A Quick History of the BBC

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – "A Quick History of the BBC"

Podcast by iHeartPodcasts | Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant | Air Date: December 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode presents a lively, whirlwind history of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), from its inception in 1922 to its contemporary challenges. Hosts Josh and Chuck blend affection, nostalgia, and critique as they unpack the BBC’s cultural significance, operational evolution, roles in politics and controversy, landmark programming, and looming questions over its future.

Tone: Warm, conversational, peppered with Britishisms and the dudes’ characteristic banter, blending fun pop culture references with serious historical insight.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The BBC’s Immense Cultural Role (03:49–07:42)

• The ‘Beeb’ Defined:
  • UK’s analogue to the US’s NPR—publicly funded, often accused of political bias (left and right), but strives for impartiality.
  • Deep, emotional connection for Brits; even critics seem to harbor pride in it.
  • Enormous scope: ~21,000 employees, a library of 10–20 million programs, and a global audience approaching half a billion.
  • Near-ubiquitous presence in UK households: "If you live in the UK, there’s some way, shape, or form that you’re taking in BBC content." (07:09 – Josh)

2. Origins: 1922–1927 – Radio Monopoly to State Corporation (07:57–10:39)

• Formed October 18, 1922, as a partnership between the Post Office and the Marconi Company.
• Britain granted BBC a broadcasting monopoly; in return they wanted high quality content.
• In 1927, transformed into a state-owned corporation—Marconi was pushed aside, and the BBC’s distinct public service model began.

3. The License Fee – Funding & Enforcement Oddities (10:39–13:46)

• Rather than advertising or taxes, the BBC has been funded since 1923 via a “license fee”—originally 10 shillings/year, now £174.50 (2025).
• Payment is more or less on the honor system... but with a twist.

  “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, do you have a TV license?’ ...you can get fined a thousand [pounds].” (11:12 – Josh)

• Roughly 22.8 million pay; 12% evade—generating £3.8 billion, but the model faces review and possible overhaul in 2027.

4. Mission & Early Culture (13:46–19:41)

• After WWI, visionaries Cecil Lewis, Arthur Burroughs, and John Reith set out to forge a common culture and enhance British identity.
  • Reith described as possessing “high intelligence, great ambition, and rigid moral views.” (15:10 – Josh, quoting Encyclopedia)
  • BBC’s goal: reach and unite the nation, creating “a bardic function” amid a fractured postwar Britain.
• Early quirks:
  • Studio signs warned: “YOU WILL DEAFEN THOUSANDS.”
  • News was read twice—second time slowly, so listeners could “take notes.”
  • “Received Pronunciation” enforced as standard on-air speech.

5. Monopoly & Early Broadcasting (16:30–19:41)

• For decades, the BBC was the nation’s sole radio and TV broadcaster.
• First broadcast: “Hello, hello, this is 2LO, the London station of the British Broadcasting Company. Calling 2L O calling.” (17:12 – Josh, doing Burroughs impression)
• Rapid growth: Initiatives like Children’s Hour, sports (FA Cup Final), and live concerts. Two million license holders by decade’s end.

6. First Big Government Clash: 1926 General Strike (22:15–24:09)

• The BBC became the only independent national news voice during the press shutdown.
• Churchill (then Chancellor) wanted direct government takeover, but Reith resisted, maintaining partial impartiality—though with notable instances of government pressure and censorship.

7. World War II – Broadcasting Under Siege (24:10–26:48)

• BBC radio became both information lifeline and propaganda outlet.
• Used by Allied governments in exile to transmit coded messages, especially to resistance movements.
• Notably, even after bombing, a newsreader “dusted the script off and kept reading.” (24:49 – Josh)

8. Television’s Rise & Wartime Hiatus (25:14–27:03)

• Early experiments with TV broadcasting began in 1932; first “high-def” (240 lines) service in 1936.
• TV was shut down 1939–1946 due to security fears during WWII.

