This is a timeline of the history of the BBC Television Service, from events preceding its launch in 1936 until its renaming as BBC1 in 1964 upon the launch of BBC2.
1920s 1929 November – The BBC and John Logie Baird begin daily experimental broadcasting of 30-line television transmissions using the BBC's 2LO transmitter.
1930s 1930 14 July – First television drama broadcast, a production of Luigi Pirandello's The Man With the Flower in His Mouth by the BBC from Baird's studios at 133 Long Acre, London, directed by Val Gielgud.
1931 No events.
1932 2 August – The BBC starts a regular television service, using John Logie Baird's 30-line system.
1933 21 April – The first television revue, Looking In, is shown on the BBC. The first four minutes of this programme survive on a Silvatone record, an early method of home video recording. September – BBC Television Policy, Rumours and Facts is published.
1934 8 January – Radio Times lists this date as the first on which a television programme is broadcast by the BBC. The 30-minute programme, titled Television: By the Baird Process, airs at 11pm. 31 March – The agreement for joint experimental transmissions by the BBC and John Logie Baird's company comes to an end.
1935 11 September – Final transmission of John Logie Baird's 30-line television system by the BBC. The BBC begins preparations for a regular high definition broadcasting service from Alexandra Palace.
1936 2 November – The first regular high-definition (then defined as at least 200 lines) BBC Television Service, based at Alexandra Palace in London, officially begins broadcasting (after test transmissions began in August). The service alternates on a weekly basis between Baird's 240-line mechanical system and the Marconi-EMI's 405-line all-electronic system. Programmes are broadcast daily, Monday to Saturday, at 3pm–4pm and 9pm–10pm.
1937 6 February – The BBC Television Service drops the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system. 24 April – The first children's television show For the Children airs. 12 May – The BBC use their outside broadcast unit for the first time to televise the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. A fragment of this broadcast is one of the earliest surviving examples of British television, filmed off-screen at home by an engineer with an 8 mm cine camera. A short section of this footage was used in a programme during the week of the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and this latter event survives in the BBC's archives. 14 May – The BBC Television Service airs a thirty-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play on television. Among the cast is Greer Garson. Peggy Ashcroft appeared in a 1939 telecast of the entire play. 18 June – The Agatha Christie play Wasp's Nest airs, the only instance of her adapting one of her works for television, a medium she later came to dislike. 21 June – The Wimbledon Championships (tennis) is first shown on the BBC Television Service. 16 September – Football is televised for the first time. It is a specially-arranged friendly match between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury. 11 November – The BBC Television Service airs an adaptation of the Great War-set play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, starring Reginald Tate as Stanhope. Shown in commemoration of Armistice Day, it is the first time that a whole evening's programming has been given over to a single play.
1938 21 February – The BBC Television Service airs the first ever piece of television science-fiction, a 35-minute adaptation of a segment of the play R.U.R. by the Czech playwright Karel Čapek. 12 March – The first news bulletin aired by the BBC Television Service, in sound only. Previously, the service had aired British Movietone News cinema newsreels. 1 April – The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race is first televised on the BBC Television Service. 19 April – The first televised football match, England v Scotland, is shown on the BBC Television Service. 30 April – The FA Cup Final is televised for the first time on the BBC Television Service. 14 May – The first quiz show, Spelling Bee, is televised on the BBC Television Service. 24 June – Test match Cricket airs for the first time on the BBC Television Service, with coverage of the second test of The Ashes series between England and Australia, live from Lord's Cricket Ground.
1939 4 March – The BBC Television Service airs one of the first plays to be written especially for television, Condemned To Be Shot by R. E. J. Brooke. The production is notable for the use of a camera as the first-person perspective of the play's unseen central character. 27 March – The BBC Television Service airs the entirety of Magyar Melody live from His Majesty's Theatre. The 175-minute broadcast is the first showing of a full-length musical on television. 20 July – The Shaw play The Man of Destiny is shown on the BBC Television Service. 1 September – The anticipated outbreak of war brings television broadcasting at the BBC Television Service to an end at 12:35pm, after the airing of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey's Gala Premiere and various sound and vision test signals. It is feared that the VHF waves of television would act as a perfect homing signal for guiding enemy bombers to central London: in any case, the engineers of the television service would be needed for the war effort, particularly for radar. The BBC Television Service would resume broadcasting, with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon, a year after the war ends in 1946.
1940s 1940 to 1945 The service is closed for the duration of World War II.
