1939 in British radio

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This is a list of events from British radio in 1939.

Events[]

August – The BBC Monitoring service is established at Wood Norton Hall in Worcestershire, acquired earlier in the year as a standby location in case of the need to evacuate facilities from London.

1 September – At 18.55 local time BBC engineers receive the order to begin closing down all transmitters in preparation for wartime broadcasting: this marks the end of the National and Regional Programmes of the BBC. At 20.15 the BBC's Home Service begins transmission: this will be the corporation's only domestic radio channel for the first four months of World War II (BBC Television has been shut down until 1946). There will be a daily Welsh language bulletin of world news at 5 pm.^[1] Programming is initially limited to news, announcements, gramophone records and live music played by a limited pool of staff musicians, with extensive use of cinema organist Sandy MacPherson.^[2]
3 September
- Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, introduced by Alvar Lidell and speaking from 10 Downing Street, announces on the BBC at 11.15 local time that "this country is at war with Germany".^[3]
- Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley reads the first installment of his novel Let the People Sing, a celebration of local democracy specially written for radio, on the Home Service.^[4]
19 September – Popular British radio comedy show It's That Man Again with Tommy Handley is first broadcast on the BBC Home service, following trial broadcasts from 12 July.^[5]^[6] Known as "ITMA", and also featuring Jack Train and many others, it runs until Handley’s death in 1949;^[7] the performers have initially been evacuated to Bristol.

25 December – In his Christmas broadcast on BBC Radio, King George VI quotes Minnie Louise Haskins' poem "The Gate of the Year".^[8]

20 July – Sir Dan Godfrey, orchestral conductor, 71^[9]
19 December – Eric Fogg, composer and conductor, 36 (killed by Underground train)^[10]

^ "Literature Wales: Encyclopedia – Broadcasting". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-01-05.
^ Baade, Christina (2020-03-26). "During the Second World War, BBC listeners kept calm and listened to an unlikely star". The Conversation. UK. Retrieved 2021-07-10.
^ McDonough, Frank (1998). Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War. Manchester University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-7190-4832-6.
^ Chignell, Hugh (2011). Public Issue Radio: Talks, News and Current Affairs in the Twentieth Century. Springer. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-230-34645-1.
^ Palmer, Alan; Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 385–386. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^ "The BBC Story – 1930s" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-05-31.
^ Wilmut, Roger (1985). Kindly Leave the Stage!: Story of Variety, 1919–1960. Methuen. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-413-48960-9.
^ The Eternal Vision: The Ultimate Collection of Spiritual Quotations. Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd. 2002. p. 516. ISBN 978-1-85311-495-3.
^ Sterling, Christopher H. (2003). Encyclopedia of Radio. Routledge. p. 344. ISBN 978-1-135-45649-8.
^ The Listener, British Broadcasting Corporation, July 1939, p. 1270.