Radio Newsreel

In an era of 24-hour rolling news it’s difficult to comprehend that there was a time when broadcasters found that “the prospect of filling fifteen minutes each night with original actuality material was a terrifying problem”. That was the problem facing the producers of Radio Newsreel when it started in 1940. It was a programme that ‘provided a model for news coverage that was urgent and involving’, it would be heard around the world for half a century and in post-war Britain it was one of the most listened-to news broadcasts. Here is a brief history of Radio Newsreel.     

The idea for a daily programme that was “about the news of the day, introducing the voices of the men and women of Britain” came from two men in BBC’s Overseas division. First was Michael Barkway, the news editor for the Empire Service. But the main driving force was Peter Pooley, a former Empire Service announcer and by 1940 the Overseas News Talk Editor. He recalled the difficulties in sourcing news and actuality as “there were no news agencies to collect it for us and send it ticking into the office day and night. We had to wait for the news to break, then try frantically to collect our sound pictures and stories in broadcastable form and have our programme on the air by midnight”.

The first Radio Newsreel was broadcast on the North American service on 8 July 1940 live from a Broadcasting House basement studio at 4.30 in the morning. Producing and presenting that first edition was Robin Duff who opened with “The British Broadcasting Corporation presents Radio Newsreel – Edition Number One.” The title was meant to suggest the commentary with pictures approach familiar to American movie-going audiences who would see newsreels produced by Fox Movietone, Universal, Paramount and the March of Time series. Indeed the producers were always on the lookout for ‘radiogenic’ stories. The approach of the writers and presenters was to adopt a more conversational and informal approach than could be heard on the news bulletins.   

In that first edition there was a talk by a bomber pilot about the fortnight he’d spent drifting in an open boat, Geoffrey Cox (ITN’s news editor from 1956) on a meeting of the French cabinet days before Petain’s surrender and an interview with three Canadian soldiers in hospital.    

It was Duff who supposedly selected the library music that would open the programme, a piece called Imperial Echoes by Alfred Safroni in a 1928 recording by the Band of the RAF. It formed part of an opening sequence that was eventually introduced with the recorded voice of Canadian announcer Byng Whittaker who would intone “Whilst Britain awaits another dawn, we bring you news from the Battle Fronts of the World in – Radio Newsreel”. 

Audrey Russell and Barry Milne editing a disc for Radio Newsreel.
The Sketch 5 January 1949 

By October 1940 Radio Newsreel was also transmitted on the Pacific Service and the following year by the African Service and on the main General Overseas Service (World Service from 1965). There were also some Latin-American editions: Radio Panorama in the Spanish Service and Radio Gaceta in the Brazilian Service. Its style heavily influenced War Report when it started on the Home Service in June 1944. With the launch of the General Forces Programme in February 1944 it also carried a daily edition (initially with the presenters Phillip Robinson – a post-war Manchester-based producer - and actor and newsreader Norman Claridge) meaning that, until July 1945, it also had a domestic audience. In December 1940 the Newsreel team had temporarily decamped to Abbey Manor near Wood Norton but by June 1942 returned to London at the Overseas HQ at 200 Oxford Street (see Life at the ZOO). Reporters working on the programme in the wartime era included Audrey Russell, Alan Melville, future BBC tv newsreader Robert Dougall, John Irwin (later a post-war tv producer on Picture Page, In the News etc.) and George Weidenfeld (of Weidenfeld & Nicolson publishing fame). Two of the producers were Stanley Maxted who went on to became a war correspondent and George Innes, the creator of The Black and White Minstrel Show.

By November 1947 Radio Newsreel was a well established, well respected world-wide programme with the Radio Times reporting that there had been 2,676 editions for North America, 2,586 for the Pacific and 2,168 for Africa. So on Monday 3 November 1947 in addition to the six international editions a seventh domestic one was first broadcast on the Light Programme. News editor Stanley Rumsam explained that “every night at 7 o’clock it will bring to Light Programme listeners not only the hard news facts of the day but a series of sound pictures illustrating the news and current events. The editors will draw upon live and recorded despatches from BBC correspondents in Washington, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Warsaw, the Middle East, the Balkans, New Delhi or Karachi and elsewhere. Happenings at home will be covered by radio reporters who will sometime be able to illustrate their accounts with actuality recordings made on the spot”.