9. Landmark Programming: From Minstrels to Monty Python (28:27–36:49)

• 50s: TV monopoly ends with ITV (1955), later Channel 4 (1982).
• Programming expanded into entertainment, drama, sitcoms:
  • For worse: “The Black and White Minstrel Show” (1957–1978) — egregiously racist, protest ignored for decades.

    “It is jaw-droppingly racist… If you’re not just, like, completely staggered by it, I’ll be surprised.” (30:13 – Josh)

  • For better: “Doctor Who” (since 1963), “Top of the Pops,” “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “Fawlty Towers,” “The Goon Show,” “EastEnders,” and more.
• “Civilization” (1969) marked the birth of the prestige documentary series.

10. Breaking the Monopoly & Radio Evolution (38:48–40:33)

• Pirate radio threatens BBC’s dominance—prompting BBC Radio 1 (1967) and eventual legalisation of commercial radio (LBC in 1972).
• BBC’s first time losing audience share to competitors by 1995, but persists with innovation and adaptation.

11. Political Battles & Scandal (1980s–2000s) (43:18–48:10)

• Thatcher era: Repeated government interference, especially with BBC coverage seen as anti-government (Falklands, Northern Ireland, IRA interviews).

  “[Thatcher] wanted... the editorializing should align with the national interest—of basically what I think is a national interest.” (43:45 – Chuck)

• 2003: The “sexed up” Iraq weapons dossier scandal prompts government feud, loss of a Director General, and a tragic death of whistleblower David Kelly under suspicious circumstances.

12. Digital Revolution—iPlayer, Web, and Global Streaming (48:24–51:34)

• BBC launches its online presence in 1997, followed by iPlayer in 2007—ahead of its time for on-demand viewing.
• Netflix’s UK arrival in 2012 eats into market share, though iPlayer remains a beloved brand.

13. Recent Scandal & Reputation Battles (54:01–56:29)

• Multiple sexual abuse scandals, most infamously involving “Top of the Pops” host Jimmy Saville, expose BBC’s decades-long failures to protect the vulnerable and deal with offenders.
• Ongoing controversies: Panorama’s Trump-centric reporting error, leaked memos citing right-wing bias, and debates over the aging, “pre-digital” nature of the BBC’s audience.

14. The BBC’s Precarious Future (51:34–57:23)

• Audience skewing older; “not the way forward” for many young Britons.
• Charter up for review in 2027; fierce debate over the nature and fairness of the license fee, government transparency, and the BBC’s political positioning.
• Hosts’ take: affection mixed with frustration, and concern for the Beeb’s ongoing relevance and survival.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the BBC’s Ubiquity & Impact:

  “If you live in the UK, there’s some way, shape or form that you’re taking in BBC content.”
  —Josh Clark (07:09)

• License Fee Analogy:

  “Imagine if Netflix showed up on your doorstep and said, ‘Are you getting Netflix for free?’ ...That’s essentially what they do with [the BBC license].”
  —Josh Clark (11:56)

• Founders’ Vision:

  “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.”
  —Josh Clark (15:46)

• On “The Black and White Minstrel Show”:

  “It is jaw-droppingly racist... there’s no context to it. They’re just in blackface doing all these different things... If you’re not just like completely staggered by it, I’ll be surprised.”
  —Josh Clark (30:13)

• On Thatcher and BBC impartiality:

  “She was like, no, this should be in the free market with everyone else.”
  —Chuck Bryant (43:45) “Editorializing should align with the national interest of basically what I think is a national interest.”
  —Chuck Bryant (43:50)

• On the Saville scandal:

  “He apparently had possibly hundreds of victims, a lot of them children... it turned out that a lot of people in the BBC were well aware of this and essentially... covered this up.”
  —Josh Clark (55:07)

• Reflecting on the Future:

  “I fear for the BBC a little bit.”
  —Josh Clark (57:20) “I love you, BBC. Get your act together is what I say.”
  —Chuck Bryant (57:23)

