1939 in British television

List of years in British television (table)

This is a list of British television related events from 1939.

Events

January

  • No events.

February

  • No events.

March

  • 4 March – The BBC Television Service broadcasts 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 broadcasts 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.
  • unknown date - The Shaw play The Man of Destiny was shown on BBC Television.

April

  • No events.

May

  • No events.

June

  • No events.

July

  • No events.

August

  • 31 August – 18,999 television sets are sold in England before manufacture stops during the Second World War.

September

  • 1 September – The anticipated outbreak of war brings television broadcasting at the BBC Television Service to an end at 12:35 p.m. after the broadcast 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 its broadcasting, with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon, after the war in 1946.

There were no further events in British television until 1946 as broadcasting had been suspended for the duration of the Second World War. This was done amid fears the signals would help German bombers. Television broadcasting resumed in 1946.

Debuts

  • BBC Cricket (1939, 1946–1999, 2020–2024)

Television shows ending before the war

1920s

  • BBC Wimbledon (1927–1939, 1946–2024)

1930s


Births

See also

References

  1. "Obituary: Sir David Frost". BBC News. 2 September 2013. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
  2. Hayward, Anthony (7 March 2018). "John Pitman obituary". the Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
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