Of course, this now sounds like every news programme but at the time all bulletins were straight reads by an announcer and there were no other news or current affairs shows. For nearly a decade Radio Newsreel was the major source of broadcast evening news, the only other being a film newsreel on BBC tv, though few folk had sets at that time, and competition from ITN was still eight years away. The listening figures for the Light Programme edition hit 4 million in the early fifties and it was still pulling in 3 million at the end of the decade, despite the draw of television.

Radio Newsreel always used staff announcers/newsreaders for the international and domestic editions, unlike other news programmes that followed such as The World at One and Outlook that relied on presenters with a journalistic background. Here are some examples from the Light Programme, Home Service and World Service dating from the 1960s and 1980s. The announcers I can identify, or who are indentified on-air, are Jimmy Kingsbury, Ronald Fletcher, Brian Hudson, Michael Murray, Pamela Creighton, Sandy Walsh and Jasper Britton. There are reports from Leonard Parkin, Reg Turnill, Conrad Voss Bark, Peter Nettleship and Harold Brierley.   

The ‘Light Reel’, as it was known in-house, came to be seen as the ‘master edition. A Radio Times article for the 21^st anniversary explained just how many daily editions were produced: 

Half-way through the evening programme, at 7.15 exactly, another Radio Newsreel goes on the air from another studio; this is heard by listeners in Africa and the Mediterranean area, and it is one of six such programmes broadcast daily in the BBC’s Overseas Services to different areas of the world. In fact, out of 49 weekly editions, 42 are broadcast overseas.

The Newsreel’s day starts just after midnight in London with an edition broadcast to America and Asia. Some hours later, while in Britain we are just getting up, another edition is being heard by West Africans at their breakfast and Australians at tea-and so on through-out the twenty-four hours. Besides those who hear it directly from the Overseas Services, in seventeen countries listeners have it relayed to them by their local stations. And some foreign station stations record it for re-broadcasting later, or select items of particular interest to them. For instance, one network in the United States broadcast 300 hours of Radio newsreel material in a single month; and 656 U.S. stations re-broadcast an item on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s retirement.  

The domestic edition of Radio Newsreel moved from the Light to the Home Service from Saturday 31 December 1966, although the Sunday edition had been carried on the Home since September 1957. However, it was dropped entirely in 1970 as part of the Broadcasting in the Seventies re-alignment, with the final edition going out on Radio 4 on Friday 3 April. The following week PM was launched at 5 pm with a 15-minute news bulletin at 6 pm and a 30-minute News Desk at 7 pm.  

London Calling billing from October 1988

Radio Newsreel continued for a further 18 years on the World Service though the number of daily editions started to reduce: five per day in the early 1980s and down to four by the middle of the decade. By 1988 the newsroom was producing three editions a day plus similar newsreels for the Australian and New Zealand broadcasting services

In 1979 the old version of the theme was dropped, much to the consternation of many listeners. The old 78 recording of Imperial Echoes was now too worn to run off any more copies so the BBC commissioned a new recording by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, who had also recorded a new version of Lillibullero. But as luck would have it some months later studio manager Keith Perrin had spotted a mint copy of the 78 in a junk shop in Tiverton, Devon which meant the ‘rightful’ sig tune could be restored.

In October 1988 the World Service announced ‘a new mix’ with some old programmes being dropped, some renamed or retimed and the introduction of Newshour. As for Radio Newsreel, presenter Sandy Walsh told listeners to the edition broadcast at 1500 GMT Friday 28 October that “our programme style is changing” and that it was the final edition of the programme. From the following day it had a shorter title, now just Newsreel, and a new theme. Out went the old 1928 recording of Imperial Echoes and in came a new electronic theme composed by Richard Atree of the Radiophonic Workshop which borrowed the melody of the old one.

Newsreel was broadcast just three times a day at 0215 GMT for Asia only (the rest of the world got Network UK), 1200 and 1500. But Newsreel’s days were numbered and just over two and a half years later the final edition was heard at 1500 GMT on Friday 31 May 1991, some 51 years after its first broadcast.

It’s back to 1961 and the 21^st anniversary of Radio Newsreel. It’s likely that this recording was taped off a shortwave broadcast so the sound quality is very ropey. The recording was recovered by Duncan Lockhart, to whom I extend my thanks.      

 Notes

Michael Barkway became the BBC’s Canadian correspondent and between 1962 and 1974 was editor of The Financial Times of Canada.

Peter Pooley resigned from the BBC in 1947 at a time when the news division came under the management of Tahu Hole. He joined the Crown Film Unit and from 1951 worked for NATO eventually becoming Assistant Director of Information.

Robin Duff would go on to become a war reporter and covered the liberation of Paris in 1944.