On the Front Line with the Robinsons

Before the Archers, before the Nashs and Tysons, and even before the Dales, there was one radio family that had millions of listeners tuning into their wireless sets each day – and that was the Robinson family. To find out who they were and why they came to be on air we have to go back to the Second World War.

As part of the war effort the BBC had split its Overseas Services into five divisions, one of which was the North American Service (NAS). Seconded to that service were a number of American and Canadian broadcasters. Heading the service was Maurice Gorham, who’d transferred over after editing the Radio Times for eight years, and had spent some time Stateside studying their broadcasting experience.

To appeal to their North American audience the service had “so far as radio technique is concerned [be]...presented in a different way”. A drama serial was seen as one way of providing a distinctive schedule as well as aiming to generate North American support for the British war effort.

It was Ernie Bushnell, seconded to the BBC from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who first floated the idea of having what he termed “a family life serial” (the term ‘soap opera’ was not used) and that it would “have to be a specially written script dealing with the daily doings of the average British family, particularly in war time”.

Hearing of the proposed serial it was writer Alan Melville (who’d been working as a BBC producer in Aberdeen and Glasgow before joining the NAS in London) that expressed an interest in developing and writing it. To help give him a steer on what North American audiences were used to, Bushnell had brought over some tapes of US soaps and by March 1941 the programme was ready to go into production, its title Front Line Family. The serial would be described, in the words of the London Calling billing as ‘the adventures of the British Family Robinson in Wartime London’. A later press report explained further: ‘It tells the adventures day by day of the London family Robinson, the father, the mother, their grown-up children, friends, neighbours and tradesmen, and gives overseas listeners a vivid idea of what a typical London family experiences under war conditions’.  

Front Line Family was broadcast six days a week (there was no episode on Sundays and it was later reduced to five days a week) with the first episode airing on 27 April 1941. Melville wrote all the episodes for the first year and a half himself, just over 400 of them, writing one each evening and then rehearsing and recording it the following morning. They were recorded three weeks in advance of transmission with each episode airing twice a day.

This rather prosaic description of the programme’s genesis is at odds with the story that Melville often told in that he had the idea for the drama whilst having dinner with Bushnell during a heavy London air-raid. Apparently they had to duck for cover under the dining table several times during the meal. In his autobiography, Merely Melville he takes full credit for the idea: “in an unguarded moment I suggested to the Powers that Be that it might not be a bad idea to put on the North American Service a daily soap opera about a London family Taking It. The Powers, after some dithering, agreed and said I could have a go for six weeks only, and to watch the budget.”

What Melville doesn’t mention in his recollections was the earlier BBC series The English Family Robinson. First broadcast in 1938, and again in 1940, it told the everyday story of Charles and Clara Robinson and their three children Joan (20), Peter (19) and John (13). It was written by comedy actress and writer Mabel Constanduros and her nephew Denis, with Mabel taking the part of Clara and Ralph Truman as Charles. A Radio Times introductory article references that this type of drama is typically American: ‘It is not often that British listeners have the chance to really get acquainted with a set of characters on the air. The serial feature, which is the backbone of American radio, has made few and fleeting appearances here’. It goes on to say that The English Family Robinson ‘are as near to real people as you can expect on the radio.’ However, with just six episodes in 1938 and three in 1940 it’s really more of an earlier sitcom than a radio soap. The Robinson family continued their lives after the radio series when Mabel and Denis wrote the characters into the 1943 stage play Acacia Avenue (a name that would become synonymous with an everyday middle-class suburban street) that toured throughout the 1940s and a 1945 film titled 29 Acacia Avenue.

The actors behind The Robinson Family are revealed in this
photo from 4 May 1946 (Manchester Evening News)

The Robinson family, Mum, Dad and their three offspring lived at 88 Ashleigh Road. The cast of Front Line Family weren’t credited on air but included Burnley-born variety singer and actor Ernest Butcher who played Yorkshireman John Robinson and Scottish actress Nell Ballantyne was Helen Robinson, whose exclamations of “what I’d give for a nice cup of tea” became something of a catchphrase. Then there was Paul Martin (later John Dodsworth) as elder son Dick who served with the Auxiliary Fire Service, Tony Halfpenny as the younger son Andy, Nancy Nevison as the daughter Kay (a part later played by Gabrielle Blunt) and Dulcie Gray as the daughter-in-law who, when she wanted to leave the programme for a theatre engagement, was written out as being pregnant. The part of Mary, Andy’s wife, was eventually taken by Margaret Long. Others in the cast included Wilfrid Fletcher as Mr Bowker, Beatrice Varley as Mrs Williams, Charles Lamb as Freddy Williams, Dorothy Smith as Maggie Mackenzie, Gladys Young as a family friend plus Judith Fellows, John McLaren and Alec Ross.

