Geeks was one season. Yeah, good point. There was also one that I'd like to see. I hadn't heard of it yet, but apparently it was enormous, and I can understand why. It's Kenneth Clark Civilization from 1969. This apparently was like the first prestige series that they ever came out with.

And it was basically like Kenneth Clark going over the dark ages up to the 20th century and talking about the philosophy of different eras and what was going on and how things developed and how people got along and interacted. It sounds really amazing. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to see that, too. Maybe we should get an eye player. We'll get to what that is later.

Okay. Or sign up for eye player. I don't think it's an object, right? No, it's not. Satire came along in 1962 with David Frost. That was the week that was. I can only think that John Oliver's last week tonight with John Oliver is a just the title itself might be a slight nod. Yeah.

That was the week that was. I mean, he's always struck me as pretty British, so I'm sure he's aware of that show. And that was, of course, the great David Frost. Yeah? Yeah, the one who got Nixon to basically admit that he was a crook. Yeah, that's the dude. There's another, that was in 1977 on CBS. I'm sure BBC was quite jealous.

Oh, Frost Nixon, yeah. Or else they didn't care because it was Nixon and he's American. That's right. But we also got Monty Python's Flying Circus and Benny Hill in the late 60s. That's right. And then also the Foresight Saga, which I hadn't heard of, but apparently it has quite a bit of similarity to Downton Abbey, and they're about to reboot it for the third time.

So I guess Downton Abbey fans can move over to the Foresight Saga. I think that's already out, actually. Oh, my God. The new one. Is it really? Yeah, I mean, it's been around since 67. I think there's a new six-part series that's also out. If not now, then maybe coming in the holidays, because it's definitely this year.

Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. Are you into Downton Abbey? I don't remember. I love Downton Abbey. I watched it all. Good. Yeah, it's not taxing on the brain or anything.

It's just exactly what it should be, which is that just real easy to watch upstairs, downstairs, soapy drama. Nice. Yeah, I like it. Okay. And then also what came along in the 60s in 1964 was the music show Top of the Pops. We talked about that a few times. You know, remember Queen's. made their Bohemian Rhapsody video to get out of having the lip sync on top of the pops.

Yeah. I mean, legendary show hosted by noted awful person Jimmy Seville, who we're going to talk about later. Yeah, for sure. Imagine if we just didn't mention them. Right. So we, you said we were blazing through the decades. We're about to blaze so fast we're going to combine the 70s and 80s together. Because a couple of really big things happened in, well, starting in the late 70s,

in early 80s, the first thing was 1979 when Life on Earth premiered. And that is David Attenborough's first really big, massive wildlife documentary series. It took three years to make. They went to over 100 locations. It had a one million pound price tag. And I was like, wow, that's got to be a lot. That's only 5 million pounds today. So imagine getting this groundbreaking series for a,

a mere five million pounds, it's quite a deal. But this thing just completely changed wildlife documentaries. Every wildlife documentary you see traces itself in its style back to life on earth. Yeah, 100%. You know, we can't go over all these shows, and I know people are going to be like, what about one foot in the grave? And on my favorite show. But we should mention my favorites, one of which was Faulty Towers.

That was another that post-college when I was living in New Jersey with my British friend from college, he introduced me to Faulty Towers and the Black Adder. And they were just a couple of the best shows ever. I mean, it was comedy that I hadn't seen before and just really, really great stuff. Yeah. For some reason, I got introduced to Faulty Towers before I ever watched Flying Circus, too. So I was like, oh, that's the guy from Faulty Towers. Oh, really? Mm-hmm.

Oh, that's funny. And you mentioned the Goon Squad. I remember we talked about them when we did an episode on, I guess, Monty Python. Did we ever do an episode of Monty Python? Because they came up. We did. Okay. I think that was one of our L.A. Podfest.

It was, totally. Yeah. Yeah. So they were deeply influenced by the Goon Show. Yeah. I said Goon Squad, didn't I? Yeah, I think I said Goon Squad earlier. So I think I'd probably influence that.

