BBC

===The birth of British broadcasting, 1920 to 1922===
Britain's first live public broadcast was made from the factory of [[Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company]] in [[Chelmsford]] in June 1920. It was sponsored by the ''[[Daily Mail]]''{{'}}s [[Lord Northcliffe]] and featured the famous Australian soprano [[Nellie Melba|Dame Nellie Melba]]. The Melba broadcast caught the people's imagination and marked a turning point in the British public's attitude to radio.{{sfn | Briggs | 1985 | p=}}{{rp|47}} However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, the pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the [[General Post Office]] (GPO), was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.{{sfn | Briggs | 1985 | p=}}{{rp|50}}

But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests{{sfn | Curran | Seaton | 2018}}{{rp|110}} and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members.{{sfn | Briggs | 1985 | p=}}{{rp|50–97}} Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufacturers, to be known as the [[British Broadcasting Company|British Broadcasting Company Ltd]], which was formed on 18 October 1922.<ref>{{cite news |title=BBC 100: 1920s |url=https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1920s/ |access-date=18 October 2022 |agency=BBC |archive-date=18 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221018065159/https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1920s/ |url-status=live }}</ref> [[John Reith, 1st Baron Reith|John Reith]], a Scottish [[Calvinism|Calvinist]], was appointed its general manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast.{{sfn | Curran | Seaton | 2018}}{{rp|110}} [[L. Stanton Jefferies]] was its first director of music.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Doctor |first1=Jennifer Ruth |title=The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922–1936: Shaping a Nation's Tastes |year=1999 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CVCtkShvDSkC |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521661171 |page=402 |access-date=8 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140811180433/http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CVCtkShvDSkC |archive-date=11 August 2014 |url-status=live }}</ref> The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The BBC: Public Institution and Private World|last=Burns|first=Tom|publisher=The Macmillan Press LTD|year=1977|isbn=978-0-333-19720-2|location=Great Britain|pages=1}}</ref> To this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to "inform, educate and entertain".<ref>{{cite news|date=24 February 2016|title=No need to change BBC's mission to 'inform, educate and entertain'|agency=UK Parliament|url=https://old.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/communications-committee/news-parliament-2015/bbc-charter-review-report-published/|url-status=live|access-date=7 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161031154543/https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/communications-committee/news-parliament-2015/bbc-charter-review-report-published/|archive-date=31 October 2016}}</ref>