Others who appeared in Front Line Family and found post-war acting fame were Harry Fowler who played a young lad called Charlie Williams who was always getting into trouble and worrying that the war would end before he was old enough to fly a bomber; Joy Shelton, co-starring as PC Archibald Berkeley-Willoughby’s girlfriend Joan in The Adventures of PC 49, and Jean Anderson, best remembered as Mary Hammond in BBC tv’s The Brothers.

Each episode would end with a cliff-hanger explained Melville: “usually a bomb coming down on what was obviously going to be a direct hit (it wasn’t) or the news that Mrs Robinson’s sister’s semi-detached had been hit by an incendiary and was a raging inferno with Mrs Robinson’s sister trapped in the upstairs bedroom or that young Andy Robinson in Fighter Command had been reported shot down over enemy territory.”   

The serial was proving so successful that by late 1941 it was also carried by the Pacific and African Services as well as on the General Overseas Service (now the World Service) itself. It was possible for short-wave listeners in the UK to tune in, which many did. It was also re-broadcast by radio stations in Canada though not, it seems, by any in the USA. 

By May 1942 the BBC noted that Front Line Family “seems to have created more general interest than any other programme except the news, the talks by Priestley and Wickham Steed and possibly Newsreel”. There’s a story that when a BBC official visited Field Marshall Montgomery’s caravan, Monty’s first words were: “I’ve a bone to pick with you. Why have you changed the time of The Robinsons so that we can’t hear them?” 

It was also reported that during the war two American women were interned in Italy and wrote to the BBC: “As enemy aliens in an enemy land we risked the death penalty over four years in order to listen to Front Line Family. Even when bombs were falling and shells whistling overhead, we never missed a single instalment.”

Remarkably two episodes of Front Line Family have survived (they were recorded on discs at the time). A clip from an episode is on BBC Sounds under History of the BBC, however that full episode can be found under the World Service Audio webpage maintained by Sean Saunders and taken from tapes donated by former World Service broadcaster, the late Andrew Piper. In the episode from 13 June 1941 (the BBC website is wrong on two counts: the date is not 4 July 1941 and the station is not the National Programme) a German fighter plane crash lands whilst John and Andy are on their way home, there are some other domestic scenes in which we hear the rest of the family and finally there’s one of the cliff-hangers that Melville mentions. In a second episode, number 59, from 4 July 1941 the story is all about Andy who has started his RAF training – he would later become a Squadron Leader.

The first Radio Times billing for the serial
on the Light Programme 30 July 1945

The end of hostilities could have also spelled the end of the Front Line Family, but it was to enjoy a post-war civilian existence. This decision didn’t enjoy the full support of everyone in the BBC. Famously the Head of Drama, Val Gielgud, was against such “ludicrous”’ American style serials which he saw as ”the lowest common denominator” and that it diverted production staff and time away from more worthy productions. In an internal memo he wrote that: “Front Line Family, as it stands, is not a programme fit for any home service” and concluded that “we shall be creating a Frankenstein monster whose influence upon programmes will be bad, though its popularity may be immediately good”.

But Gielgud was overruled by the man who had originally commissioned it, Maurice Gorham, who was now the controller of the new Light Programme and wanted a regular drama serial in its schedules. So on Monday 30 July 1945, the second day of broadcasting on the Light Programme, the drama continued in an early afternoon slot five days a week with much the same cast as before and now billed as The Robinson Family. It would also continue to be heard on the General Overseas Service. 

Much like the wartime broadcasts the cast of The Robinson Family was not widely advertised on air or in print, the Radio Times, for instance, never published a cast list. One can only assume this stems from Val Gielgud who wrote in a memo to Gorham: “When you consider that the type of actors employed will be those of about the third rank – for no-one above that would accept an engagement of this kind – it is clear that they will see themselves provided with a comfortable livelihood for which, ultimately, they will be able to demand salaries equivalent, for example, to the best people in our Repertory.”