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Notable Segment Timestamps

• [03:49] – BBC’s scale and cultural standing
• [07:57] – Birth of the BBC (1922)
• [10:39] – License fee explained & enforcement
• [13:46] – The BBC’s founding vision
• [22:15] – 1926 General Strike & political neutrality
• [24:49] – WWII: Broadcasting through the Blitz
• [28:27] – From TV Monopoly to landmark programming (“Black and White Minstrels,” “Doctor Who”)
• [38:48] – Pirate radio, Radio 1, and competition
• [43:18] – Thatcher confronts the BBC
• [48:24] – Digital era innovations: BBC Online, iPlayer
• [54:01] – Scandals: Saville & sexual abuse
• [56:56] – 2027 charter review & BBC’s future

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Conclusion

Josh and Chuck celebrate the BBC’s formative influence, pioneering spirit, and enormous cultural footprint while honestly engaging with its failures—colonial legacy, institutional sexism/bias, and recent scandals. They highlight the existential questions facing the Beeb as it seeks new relevance in a fractured media landscape.

Final word: Deep love for the BBC endures—but as Chuck says:
“Get your act together.”

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For those curious about the BBC, this episode serves as a rapid-fire, highly listenable primer: rich in history, anecdotes, critique, and the kind of affectionate ribbing that only Stuff You Should Know can deliver.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Josh Clark]

The universe is full of mysteries. Black holes, quantum physics, galaxies. On TikTok, millions of people are learning more about the universe around them every day. Scientists break down complex theories, demonstrate experiments, and connect dots between the cosmos and our daily lives. One scroll might reveal the concepts on the fabric of spacetime, the next, an optical illusion. It's discovery on a massive scale where millions learn something new every day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. You got a quick announcement, huh?

[Josh Clark]

I do, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so.

[Josh Clark]

Well, if you're talking about our new playlist that's coming out. That one.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we have a new playlist coming out, right, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this holiday season, I think, coming out very soon actually we have the 12 days of holiday Toys. Cause we've got lots of great toy episodes over the years and we compiled them together for the whole family to enjoy.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. We love those toy episodes. I think it comes out on December 12, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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 gonna put them in the feed like we have been and hope you enjoy them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, totally. And I have another announcement for this BBC episode.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Is that how you say it?

[Chuck Bryant]

The Beeb?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I've heard that too.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you say?

[Josh Clark]

That's how I was gonna say it. The whole episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 longstanding 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.

[Josh Clark]

That's exactly what we're gonna do.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's with love.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And big thanks to our man in Britain, Kyle, for wrangling this huge, massive topic into something pretty good and understandable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Cause I gotta say, I love the BBC. Always have since I was a little kid watching.

[Josh Clark]

Oh really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, watching their content on public television. You know, everything from Flying Circus to Benny Hill to Fawlty Towers. And then having a British roommate in college, he would tell me about the EastEnders and, you know, all the, 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.

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you just thought it was some guy who talked funny from Indiana.

Who liked bare, bare breasts.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. He was really into boobs, man. He was. If there was ever a person into boobs, it was Benny hill.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and 12 year old Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. To this 103-year-old institution.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Just in time for his 103rd birthday. So let's get started. You mentioned that it's called Beeb. I had not heard that before, but apparently it's quite accurate. And the Beeb, you can liken it in the US 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. It's a. 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 and the BBC in its existence.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you know, that is all, as we have learned by design, that was no accident. It is the world's largest broadcaster, 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.

[Josh Clark]

It really is. As a guest margin. Yeah. That's called hedging.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that includes, I think, you know, everything radio. And because as we'll see, their little thingies are in all the figgy puddings.

[Josh Clark]

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, 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 in the, like 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

I believe it.

[Josh Clark]

I believe it too. I know probably 250 million people who watch the BBC myself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we go back to the beginning?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's go with the beginning.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we gotta 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.

Mind the Gap, which, you know, runs on coal and Shepherd'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 assail, but you got nothing to put on the radio.

