The British Broadcast Company (BBC) Comes To Glasgow (5SC)

BACKGROUND

The British Broadcasting Company (Ltd), under the chairmanship of Lord Gainford, was formed in October 1922 to set-up a broadcasting system as outlined in a plan sanctioned by the Postmaster General in May 1922. This allowed eight areas of Britain to have a local transmitter of a power of 1.5kW.  From this original scheme, the BBC developed the network of high power stations that became so familiar.

Initially eight stations were established.

(G)2LO – 14th November 1922 London (Marconi House) – 369 metres
(G)5IT – 15th November 1922 Birmingham (Witton) – 420 metres
(G)2ZY – 15th November 1922 Manchester (Trafford Park) – 385 metres
(G)5NO – 24th December 1922 Newcastle-Upon-Tyne – ? metres
(G)5WA – 13th February 1923 Cardiff – ? metres
(G)5SC – 6TH MARCH 1923 GLASGOW – 415 metres (722KHz)
(G)2BD – 10th October 1923 Aberdeen – ? metres
(G)6BM – 17th October 1923 Bounrnemouth (originally Plymouth)

Music quality landlines didn’t exist at first but simultaneous broadcasting started in May 1923 over trunk telephone circuits with regular London news bulletins from August 1923.

Of course, these initial callsigns where not prefixed with (G), which was introduced in the 1930’s covering UK callsigns.

Interestingly 5SC was not the first station to provide ‘Broadcast’ facilities in the Glasgow area.

2BP was the call-sign of Scotland’s first broadcast radio service, which was broadcast for a temporary period between Wednesday 24 January and Saturday 3 February 1923, by the Marconi Company and the Daimler Motor Company. For more information checkout this Website for more information about 2BP:

https://wiki.scotlandonair.com/wiki/2BP_(Glasgow).

And for more information about The BBC Ltd, checkout:

British Broadcasting Company – Wikipedia

And special event station GB5SC (@ BBC Scotland, Glasgow 4-6th March 2023) checkout: QRZ.com  , and the WoSARS CALENDAR entry.

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