Thank you. It's my fault. Jumping on that grenade for me. But it's the Goon Show, and it was one of the first absurdist comedies that really influenced shows to come like Monty Python. But it was just on the radio, which makes it even more creative, if you ask me. Yeah, amazing. Spike Milligan created it, and it's probably most notable these days for where Peter Sellers got his start. He was in the first couple of series, what we call Seasons, along with Harry Seacom.

And I believe Michael Bentine took over Peter Sellers. And like I said, there's so many shows to mention, but we can't not mention EastEnders because my former roommate, Justin, talked about it a lot. He was from East London. And it was, it's one of the biggest shows in the history of the BBC. It's basically like the British version of Friends. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not going to comment on that.

But that was a TV show and still is. EastEnders is still on, correct? I don't know, is it? I'm pretty sure it is. Maybe not. It would surprise me. It started in 1985 and was a really big hit out of the gate. And it's, you know, it's melodrama.

Kyle points out that it hits all the sort of stereotypical, like soap opera archetypes. But they've also, through the years, like I think most good shows, gotten some applause for tackling things like some of the realities of the East End of London through history. Yeah, like HIV unemployment. Just stuff that you don't always see on the TV. It was kind of groundbreaking in that sense. Yeah, for sure. Don't call it a soap opera, though, Chuck.

If you want to go soap operas, you've got to get back to the radio and just find the archers, which is the world's longest running soap opera. They have over 20,000 episodes, so almost as many as we do. And it's set out in rural England. Apparently, it's great, or it has been from time to time. So I've never heard of it and never heard it. But I may pick up an Archer's habit. I'm not sure.

To do you in? Yeah. Or you could just watch Archer instead on FX because that's great. It's basically the same thing. The radio was still going on. You know, I know we're talking a lot about TV, but you mentioned the Archers. The quality of radios, you know, if you listen to our AM radio episode, everything just on it kind of started getting better technologically in the 60s and 70s.

Mm-hmm. They were more you. so it reached more ears. But, you know, this touches on a lot of our episodes because if you listen to our pirate radio episode, you'll know that pirate radio was a legitimate threat to the BBC radio. Radio Carolina and Radio London,

it wasn't just, you know, like a few hundred people listening. Like, they were playing popular music and sort of dominating that scene in the mid to late 60s, and the BBC was like, we've got to do better. Yeah, the reason why there were pirate radio stations is, again, because it was illegal to run a radio station because BBC had the monopoly on it. So they were like, well, like you said,

we need to keep up, so they launched Radio 1 in 1967. Apparently, it's the most listened to radio station in the entire world for no small reason in part to Pete Tong in his essential selection show that ran in the 90s. Did you ever listen to that? I know the name, but I don't know if I ever listened to that. It was like DJ sets that he hosted. They were really good.

It was a good show. Yeah. Well, they eventually would end that monopoly five years later in 1972 on the radio when they passed legislation that commercial radio could be a thing. And that's when the LBC, the London Broadcasting Company, was the first one to hit the legitimate airwaves as not pirate radio. And apparently it was, you know, things moved along okay through the 70s and 80s, but it was really in 1990s where local independent radio like super took off. Yeah. Yeah. I think by that time, by 1995, the BBC had a smaller audience than some of its competitors for the very first time. Yeah. But the BBC plotted along, don't feel bad for them, as we'll see. They know how to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and say, what's next for the BBC? I say we take a break and we come back and find out what's next, Chuck.

Let's do it. Hey, Harry Potter fans, huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions are all being released on Audible on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed is Snape,

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As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player.

Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?

Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Fu with Ed Helms on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Atlanta is a spirit.

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She's like, you really did first lady to have a gayful girl's tape in Atlanta, Georgia. Like, that's what separates you from a lot of people. And I'm like, oh, what, you're right. Atlanta doesn't wait for permission. It builds its own spotlight. I'm big rude. Let us guide you through the stories behind Atlanta's most iconic moments. Listen to Atlanta is on the I-Heart Radio app.

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're back, and we promise what's next for the BBC, and what was next was Margaret Thatcher, saying, I hate you, BBC. Yeah. She was elected in 1979, had a strong, I guess, aversion to the BBC and their privileged status right out of the gate. She wanted, she was all about the free market. She was like, nah, this should be in the free market with everyone else. The editorializing should align with a national interest of basically what I think is a national interest. That's right.