[Josh Clark]

Ooh, we haven't heard that in a while.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's been a minute.

[Josh Clark]

So. Yeah, Remember in our AM radio episode, we talked about the Marconi Company setting up companies all over the world? Yeah, this is, 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 is. Will give you a monopoly, but you 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And so the Marconi Company set this up. They, they established this, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 gonna do. We're not gonna. It's gonna 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 gonna advertise, we're not gonna tax people, outwardly at least. We're gonna 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.

[Josh Clark]

Like you have to have a license to watch TV in the UK is what you're Saying, yeah, but they don't.

[Chuck Bryant]

They don't say, all right, now here's the code to turn it on. I mean, I guess, is it just like a honor system?

[Josh Clark]

That's what Kyle. So we were, we had to follow up with Kyle. We're like, we do not get this license thing because it's just. You Brits just take it as like it's just the most normal thing in the world. It's not. So it turns out that it is. 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, it's incumbent upon them to open their door and let the person in to see that they have a TV and they, they can't produce a license and you can get fined a thousand dollars. And apparently they have trucks. They say, pounds, thank you. Which is more than a thousand dollars.

[Chuck Bryant]

You should have also said the goon squad.

[Josh Clark]

I should have. I, I. Let me just retake this whole. Let's just start at the beginning again.

[Chuck Bryant]

You have to put on your newsboy cap and get out your cup of tea to really get in the zone, you know, really?

[Josh Clark]

My, my Lipton's BlackBerry tea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 hemming and hawing going on over what's going to happen next.

[Josh Clark]

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, this does seem like to be a particularly dire situation for the BBC in their charter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

So there's a lot of people who are like, no, let's, let's get rid of the BBC altogether or let's let them compete in the free market. They 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they're getting crickets. So time will tell. In 2027, we'll report back what happened. Okay, yeah, yeah, A little follow up. But let's go back to the beginning because they had a guiding light at the beginning, which I was talking about, which was after the World War I, the Great War. They really said, let's start this thing to embody what it means to be a Briton and to sort of get our common culture out there to the world through, you know, sports obviously would come along and, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Man, you are nailing the British pronunciations here.

[Chuck Bryant]

He might have gone by seesaw that I know a broadcaster named Arthur Burroughs and their first director general, who is the person in charge of the whole thing. His name was John, I think. Writhe.

[Josh Clark]

I'm going with Wreath.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're going with Wreath. And the director general is in charge, but there's also a government board of governors that they work with or maybe answer to.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this was in the infancy of 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 early on to sit in front of a microphone when no one had done that kind of thing before. And even Arthur Burroughs as a broadcaster, he said broadcasting to millions was awful. And they were worried about getting, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so for people outside of Britain, too, the BBC was it. They were the only radio station. Not because.

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 14, 1922, with the call sign 2Lo. That was their broadcast license from the Marconi Company. And Arthur Burroughs said, hello, hello, this is 2Lo, the London station of the British Broadcasting Company. Calling 2L O calling. And that was my Arthur Burroughs. It's pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Apparently it had been generating among aristocrats since like the 18th century. And at that same time, there were colonists who were setting up 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 Rs 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, those two big differences. That's how Brits used to speak before, like I guess about the 1800s.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 the Children's Hour. They started playing live concerts at some of London's, you know, venerated halls. In 1927, they started sports broadcasting with the FA 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 2 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. But before that they ran into their first major headbutt with government. And I say we take a break and come back and talk about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

About Churchill.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll be right back.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

[e-mail] hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations, but don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30th. Shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z Bar Variety Packs, Open Nature Powder and Body Fortress Protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Josh Clark]

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 one 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, a government owned monopoly, was not just being like this strike sucks and anybody who likes it sucks. They were reporting neutrally on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was 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 gonna 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 Reith's house. They were broadcasting out of the leader of the opposition, Ramsay MacDonald was like, well, I'd get to come on now too, right? And the government refused that. So they remained through the rest of the strike somewhat impartial. They didn't let MacDonald 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.