However, I have traced a few names of those who appeared in the serial including Shelagh Kennedy as the Irish maid Biddy Sullivan, Dick’s wife Connie was played by Joyce Heron, Janet Barrow as Aunt Maud, Olwen Brookes as Mrs Blair plus Susan Scott, Thea Wells and John Carol. The narrator of The Robinson Family was Douglas Burbidge and in later episodes Ellis Powell appeared as Mrs Williams, both would go on to star in Mrs Dale’s Diary as Jim and Mary Dale.   

By March 1946 Front Line Family and The Robinson Family had jointly clocked up 1,300 episodes. On 23 July of that year the characters of Mr and Mrs Robinson made an appearance on television in a broadcast from Alexandra Palace in which a Ministry of Food official talked about bread rationing and ration books. Mr and Mrs Robinson were there to ask the official about the food coupons. In one episode Sir Malcolm Sargent is supposed to have made an anonymous appearance

The afternoon audience was over 3.5 million, with the loyal listeners welcoming the Robinsons as friends: “A crisis in the family brings advice in the next post. An injury to some member of the family brings sympathetic letters and telephone calls. When Mrs Robinson was ill once, there were extremists who wired threats of reprisals if she was allowed to die.” (Daily Express 29.4.46)

From 31 March 1947 the title was changed to just The Robinsons by which time the drama department had created a separate division to handle drama serials (Dick Barton-Special Agent having started the previous October).

Very few script writers, of which there were about 15 in total, get credited in the pages of the Radio Times but they included Ronald Gow, Adrian Thomas A.W. Colley, Lesley Wilson, Ted Willis and Jonquli Antony. Both Willis and Antony would write for Mrs Dale’s Diary. Joan Littlewood, of Theatre Workshop fame, provided scripts. In her autobiography it gets the briefest of mentions: “Marjorie (BBC producer Marjorie Banks) managed to get me a temporary pass. We wrote a series between us, Front Line Family, precursor of today’ soaps.”

By October 1947 the BBC revealed that The Robinsons would be coming off air at the end of the year. It appears that tensions regarding the production – the continuing battle between Drama department and the Light Programme management – rather than a drop in listeners led to its demise. It was ironic then that its replacement, Mrs Dale’s Diary, was yet another domestic drama that would ultimately run for 21 years.

And so, after seven years, on Christmas Eve 1947, The Robinsons were heard celebrating their last Christmas. There were protests, if a little muted, with the BBC receiving just over 200 letters in the January mourning the loss.

But that wasn’t quite the end of the Robinson family saga as, in 1948, Jonquil Antony and Lesley Wilson wrote a follow-up novel The Robinson Family. Later that year Antony also wrote a stage version of The Robinson Family that had a short run with Nell Ballantyne in the cast. It was revived in August 1949 in Belfast and then toured English theatres through until the following January. This touring version starred Hylton Allen and Renee Kelly as Mr and Mrs Richardson. And with that the Robinsons disappeared into post-war oblivion.  

News Briefing in Brief

Tomorrow morning BBC Radio 4 will, for the last time, broadcast the early morning News Briefing. A fixture of Radio 4’s schedule for nearly half a century it’s yet another victim of financial cuts.

News Briefing is a 13 minute round-up of international and national news, a full weather forecast, sports news, review of the newspapers, business news, sports news and ending with a on this day in history feature.

The cuts in the news division means not only the end of News Briefing but also, from next month, that World Service bulletins will be carried overnight on Radio 2, Radio 5 Live and BBC local stations.

Radio Times billing 3 July 1978

News Briefing, read by Eugene Fraser, was first broadcast as a 10-minute bulletin at 6 am on Monday 3 July 1978 as part of a refresh which saw Today start at 6.30 am and the dropping of the two editions of the notorious Up to the Hour sequences.

The weekday edition was dropped from 3 April 1998 leaving just the Saturday and Sunday briefings. From that date on weekdays Radio 4 opened at 5.30 am with a World News bulletin followed by the Shipping Forecast. The World News is dropped at the end of April 2000 and Radio 4 starts the day at 5.35 with the Shipping and Inshore Forecast. Meanwhile, from March 2003, the Sunday edition, now reduced to 5 minutes, is just described as a news summary.