And there were a number of things that happened in the 1980s that I guess you could call them either missteps or just honest broadcasting that Thatcher did not like. No, especially covering the Falklands War or the troubles in Northern Ireland. They weren't just like, screw Northern Ireland. screw the IRA or screw the Argentinians. Like they, like you said, reported fairly. And in some cases, we're accused of treachery. Apparently, Peter Snow on Newsnight called the troops the British when they were invading the Falklands rather than our troops. And he was accused of treachery.

And they once interviewed an IRA member for a, I think, a panorama episode. Yeah, panorama, it's kind of like front line from. what I can tell. It's like a hard-hitting investigative documentary show. And you just couldn't do that. You couldn't talk to the IRA. You couldn't give them any kind of air time. You couldn't air their viewpoints. And they tried to in the mid-80s with that panorama episode, but I guess they never saw the light of day because of the government. Yeah. And that whole situation would eventually lead to the Alster of the director general at the time, Alistair Milne. And, you know, he was everything I read about him said that he was doing a pretty good job, but it was, you know, Thatcher was

in power. She wanted him out. And in 1987, he was basically kind of strong earned out. And Thatcher's, you know, choice person, Marmaduke Hussey, was installed. And, you know, just to be more government friendly. Yeah, apparently I was reading about Marmaduke Hussey. He was described in his obituary as cleverer than he looked, but almost certainly not as clever as he thought. And he said that when he was appointed to the BBC, he was so unfamiliar with it that he and his wife had to look up the address in the phone book to see where he should be going. So he was not like an obvious choice, and he was clearly the choice that was like, this guy is going to listen to everything I want, thought Thatcher.

Yeah, well, and I read some about what Milne thought of, like kind of the board. after that and the management after that. And he was like, it's just, it's a bunch of amateurs, people that don't know what they're doing, like, beyond the fact that they're just cronies for Thatcher, like, they're not good at this job. Yeah, yeah. Apparently, Hussie was known to this point for having almost run the Daily Mail into the ground and then almost run the telegraph into the ground, too.

So he was definitely not an obvious choice, like I said. Yeah. Fasts forward a lot, actually. if you want to go all the way up to Tony Blair in the 21st century, one of their big first sort of controversies of that era was the Iraq dossier. In May 2003, there was a defense correspondent named Andrew Gilligan who got on Radio 4 and alleged that the Iraq WMD dossier

had been, quote, sexed up, something that everyone understands as being the truth now. And Blair's press chief, Alistair Campbell, went on the counter and a big feud sort of erupted between the BBC and the government. And Director General there, Greg Dyke was, well, I guess he was sacked as well. Well, he resigned, but kind of another strong arm. Yeah, that was a huge, huge deal. And one of the most shocking things that came out of all of this is that Andrew Gilligan's source on this matter was a guy named David Kelly, who was a UN weapons expert.

So he really knew what he was talking about. But he had been an anonymous whistleblower up to this point. It leaked out somehow that he was the source for this huge government controversy that basically said the UK faked all of the stuff that helped America invade Iraq. And David Kelly was found dead, apparently by suicide, in the woods by his house. Yeah. It's very sad, too. Apparently, there's a certain amount of people who are like, I don't think he took his life. Yeah, as soon as I read that, I was like, I know, I mean, there was an investigation, apparently, and the government was cleared of wrongdoing, but, you know.

Yeah, but I mean, that'd be pretty vindictive if you think about it. Like, I can really buy the government killing this guy to silence him before he can share this information, but to do it in retribution seems even, wow. Yeah, for sure. The late 90s come along, and the digital revolution is upon us. and Director General at that time, John Burt, started BBC Online. He had visited the States and kind of realized that that was the future. And it really took off. They had at the time just sort of a piecemeal network of webpages.

And in 1997, they really kicked it off in earnest with BBC Online with the general election. And a rolling news website for the first time was established after the death of Princess Diana. So it was hotly trafficked, obviously. Yeah, apparently 19 million people watched her funeral, the largest ever broadcast for them. And one of the things that came out of this, and again, this was really forward thinking. We're talking 1997, and they're like, we're going to put a substantial amount of money in creating our web presence. One of the things that came out of it was that eye player you were mentioning. Yeah.

