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
Only Fools and Horses (titled onscreen as Only Fools and Horses....) is a British television sitcom created and written by John Sullivan. Seven series were originally broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1991, with sixteen sporadic Christmas specials aired until the end of the show in 2003. Set in working-class Peckham in south-east London, it stars David Jason as ambitious market trader Derek "Del Boy" Trotter and Nicholas Lyndhurst as his younger brother Rodney Trotter, alongside a supporting cast. The series follows the Trotters' highs and lows in life, in particular their attempts to get rich. Critically and popularly acclaimed, the series received numerous awards, including recognition from BAFTA, the National Television Awards, and the Royal Television Society, as well as winning individual accolades for both Sullivan and Jason. It was voted Britain's Best Sitcom in a 2004 BBC poll.
Lennard Pearce appeared in the first three series as Del and Rodney's elderly grandfather. After Pearce's death in 1984, a new character was introduced - Uncle Albert, the boys' great-uncle, played by Buster Merryfield - to replace Grandad. From 1988, the show featured regular characters in Del Boy's and Rodney's love interests: Raquel (Tessa Peake-Jones) and Cassandra (Gwyneth Strong), respectively. Other recurring characters included car dealer Boycie (John Challis), road sweeper Trigger (Roger Lloyd-Pack), lorry driver Denzil (Paul Barber), spiv Mickey Pearce (Patrick Murray), Boycie's wife Marlene (Sue Holderness), and pub landlord Mike (Kenneth MacDonald). (Full article...)
Selected image
BBC journalist Nick Robinson (right) interviewing then-MP Michael Portillo close to the Palace of Westminster for BBC News in 2001.
Selected list article
Blue Peter is a British children's television programme created by John Hunter Blair. The first programme was broadcast on 16 October 1958. It is the longest-running children's television programme in the world, and also one of the longest-running television programmes in the world.
Blue Peter currently airs weekly on Fridays in the United Kingdom on CBBC, a digital television channel. The show is produced in a magazine format, often transmitting live, and features a combination of studio presentation, interviews and outside broadcasting items. There have been forty-three official presenters of Blue Peter. (Full article...)
Related portals
Selected biography
Konnie Huq (born Kanak Asha Huq /ˈhʌk/; on 17 July 1975) is a British television and radio presenter, screenwriter and children's author. She became the longest-serving female presenter of the British children's television programme Blue Peter, presenting it from 1997 to 2008. She has been a presenter and guest of shows including the 2010 series of The Xtra Factor on ITV2.
She co-wrote the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits" with her husband, Charlie Brooker. Her children's book Cookie and the Most Annoying Boy in the World was published in 2019. She published the follow-up, Cookie and the Most Annoying Girl in the World, in 2020 along with her third children's book, Fearless Fairy Tales. (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 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 the BBC coat of arms was adopted in 1927 and uses heraldic symbols to depict the various qualities of broadcasting?
- ... that Adam and Joe on BBC 6 Music won the Broadcasting Press Guild award for Radio Programme of the Year in its first six months of broadcast?
- ... that Up the Women was the last sitcom to be filmed before an audience at BBC Television Centre?
- ... that after criticising horsegiirL's "My Barn My Rules" live on air, the British DJ Arielle Free was suspended from BBC Radio 1 for a week?
- ... that working broadcast journalists were used as extras for the portions of the Doctor Who episode "73 Yards" that were filmed at the BBC Cymru Wales New Broadcasting House?
- ... 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 the pilot episode for a BBC series on a suicide prevention charity made some critics laugh?
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