Radio Times billing 2 May 2006

On 2 May 2006 News Briefing returned as a seven days a week programme of 13 minutes with a 5.30 start, after the Shipping Forecast, where it has, until this week, remained. There was a brief hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic when it was dropped from 30 March 2020 and Radio 4 started to leave the World Service at the slightly later time of 5.32 for the Shipping Forecast. News Briefing returned on Monday 13 July 2020.   

The last News Briefing airs tomorrow at 5.30 am. From Monday (24^th) Radio 4 will leave the World Service at 5.00 am for a news bulletin followed by Yesterday in Parliament which moves back over from Radio 4 Extra where it has been for the last year. There’ll be repeats at times when Parliament isn’t in session. The Shipping Forecast moves to 5.34 am followed by, as usual on weekdays, Prayer for the Day and Farming Today.   

Some audio now, and the earliest News Briefing I can lay my hands on comes from Tuesday 3 February 1998 where the lead story centres on the libel suit by Richard Branson against GTech in the bid to run the National Lottery. The reader is Andrew Crawford and there are correspondent reports from Torin Douglas, Jon Silverman and Paul Reynolds. The weather forecast is delivered by Sarah Wilmshurst and with the sports news it’s Garry Richardson.

The second edition dates from Saturday 29 September 2012 and is read by Corrie Corfield. The weather forecaster is Chris Fawkes and the sports news read by Seth Bennett with a report from golf correspondent Ian Carter.

After News Briefing was dropped during the 2020 lockdown it was, in the world of announcer Jane Steel an “auspicious date” when it returned on 13 July. Here’s how the full morning sequence panned out with the World Service handover, the Shipping Forecast read by Ben Rich and then Jane with News Briefing. The business report is by Andrew Wood and the sports report by Paul Sarahs.    

The final News Briefing on 23 March 2025 was read by Jane Steel.

Give Us A Conch

Conch (noun) a thick heavy spiral shell occasionally bearing long projections of various marine gastropod molluscs of the family Strombidae.

Give Us A Conch (later The Conch Quiz) was a light-hearted natural history quiz that ran on BBC Radio 2 between 1984 and 1987. Teams wrestled with “animal sounds, songs and riddles” in an attempt to win the (virtual) “glittering Conch Shell”.  Given its subject matter it’s perhaps not surprising that it was produced by the Bristol-based Natural History Unit, with programmes recorded at the city’s Watershed Theatre.

Chairing every edition was Paddy Feeny (pictured with conch above), at the time co-chairing Top of the Form and presenter of the World Service sports service Saturday Special. Paddy told the Radio Times: “We’re so surrounded by scientific hardware these days that I get the impression people just can’t hear enough about natural history”. He later confessed that chairing the quiz has “turned me into a real enthusiast. I now read books on the subject just so that I can suggest a few questions.”

The panellists were a mix of zoologists, botanists and so on, and showbiz guests chosen for their particular interest in the subject such as Frank Thornton, Eric Morecambe, Spike Milligan, Bill Oddie, Bernard Cribbins and Andrew Sachs. (They had all previously appeared as guests on Sounds Natural with Derek Jones, episodes of which have been repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra).  Folk that regularly worked for the Natural History Unit also popped up, names such as Derek Jones, Tony Soper and Johnny Morris. For later episodes they split into two teams captained by Pam Ayres (sometimes Don Maclean) and marine biologist Dr Sheila Anderson.  

The questions were set by Kate Tiffin and later Tess Lemmon, both of the Natural History Unit. Kate went on to write natural history books and contribute to the BBC Wildlife magazine. The producers were Melinda Barker (for series one and two) who also produced Radio 4’s The Living World. She later married wildlife film director and producer Alastair Fothergill. Producing series three and four was John Harrison who was with the BBC in Bristol for 18 years from 1973, working mainly on The Living World with Derek Jones

Give Us A Conch ran for 20 episodes in 1984 and 1985 and came back in late 1985 for a further 18 episodes as The Conch Quiz. Other than the last series being aired on the BBC World Service the quiz has never been repeated, so this is a rare opportunity to hear what it was all about. From 1^st January 1985 this is the first programme in series two with Don Maclean, Derek Jones, Sheila Anderson and zoologist Professor Mike Stoddart. The continuity announcer is Jean Challis.

It’s a week later, 8^th January 1985, for the second episode with Pam Ayres, Johnny Morris, Sheila Anderson and Mike Stoddart. The announcer at the end of the recording is Nick Page.