Yeah, which is launched in 2007. And initially it was like, did you miss EastEnders this week? well, come watch it on IPlayer. And this was not a thing at the time. Like, this was a really groundbreaking thing for the BBC to come up with. Yeah, there was a lot of lobbying by rivals, like commercial rivals.

So they had a lot of constraints at first. That, you know, hey, you can watch East Senders. It was just for seven days at first. Right. But it was free. Kyle said it was very easy to use. I cannot attest to that, but Kyle said it was. and by 2012, Iplayer was voted the UK's best brand

and that was when they had the London Olympics going on and that's a great time to have something like IPlayer so you can catch the Olympics if you're not watching it live. But then Netflix would come along in 2012 overseas and they were free from those regulations and they could mine all the top shows they wanted that they could cut deals with and all of a sudden, I think the BBC had a restriction

on their best shows for, like seven years. So Netflix really put a hurting on EyePlayer for a while. Yeah, I guess their audience share in the UK went from 40% to 15% once Netflix showed up. And I saw that adolescence is the most watched show in the UK, I believe in history. It's pretty good. And I guess the BBC's like, we can't compete with this. Like our IPlayer, even the Netflix chief executive said the IPlayer really,

blaze the trail for video on demand. Yeah. But they're like, we can't, we can't keep up with this. And it doesn't really matter because everybody loves IPlayer. And I guess you would not necessarily choose between Netflix and IPlayer. Maybe some do. I'm not quite sure what the competition problem is. Yeah, I'm with you.

Because it's not like BBC's like, give me some money for IPlayer. Like that's included in your license that you pay every year. Maybe they just don't like to look bad. Well, I mean, you don't want a dying product on your company, you know? Yeah, I don't think it is dying, but, yeah, Netflix took a huge bite out of it. Yeah, for sure. But BBC is still around. BBC One still reaches millions of people on just on the telly.

Radio 4 reaches about 10 million people weekly. The sort of knock against, or the crack against BBC, I guess, crack in the American sense, not the Irish sense. I guess you would say the knock over there. is that it's like for, you know, for the senior set. Like, you know, there are people that watch the BBC are in their 60s, and, you know, it's sort of not the way forward it was our past. Yeah.

That's right, Chuck. Do we play bureau music or something? Well, I don't know yet. That actually remains to be seen. I can't imagine that the BBC is going to just be done away with, but it is quite possible that they're going to face some, some real changes. Because in the 2010s, the BBC,

it was just misstep and scandal and problem after problem. Apparently, they worked on 100 million pound digital media initiative where they were going to come up with a great archive that's going to be super searchable, and it just went nowhere. So they just wasted, you know, I think

97 million pounds on it. And Brits were outraged, which shows you that sense of ownership that the average British person has for the BBC, whereas, like, if you found out, you know, Nickelodeon spent $100 million in a failed initiative, even though you're paying through your cable subscription, in part for Nickelodeon, you wouldn't, it would matter not. It's like, Nickelodeon, do whatever you want with the money, but Brits feel like that about the BBC. That's the impression I have from that response. Yeah, well, yeah, it's tied,

Nickelodeon's not tied to the government. I think that's one of the big differences. Okay. Sure. In 2017, the conservative government said, hey, we need to start publishing these salaries. And they revealed a gender, a pretty substantial gender pay gap. And people were also not happy that departing executives got big payoffs. And I was like, who, what's big? Yeah. Deputy Director General Mark Bifert got a 949,000 pound payment in 2011.

And David Zazloff said, hold my punch. guys. That's right. He made 52 million bucks last year. Yeah. And they said, no, no, no, no. You can't make that much money. And so they're cutting it back to like 30-something million this year. That's funny. There's like, that's like, that's too much money. Sorry. You don't get that much. And he's like, oh, okay. How much do I get? 30-something? Yeah, I guess I can make do. There was then like all sorts of terrible sex scandals to Jimmy Seville kicked it all off when he died in 2011. And the, the, a flood gate opened where people just started coming forward being like, he sexually abused me in the 60s, he sexually abused me in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2,000s.

