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Television: Art, Reality and Entertainment

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Representations of Working-Class Life 1957–1964

Abstract

The BBC resumed television transmissions in June 1946 to a handful of viewers in the London area; by March 1947 there were under 15,000 licensed sets. This rose slowly to 760,000 in 1951 and then with increasing speed to 4.5 million in 1955. 1953 was the watershed year. Between March 1953 and 1954 over 1 million new licences were issued and the figures continued to grow at a comparable rate, reaching 8 million in 1958 and 12 million by 1963. The mid 1950s (rather than the late 1940s) were the key years, for a number of reasons. The amount of income available for expenditure on consumer durables grew while there was a relative fall in the price of sets; by the early 1950s it was also possible to rent or buy by hire purchase. Equally important was the rate of growth of the national network. Transmissions for the Birmingham area began only in 1949, for the North in 1951 and for the main centres of Scotland and Wales in 1952. By 1953 the BBC could reach 85 per cent of the population.1 The Coronation in June 1953 was the first major event to be presented through this network; an estimated 20 million people watched on the 2.5 million sets available.

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Notes and References

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  1. Stuart Laing
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© 1986 Stuart Laing

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Laing, S. (1986). Television: Art, Reality and Entertainment. In: Representations of Working-Class Life 1957–1964. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18459-0_7

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