Editorial: May 2006
By Richard G Elen
A goldmine of programming history
There’s something that has been widely talked about recently in the several forums and email lists that discuss goings-on in television and the media. If you’re someone who frequents such places, you’ll already know about it: but to the vast majority of our readers who are less specialised, the information might just be utterly fascinating.
I’m referring to the BBC’s currently experimental Programme Catalogue, available at http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/ . It contains, they say, searchable details on 946,976 BBC radio & TV programmes, going back 75 years; 503,193 subject categories; and 1,183,001 contributors. They admit there are gaps and even errors in the record; it’s a catalogue, not a gateway to the media themselves; and it’s currently a prototype; but nonetheless it’s a stunning achievement.
Even obscure things are easy to find. I located my sister’s appearance a decade ago in an edition of Newsroom South East in a moment, for example. More usefully, perhaps, for researchers into broadcasting history, you can look up Mickey’s Gala Premier(e) and confirm that the cartoon film was broadcast both on September 1, 1939 and on June 7, 1946: the last day of broadcasting before, and the first after, World War II, as detailed in our recent article on the subject. You can also find Salute to AP, the 1954 documentary and discover, by clicking ‘show extra detail’, that the cartoon indeed “closed & opened the television service for WW II”. And, of course, you can find a whole lot more.
The possibilities for researchers - and for all of us who want to find out when something, or somebody, appeared on the BBC - are endless, and congratulations to the Corporation not only for assembling this mass of valuable data, but for making it available to the public. This is yet another example of something for which I am happy to pay my licence fee.