He apparently had possibly hundreds of victims. A lot of them, children, some of them under like age 16, a pretty substantial number. And it turned out that a lot of people in the BBC were well aware of this and essentially spent their time covering this up. because Jimmy Seville was just so revered in such a VIP that he was treated with that much deference. And like your career would end if you went head to head with him or even thought about it out loud.

Yeah, that's how much power he had as the host of Top of the Pops. Very sad. Yeah, imagine like Dick Clark doing that. You can't. You can't do it. In 2023, just a couple of years ago, Hugh Edwards, who was the lead presenter, BBC News at 10 for 20 years, since 2003, he played guilty to sex offenses as well.

And a master chef host, Greg Wallace, this year was sacked after dozens of sexual misconduct allegations were upheld. So, yeah, they had a long run of bad headlines leading all the way up into, like, very, very recently with the Trump administration, right? Yeah, there's a current scandal going on where a panorama, again, they're investigative. documentary series, they just released an episode, I think it's the most recent one as of today, um, on Trump and the technocrats. And in it, they spliced together his speech that he gave on January 6th, which makes it look like he directly called for violence. And the, I guess BBC was like, we regret this error. And Trump's response was that he was going to sue for no less than one billion dollars. Yeah. That's the, the first part of it. The second part is that at the same

time this is like these are just body blows coming one after the other yeah an internal memo was leaked that that was basically said i think outright that the bbc is two left wing biased and gave examples of it that memo got leaked and it's like okay not only do the conservatives think that it's left wing bias you think that it's left wing bias bbc or that your left wing bias so this is what's going on as they're negotiating the charter that renews in twenty Yeah. So the state is set for, you know, a pretty big battle is brewing on what that charter is going to, or what that, yeah, license fee is going to look like. And if it's even, you know, like we mentioned, people are calling it a regressive tax. I believe that the BBC used to cover, or the government used to cover it for people over 70. Now the BBC's responsible for that. But, yeah, I mean, it's going to be real interesting to see how it all plays out. Yeah. I fear for the BBC a little bit. I love you, BBC.

Get your act together, is what I say. Sure. Why not? You got anything else about the BBC or the Bibb? I got nothing else. Okay. I don't either, which means everybody. It's time for listener mail. We got lots of good Pop-Tart response.

One of our more beloved episodes of late. And a lot of people said, eat them frozen. And here's one. Hey guys, longtime listener from Santa Rosa, California. You guys have been the soundtrack to so many moments of my life and it brought so much joy and moments and times to tell fun facts. So thank you. The recent Pop-Tart episode, I was waiting to see if you had mentioned the ultimate, all-caps.

Way to enjoy Pop-Tarts, and that is Frozen. However, you did mention it, and Chuck shuddered with what seemed to be terror at the thought. I don't remember doing that, but I guess I did. Strongly urge you to both try it. It's the Pop-Tart you know and love, but in frozen treat form. do your taste buds of favor and go pop a couple in the freezer, then pop them in your mouths. And that is from Matt F.

And Matt, you'll be glad to know because the urging of another listener who said, cut those crust off first. I went and got a couple of those brown sugar cinnamon's. I cut the crust off, put them back in the package, and I threw them in the freezer, and I'll enjoy them at some point this week. Oh, you haven't enjoyed them yet?

No, no, no. I just put them in this afternoon, and so I'm going to, before we recorded, and I'm not an afternoon pop charter. Okay. Okay. You're a morning guy or evening? Oh, late night, my friend. Okay, so you need to report back, okay?

Yeah, this means I can't butter them, but I'm willing to forego that. Yeah, you could use cold pads of butter. That would be good. Or, ooh, do you know I could do is melt some butter and just dip that frozen in there, bite by bite. Oh, yeah. It's kind of like a reverse fried snickers. Yeah, I'll report back. Okay. We'll see. Okay. And who was that from?

That was from Matt F. Thanks a lot, Matt F. That was a great email, and we'll let you know what Chuck thinks. And in the meantime, if you want to be like Matt F and send us a great email, you can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop?

What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper. Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying. Suicides that don't make sense.

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