[Josh Clark]

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 had made their way to the UK used the BBC to broadcast to their, 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. It 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, the script off and kept reading. You heard kind of a boom in the background, but the newsreader basically didn't miss a beat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they kept going because they had that charge to do. So in the 1930s is when TV 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 def television service launched from Alexandra palace in North London. And at the time high DEF meant 240 lines of resolution or more.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, which is nuts because TV high def 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 were like, well we don't want to risk that, we'll just stop broadcasting. And they did for seven years, from 1939 to 1946.

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

I know. And it was around for three years, so that was enough time to get people pretty strung out on tv.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know, huh? So remember, these guys are figuring this 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 one, a really good example of that came in the 50s, in 1953, when Queen Elizabeth II, the sequel, when her. 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 gonna. Are. We're just gonna throw everything we can at 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they could see that thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so they could see what Queen Elizabeth looked like finally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they told us on the radio we could see what she looked like on tv. So we went out and bought one.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that a corgi?

So you mentioned the monopoly. That monopoly was eventually broken in 1955 when ITV Independent Television was launched, the oldest commercial network in Britain. And then eventually in 1982, channel four would come along. And all of a sudden, programming started to get somewhat interesting in 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 Minstrel 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 BBCA 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.

[Josh Clark]

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, and.

[Chuck Bryant]

They'Re just not good.

[Josh Clark]

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. It's insane. Like, you should definitely go check it out. Like, if it. If it. If you're not just like completely staggered by it, I will be surprised. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or maybe, you know, check in with yourself.

[Josh Clark]

That's a good litmus test. Watching the Black and White Minstrel show and seeing what you think of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that should be the test. Moving forward.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's so nuts, dude.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just hook people up to a machine.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's 1960s now. We're really flying through the decades. BBC2 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 Doctor who.

[Josh Clark]

Who?

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. A show that I've never watched.

[Josh Clark]

No, me either.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I know people love it.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's been a cult classic for man since 1962. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, good point.

[Josh Clark]

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 was Kenneth Clark's civilization from 1990.

[Chuck Bryant]

I want to see that too.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I want to see that too. Maybe we should get an iplayer. We'll get to what that is later.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or sign up for iplayer. I don't think it's an object, right?

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 just the title itself. Might be a slight nod toward that Was the Week that Was.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, he's always struck me as pretty British, so I'm sure he's aware of that show.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that was of course the great David Frost. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The one who got Nixon to basically admit that he was a crooked.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's the dude.

[Josh Clark]

There's another that was in 1977 on CBS. I'm sure BBC was quite jealous.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, Frost, Nixon.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or else they didn't care because it was Nixon and he's American.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But we also got Monty Python's Flying Circus in Benny Hill in the late 60s.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that's already out actually.

[Josh Clark]

Oh my God.

[Chuck Bryant]

The new one.

[Josh Clark]

Is it really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, it's been around since 67. I think there's a new six part series that's also. That's also out. If not now, then maybe coming in the holidays. Cause it's definitely this year.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Are you into Downton Abbey? I don't remember.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love Downton Abbey. I watched it all.

[Josh Clark]

Good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's not taxing on the brain or anything. It's exactly what it should be. Which is that. Just real easy to watch. Upstairs, downstairs, soapy, drama.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I like it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. And then also what came along in the 60s, in 1964 was the music show Top of the Pops. We've talked about that a few times. You know, remember Queen made their Bohemian Rhapsody video to get out of having to lip sync on Top of the Pops.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, legendary show hosted by noted awful person Jimmy Saville, who we're going to talk about later.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. Imagine if we just didn't mention him. 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. Well, starting in the late 70s and 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 1 million pound price tag. And I was like, wow, that's gotta be a lot. That's only £5 million today. So imagine getting this groundbreaking series for a. A mere £5 million. That'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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, 100%. 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 my favorite show, but we should mention my favorites, one of which was Fawlty Towers. That was another that post college when I was living in New Jersey with my British friend from college. He introduced me to Fawlty 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. For some reason I got introduced to Fawlty Towers before I ever watched Flying Circus too. So I was like, oh, that's the guy from Fawlty Towers. Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's funny.