1946 7 June – The BBC Television Service begins broadcasting again. The first words heard are "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?". The Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Gala Premiere that had been the last programme transmitted seven years earlier at the start of World War II, is reshown after Bligh's introduction. June – BBC Wimbledon, the longest-running pre-war programme since it debuted in 1927, returns. 7 July – The BBC's children's programme For the Children returns, one of the few pre-war programmes to resume after the resumption of the BBC Television Service. 4 August – Children's puppet Muffin the Mule makes his debut in an episode of For the Children. He becomes so popular, he is given his own show later in the year. 22 October – Telecrime, the first television crime series from the 1930s, returns for the final run on the BBC Television Service, retitled Telecrimes. October – The first live televised football match is broadcast from Barnet's home ground Underhill. Twenty minutes of the first half of the game against Wealdstone was televised and thirty-five minutes of the second half was shown before it became too dark to continue with the coverage. 29 November – Pinwright's Progress, British television's first sitcom, makes its debut on the BBC Television Service.
1947 10 February–11 March – The BBC Television Service is temporarily suspended for the first time since World War II due to a national fuel crisis. 11 March – The BBC Television Service resumes broadcasting. 9 November – The memorial service broadcast from the Cenotaph airs on the BBC Television Service, using tele-recording for the first time. 20 November – The Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II), daughter of George VI marries The Duke of Edinburgh at Westminster Abbey, London.Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. . The service is watched by an estimated 400,000 viewers and is the oldest surviving telerecorded programme in Britain. Adelaide Hall appearing in Variety in Sepia, the first telecording by BBC (kinescope) showing the singer performing two songs with a chorus and her guitar. Copies of this first English kinescope of live TV broadcasting are preserved by the BBC. Café Continental makes its debut on the BBC Television Service.
1948 5 January – Television Newsreel is first shown on the BBC Television Service. 29 July – The BBC Television Service begins its coverage of the Olympic Games in London by broadcasting the opening ceremony. From that day until the closing ceremony on 14 August, they will broadcast an average of three and a half hours a day of live coverage of the Games, using a special coaxial cable linking the main venue at Wembley Stadium to their base at Alexandra Palace. This is the most ambitious sustained outside broadcast attempted yet by the BBC, but passes off with no serious problems.
1949 July – The BBC Television Service revives the regular televised weather forecast."A history of TV weather forecasts ", BBC, 16 January 2009 29 September – The BBC Television Service first airs Come Dancing, a TV ballroom dancing competition show which would run until 1998. 26 October – How Do You View?, the first comedy series on British television, starring Terry-Thomas, first airs. 17 December – The Sutton Coldfield television transmitter is opened in the Midlands, making it the first part of the UK outside of London to receive the BBC Television Service.
1950s 1950 23 February – The first televised report of the General Election results in the UK. 3 April – The BBC's aspect ratio changes from 5:4 to 4:3. 21 May – The BBC's Lime Grove television studios open. 11 July – Andy Pandy makes its debut on the BBC Television Service. 27 August – The first ever live television pictures from across the English Channel are transmitted by the BBC Television Service. The two-hour programme is broadcast live from Calais in northern France to mark the centenary of the first message sent by submarine telegraph cable from England to France. 30 September – The first BBC Television Service broadcast from an aircraft.
1951 16 July – What's My Line? makes its debut on the BBC Television Service. It will be one of the top-rated programmes for the rest of the decade and makes a star of its host, Eamonn Andrews who takes over from Gilbert Harding from the second episode. 12 October – The Holme Moss transmitter is opened in Northern England, making the BBC Television Service available to the region for the first time.
1952 16 January – Sooty, Harry Corbett's glove puppet bear, first appears on the BBC Television Service. 15 February – The funeral of King George VI is televised in the UK. 14 March – The BBC Television Service is launched in Scotland. 20 July – Arrow to the Heart, the first collaboration between director Rudolph Cartier and scriptwriter Nigel Kneale, airs on the BBC Television Service. 15 December – Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men makes its debut on the BBC Television Service. December – For the Children airs for the final time.
1953 17 March – Patrick Troughton becomes television's first Robin Hood, playing the eponymous folk hero in the first of six half-hour episodes of Robin Hood, shown weekly until 21 April on the BBC Television Service. 1 May – The BBC brings into service television transmitters at Pontop Pike (County Durham) and Glencairn (Belfast) to improve coverage prior to the Coronation broadcast. 2 June – The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is televised in the UK on the BBC Television Service. Sales of TV sets rise sharply in the weeks leading up to the event. It is also one of the earliest broadcasts to be deliberately recorded for posterity and still exists in its entirety to this day. 18 July – The Quatermass Experiment, the first of the famous Quatermass science-fiction serials by Nigel Kneale, begins its run on the BBC Television Service. 20 July – The Good Old Days begins on the BBC Television Service, it would run until 1983. 11 November – The current affairs series Panorama launches on the BBC Television Service. It is now the longest-running programme in British television history.