Reith and the Pre-television Child: The BBC’s Struggle to Understand Britain’s First Generation of Child Radio Listeners through <i>Children’s Hour</i> (1922–7)

The BBC has been providing public service content for children in Britain for more than a century. Radio was the testing ground to discover what young audiences wanted. The long-running radio programme Children’s Hour served as an important laboratory to try out policies, practices, programming and presentation styles more than 20 years before the BBC’s first regular television show for children in 1946. This article evaluates archive material to explore how the BBC attempted to understand the needs of the first generation of child radio listeners (‘the pre-television child’) between 1922 and 1927. Nineteen BBC stations ran individual clubs for children, mobilising thousands as fundraisers, writers, performers and collaborators, with variable access to studios, programmes and social activities across the BBC and Britain. But John Reith, who led the organisation, had no clear, BBC-wide strategic vision for Children’s Hour. His reluctance to impose directives meant station directors interpreted the remit in different ways, creating an innovative but frustratingly inconsistent service. Roger Eckersley was promoted to run all programmes and budgets in London in 1926; a skilled strategist who streamlined, professionalised and centralised Children’s Hour, formalising the BBC’s relationship with children forever, as it transformed from private company to public corporation.