1939 in British television

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

List of years in British television (table)
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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, London. The 175-minute broadcast is the first showing of a full-length musical on television.

April

  • No events.

May

June

  • No events.

July

August

  • 31 August – 18,999 television sets have been sold in Britain before manufacture stops during World War II.

September

  • 1 September – The anticipated outbreak of World War II brings television broadcasting at the BBC Television Service to an end at 12:35pm after the broadcast of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey's Gala Premier 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 will resume its broadcasting with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon after the war in 1946.

October to December

  • No television is broadcast for the remainder of the War.

Date unknown

  • Future presenter, actor, comedian, singer, dancer and screenwriter Bruce Forsyth makes his first on-screen appearance at the age of eleven on the BBC talent show Come and be televised.[1]

Debuts

  • 1 January – Marco Millions (1939)
  • 4 January – The Tell-Tale Heart (1939)
  • 4 March – Condemned To Be Shot (1939)
  • 19 March – Gaslight (1939)
  • 27 March – Magyar Melody (1939)
  • 2 June – The Anatomist (1939)
  • 9 July – The Fame of Grace Darling (1939)
  • 29 July – Prison Without Bars (1939)
  • 12 August – Private Lives (1939)
  • Unknown – BBC Cricket (1939, 1946–1999, 2020–2024)

Television shows ending before the war

1920s

  • BBC Wimbledon (1927–1939, 1946–2019, 2021–2024)

1930s

Births

See also

References

  1. "We look back at some of Bruce Forsyth's most memorable shows". Metro. 2017-08-18. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
  2. "Obituary: Sir David Frost". BBC News. 2 September 2013. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
  3. Hayward, Anthony (7 March 2018). "John Pitman obituary". the Guardian. Retrieved 6 August 2018.
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