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 17,900 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
Monty Python's Flying Circus (also known as simply Monty Python) is a British surreal sketch comedy series created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, who became known collectively as "Monty Python", or the "Pythons". The first episode was recorded at the BBC on 7 September 1969 and premiered on 5 October on BBC1, with 45 episodes airing over four series from 1969 to 1974, plus two episodes for German TV. A feature film adaptation of several sketches, And Now for Something Completely Different, was released in 1971.
The series stands out for its use of absurd situations, mixed with risqué and innuendo-laden humour, sight gags, and observational sketches without punchlines. Live-action segments were broken up with animations by Gilliam, often merging with the live action to form segues. The overall format used for the series followed and elaborated upon the style used by Spike Milligan in his groundbreaking series Q..., rather than the traditional sketch show format. The Pythons play the majority of the series's characters themselves, along with supporting cast members including Carol Cleveland (referred to by the team as the unofficial "Seventh Python"), Connie Booth (Cleese's first wife), series producer Ian MacNaughton, Ian Davidson, musician Neil Innes, and Fred Tomlinson and the Fred Tomlinson Singers for musical numbers. (Full article...)Selected image
,_June_2006.jpg)
BBC journalist, presenter and newsreader Huw Edwards during an outside broadcast for BBC News. He joined the BBC in 1984, and since 2003 he has been the main presenter of the BBC Ten O'Clock News.
Selected list article
The British documentary series Chartjackers ran for a single season of eleven weekly episodes during the autumn of 2009. The series documents the lives of four teenage video bloggers—Alex Day, Johnny Haggart, Jimmy Hill, and Charlie McDonnell—from the video-sharing website YouTube as they attempt to write, record and release a pop song by crowdsourcing through social media in ten weeks. When initially aired, the first ten episodes of Chartjackers, each five minutes in length, detailed the events of the previous seven days. The final episode, broadcast on 21 November 2009, compiled highlights from the previous ten weeks into one 30-minute episode, which was narrated by British DJ MistaJam. All eleven episodes were produced by Adam King and Jonathan Davenport of the production company Hat Trick Productions.
Chartjackers was devised in 2009 by Davenport and Andy Mettam of Hat Trick Productions, and was commissioned for development by Geoffrey Goodwin and Jo Twist of BBC Switch. Alongside the programmes Off the Hook and The Cut, it was featured as part of a season of multi-platform content designed to appeal to teenagers. The show was also directly linked to the 2009 annual appeal for the British charity Children in Need – profits from sales of the completed pop song were donated to the charity. Chartjackers aired weekly at approximately 1:10 p.m. on Saturday afternoons on BBC Two, with the first episode premiering on 12 September 2009 during the channel's two-hour long BBC Switch segment. The series garnered a viewing figures peak of almost half a million with its final episode and was critically panned by reviewers. Each episode was streamed online through BBC iPlayer to UK residents for seven days after its initial airing. The series was not broadcast outside the UK and, , is not available to buy on DVD. (Full article...)Related portals
Selected biography
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG). Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990) and Last Chance to See (1990). He wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death (1979), and served as script editor for its seventeenth season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002. (Full article...)Selected building
BBC Pacific Quay was opened in 2007 as BBC Scotland's television and radio studio complex at Pacific Quay, Glasgow, when it became home to the BBC in Scotland.
Did you know
Highlights from Wikipedia's Did you know
- ... that despite attracting the highest ratings ever for a comedy show debut on BBC Three, Horne & Corden was described by one critic as, "about as funny as credit default swaps"?
- ... that Olivia Colman bonded the cast of Beautiful People by arranging a visit from a mobile blood donor unit?
- ... that a 1927 Wolseley motor car used in the 2008 BBC television adaptation The 39 Steps was previously used in the 1960s BBC television series Dr. Finlay's Casebook?
- ... that Clothes-Line, aired in 1937, was the first television programme on fashion history and also probably the first to feature a heavily pregnant female presenter?
- ... that the BBC Sound Archive was founded in 1936 by Marie Slocombe while she was working as a temporary secretary disposing of sound recordings?
- ... that Jauchzet dem Herren, alle Welt by Heinrich Schütz, a 1619 setting of Psalm 100 for double choir, was performed at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1972?
- ... that Dahiru Musdapher, the 12th chief justice of Nigeria, was once a BBC World Service contributor for West Africa and Hausa?
- ... that the BBC documentary India: The Modi Question, which examines the career of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, was banned in India?
- ... that the programming language Acorn System BASIC was so non-standard that one commenter suggested that using it on the BBC Micro would be a disaster?
BBC topics
| Services | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management | |||||||||
| Departments | |||||||||
| Nations and regions |
| ||||||||
| Commercial subsidiaries | |||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| Key properties (full list) |
| ||||||||
| Finance | |||||||||
| Projects | |||||||||
| Technical | |||||||||
| UK channels | |
|---|---|
| UK nations and regions | |
| Services and programming blocks | |
| UKTV channels | |
| International channels and joint ventures | |
| Defunct channels |
|
| UK stations | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| International stations | |||||||
Defunct stations and services |
| ||||||
| Related topics | |||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| Programmes |
| ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Other | |||||||||||||||
.svg) |
| ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Categories
WikiProjects
This portal is maintained by members of WikiProject BBC, in particular those listed on the Portal Maintenance page.
To join the project, please add your username to the list of members.
| WikiProject BBC Navigation |
|---|
| Main page | WikiProject talk | Assessment | Requests | Templates BBC Portal (Maintenance) | Radio task force | Sitcoms task force |
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