Give Us A Conch series details  

Series 1:  25 January to 28 March 1984 (10 episodes)

Windsor Davies, Andrew Sachs, Pat Morris, Chris Mead, Frank Windsor, David Shepherd, Mike Stoddart, Wilma George, Carol Drinkwater, Derek Jones, Michael Clegg, Sheila Anderson, Bill Oddie, Tony Soper, Penny Anderson, Malcolm Coe, Eric Morecambe, Pam Ayres and David Bellamy

Series 2: 1 January to 5 March 1985 (10)

Don Mclean, Derek Jones, Sheila Anderson, Mike Stoddart, Pam Ayres, Johnny Morris, Tom Baker, Michael Clegg, Judy Geeson, Jeremy Cherfas, Jeffrey Boswell, Frank Thornton and Andrew Sachs

Name changed to The Conch Quiz

Series 3: 25 November 1985 to 13 January 1986 (8)

Don Maclean, Sheila Anderson, Irene Christie, Malcolm Coe, Pam Ayres, Bernard Cribbins, Michael Clegg, Roger Lovegrove, Bill Oddie, Johnny Morris and Joe Henson

Series 4: 24 January to 28 March 1987 (10)

Pam Ayres, Sheila Anderson, Don Maclean, Roger Lovegrove, Johnny Morris, Michael Clegg, Joe Henson, Bernard Cribbins, Peter France, Spike Milligan and Lionel Kelleway

This series was repeated on the BBC World Service August to October 1987 

The answers to the picture quiz are (l-r) a slug, a North American salamander, a furry armadillo

Churchill and the BBC

When Winston Churchill died on 24 January 1965 the BBC went into full obit mode, a special Radio Times supplement printed and plans made to broadcast the state funeral on Saturday 30^th (1) But the relationship between the former Prime Minister and the Corporation had always been problematic to say the least, even during their ‘finest hour’ in World War II.

The antagonism stemmed from, on one hand, Churchill’s belief that the Government should be able to commandeer the BBC to broadcast whatever messages the Government decreed and, on the other, the BBC’s (both as a company and a corporation) battle to retain its hard-won independence. A continuing story of our times, of course. 

During the war Churchill was intent on clipping the wings of the BBC and issued a memo that stated that “the Ministry of Information will take full day-to-day editorial control of the BBC and will be responsible for both initiative and censorship.”  Back in 1933 he told the Commons that “these well-meaning gentlemen of the British Broadcasting Corporation have absolutely no qualification and no claim to represent British public opinion.”

But the first run-in between the politician and the BBC was during the nine-day General Strike of May 1926 when it fell to managing director John Reith to ward off any takeover.

David Low cartoon on the General Strike

The BBC was only dragged into the political mire of the General Strike because the printing of all newspapers, save for The Times, had come to a halt and both the government and the TUC were keen to put forward their side of the argument. The government, under the premiership of Stanley Baldwin, saw the dissemination of news and official communiqués as falling to the BBC and its own hastily produced newspaper, The British Gazette. Meanwhile, the TUC produced The British Worker, the ‘official strike news bulletin’.

Baldwin had given the job of editing The British Gazette to his then Chancellor, Winston Churchill, a former journalist himself, of course, as a war correspondent for a number of newspapers around the turn of the century. Churchill viewed the strike as some form of Bolshevik revolution and was “prepared to resort to extreme measures” to put it down.    

One positive outcome for the BBC was the dropping, albeit temporary, of the requirement to only broadcast evening news bulletins, so as not to adversely affect newspaper circulation. During the strike bulletins went out at 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, 7 pm and 9.30pm each day. (2) The news, put together by a hastily formed team, was sourced from Reuters and from the Admiralty and many of the bulletins were read by Reith himself, his deputy, Rear-Admiral Charles Carpendale and chief engineer Peter Eckersley. It is claimed that senior management went on air as the announcers sounded ‘nervous’, though announcer Stuart Hibberd claims that is was just due to the increased frequency and length of each bulletin. Reith himself was at the microphone both when the strike was officially announced and when it was called off.     

Whilst Churchill was keen to invoke the emergency provisions on the BBC, this was not the opinion of the majority of the Government, including Baldwin who was more emollient. In a meeting with the Reith, Baldwin and John Davidson (Deputy Chief Civil Commissioner acting as vice-chairman of the Emergency Committee and liaison between the PM, Churchill and the BBC) Reith noted in his diary that the PM “said he entirely agreed with us that it would be far better to leave the BBC with a considerable measure of autonomy and independence. He was most pleasant.”