[Josh Clark]

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 on Monty Python? Because they came up.

[Chuck Bryant]

We did.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that was one of our La Podfest.

[Josh Clark]

It was totally. Yeah, yeah. So they were deeply influenced by the Goon Show. Yeah, I said Goon Squad, didn't I?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think I said Goon Squad earlier. So I think I probably influenced that.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. Thanks for 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Secombe. And I believe Michael Benteen 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's one of the biggest shows in the history of the BBC.

[Josh Clark]

It's basically like the British version of Friends. Yeah.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not gonna comment on that.

[Josh Clark]

But that was a TV show and still is. EastEnders is still on, correct?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Is it?

[Josh Clark]

I'm pretty sure it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe not. Maybe surprised 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 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.

[Josh Clark]

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 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. Wow. 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 Archer's habit. I'm not sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Tune in.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or you could just watch Archer instead on fx, because that's great.

[Josh Clark]

It's basically the same thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

The radio was still going on. I know we're talking a lot about tv, but you mentioned the Archers, the quality of radios. If you listen to our AM radio episode, everything just kind of started getting better technologically in the 60s and 70s. They were more ubiquitous, so it reached more ears. But 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 a few hundred people listening. They were playing popular music and sort of dominating that scene in the mid to late 60s. And the BBC was like, we gotta do better.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And 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 and his Essential Selection show that ran in the 90s. Did you ever listen to that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I know the name, but I don't know if I ever listened to that.

[Josh Clark]

There's like DJ sets that he hosted. They were really good. It was a good show.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 the 1990s where local independent radio like super took off over there.

[Josh Clark]

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 Bryant]

Chuck, let's do it.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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Is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop. This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app to see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and.

[Ryan Seacrest]

[e-mail] hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations, but don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30, shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z Bar Variety Packs, Open Nature Powder and Body Fortress Protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we're back and we promised what's next for the BBC? And what was next was Margaret Thatcher saying, I hate you, BBC.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, no, this should be in the free market with everyone else. The.

Editorializing should align with the national interest of basically what I think is a national interest.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And there were a number of things that happened in the 1980s that.

[Josh Clark]

I.

[Chuck Bryant]

Guess you could call them either missteps or just honest broadcasting that Thatcher did not like.

[Josh Clark]

No. Especially the 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 were 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 a IRA member for a, I think a panorama episode. Yeah, panorama. It's kind of like Frontline from what I can tell. It's like a hard hitting investigative documentary show. Okay. And you just couldn't do that. You couldn't talk to the ira, you couldn't give them any kind of airtime, you couldn't air their viewpoints. And they tried to in the mid-80s with that panorama episode, but I guess it never saw the light of day because of the government.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that whole situation would eventually lead to the ouster of the Director general at the time, Alistair Milne. And you know, he was everything I read about him said that he was. 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 choice person, Marmaduke Hussey, was installed. And, you know, just to be more government friendly.

[Josh Clark]

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's going to listen to everything. I want thought Thatcher.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. Apparently he, Hussey, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, fast 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.

[Josh Clark]

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 this 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, as soon as I read that, I was like, no. I mean, there was an investigation, apparently, and the government was cleared of wrongdoing. But, you know.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 web pages. 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.

[Josh Clark]

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 iplayer you were mentioning. Yeah, yeah. Which was 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 EastEnders. It was just for seven days at first.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, you know, 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 iplayer for a while.