The General Strike and the battle lines between Churchill and Reith have been explored in three dramas, one for the stage and two radio productions. The most recent radio programme to explore the working relationship between the two men is the 2022 Drama on 3 production Churchill versus Reith. Aware that most of the main protagonists that lock horns are male, writer Mike Harris decided to give Reith’s trusted secretary Isobel Shields (played by Emily Pithon) a voice and make her the narrator, “because secretary’s know everything”. This helps to lend lightness and humour to what would otherwise be a dry subject. There is also focus on Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, ‘Red Ellen’ (played by Helen O’Hara) who, writing in the Radio Times in late May 1926, accused the BBC of causing “pain and indignation” and that she “felt like asking the Postmaster-General for my licence fee back”. She might well have added #DefundtheBBC! Playing Reith is Tom Goodman-Hill whilst Christian McKay is Churchill. That end sequence with Reith quoting Blake’s Jerusalem is not poetic licence, this did happen on the night of 12^th May, Reith offered thanks to God for ending the strike and, on the BBC’s role said “we hope your confidence in and goodwill to us have not suffered. We have laboured under certain difficulties, the full story of which may be told someday.”

Churchill versus Reith can be found on BBC Sounds here.

Photo credit Manuel Harlan

At London’s Donmar Warehouse in the summer of 2023 there was a production of Jack Thorne’s When Winston Went to War with the Wireless. This starred Adrian Scarborough as Churchill, Stephen Campbell Moore as Reith and, in a piece of gender-blind casting, the late Haydn Gwynne as Baldwin. Much like Churchill versus Reith we get glimpses of the men behind the story in scenes with their respective spouses and mention of Reith’s earlier infatuation with the young Charlie Bowser. It’s mainly set at the BBC’s HQ at Savoy Hill (and an impressive set by all accounts with various sound effects and microphones visible at the back of the stage) with the drama and news bulletins interspersed with variety acts of the day. No recordings exist but you can hear the cast, crew and author speaking about When Winston Went to War with the Wireless on the Donmar Warehouse YouTube channel.

The second radio offering is from the 1990 BBC Radio 4 six-part drama series The Churchill Years written by David Wheeler. The series focused on “six turning points in his career” and in this fourth episode it’s the General Strike. The emphasis is more on events rather than personalities with the story starting with discussions between Baldwin and the mineworkers - “Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day” – and rallying speeches from the likes of Labour leader Ramsey MacDonald (Hugh Fraser). Churchill is charged with setting up The British Gazette which, in the eyes of the PM “puts him in a corner and stops him doing worse things” whilst Reith has a microphone set up at his Barton Street residence so that he can broadcast at a moment’s notice. Baldwin’s speech for which Reith famously wrote the final words about not compromising for “the safety and security of the British constitution” were broadcast from Reith’s study.

 Amongst the illustrious cast are Nigel Davenport as Baldwin and John Moffatt as Chamberlain. Taking on the role of Reith is the wonderful Graham Crowden (an actor who was just a couple of weeks older than the BBC itself).  Doing his best, if rather distracting, Churchill impression is Daniel Massey. He told the Radio Times “I remember hearing him on the radio during the blackout when I was about 7 or 8 – it was like a vitamin injection”. And on getting the rumbling tones right: “the voice has become a bit of a cliché though Churchill didn’t talk in clichés but in wonderfully rounded sentences that reflected his imagination and vision.

Episode 4 of The Churchill Years titled Class Wars was first broadcast on Wednesday 28 March 1990 and repeated on Sunday 1 April 1990. It was directed by Louise Purslow.

You can hear more about the BBC and the General Strike in Nick Robinson’s series Battle for the Airwaves.   

(1) The funeral was broadcast on BBC1, the Home Service, the Light Programme, the Third Programme and the General Overseas Service. Read more about the BBC tv coverage on the History of the BBC pages. The radio commentary for the funeral service is on the Internet Archive here. 

(2) After the strike the bulletins returned to their normal times for 7pm and 10pm. They were moved forward to 6.30 pm and 9.00 pm in early 1927 when the BBC was now Corporation. News was part of the Talks Department until December 1929 and again between February 1932 and August 1934 when it finally became a separate department under its first editor Professor John Coatman.