[Josh Clark]

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 iplayer really blazed the trail for video on demand. But they're like, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm with you.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, you don't want a dying product on your company, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I don't think it is dying. But yeah, Netflix took a huge bite out of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's right. Chuck, should we play funeral 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 2000 and tens, the BBC, it was just misstep and scandal and problem after problem. Apparently they worked on a hundred 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 on it and Brits were outraged. Which shows you, you know, 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 on 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, yeah, it's tied. Nickelodeon's not tied to the government. I think that's one of the big differences.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

In 2017, the Conservative government said, hey, we need to start publishing these salaries. And they revealed a pretty substantial gender pay gap. And people were also not happy that departing executives got big payoffs. And I was like, ooh, what's big?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Deputy Director General Mark Byford got a 949,000 pound payment in 2011. And David Zaslav said, hold my pint, guys.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

He made 52 million bucks last year.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they said, no, no, no, no, you can't make that much money. And so they're cutting it Back to like 30something million this year.

[Josh Clark]

That's funny. There's like, that's too much money. Sorry, you don't get that much. And he's like, okay, how much do I get?

[Chuck Bryant]

30 something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I guess I can make do. There was then, like, all sorts of terrible sex scandals too. Jimmy Saville kicked it all off when he died in 2011, and a floodgate 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, 2000s. 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 and 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's how much power he had as the host of Top of the Pops. Very sad.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Imagine, like Dick Clark doing that. You can't. You can't do it in 2023.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just a couple years ago, Hugh Edwards, who was the lead presenter of BBC News at Ten for 20 years since 2003, pled guilty to sex offenses as well. And MasterChef 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. There's a current scandal going on where Panorama again, their investigative documentary series, they just released an episode, I think it's the most recent one as of today on Trump and the Technocrats. And in it they spliced together his speech that he gave on January 6, 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 $1 billion. Yeah, that's 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

An internal memo was leaked that was basically said, I think outright that the BBC is too left, right 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 biased, you think that it's left wing bias BBC or that you're left wing bias. So this is what's going on as they're negotiating the charter that renews in 2027.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So the stage is set for, you know, a pretty big battle is brewing on what that charter is going to or what that 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 is responsible for that. But yeah, I mean, it's going to be real interesting to see how it all plays out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I fear for the BBC a little bit.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love you, BBC. Get your act together is what I say.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, why not? You got anything else about the BBC or the Biblical or the Beeb?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I don't either. Which means, everybody, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

We got lots of good pop chart 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 was. It brought so much joy and moments and times to tell fun facts.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

So thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

The recent pop Tart episode, I was waiting to see if you would mention 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.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 a 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 crusts off first, I went and got a couple of those brown sugar cinnamons. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you haven't enjoyed them yet?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. I just put them in this afternoon. And so I'm going to before we record it. And I'm not an afternoon pop charter.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, You're a morning guy or evening.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, late night, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so you need to report back. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this means I can't butter them, but I'm willing to forego that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you could use cold pats of butter. That would be good. Or.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ooh, do you know what I could do is melt some butter and just dip that frozen in there bite by bite.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, it's kind of like a reverse fried Snickers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'll report back.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, we'll see. Okay. And who is that from?

[Chuck Bryant]

That was from Matt F. Thanks a.

[Josh Clark]

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 podcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff you.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

For more podcasts My Heart Radio Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Support for this show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, buys one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures and.

[Josh Clark]

Now superhuman Shack I keep telling them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not to say that. I'm no superhuman. Believe it or not, I struggle with moderate obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity. Moderate to severe OSA is a condition where breathing is interrupted during sleep, with loud snoring, choking, gasping for air, and even daytime fatigue. Let's just say it can sound a lot like this.

Sound familiar? Learn more@don'tsleeponosa.com this information is provided by.

[Josh Clark]

Lilly, a medicine company.

[Chuck Bryant]

Living with an autoimmune condition isn't easy, and every journey is different. That's why Season five of Untold Life with the Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenics shares powerful firsthand stories from people with conditions like MG and cidp. Hosted by Martine Hackett, these conversations dive into what resilience really looks like through setbacks, breakthroughs, and finding strength in community. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Guaranteed Human.