Broadcasting and the Coronation

Abstract

CORONATION day, May 12, is likely to mark an interesting and notable event in the history of radio communication, for it will witness the most complicated outside broadcasts yet undertaken by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The arrangements for the sound programme were explained in the issue of the Radio Times of April 23, while some details of the means to be adopted for televising the Coronation procession were given in World Radio of the same date. On the sound side, apart from the arrangements necessary for the home and Empire programmes, the B.B.C. is providing facilities for about a dozen foreign Observers to broadcast commentaries in their own languages direct to their own countries. Two separate control rooms will be established, one at Westminster Abbey for the British programmes and the other at the Middlesex Guildhall for the foreign commentaries. In addition to supplying all the B.B.C. transmitters, the ‘home’ programme will be distributed to loudspeakers within the Abbey and to others on some of the stands along the route followed by the procession. By this means, a large number of the public will be enabled to follow the progress of the procession and to hear the service in the Abbey. At the foreign control room, provision is being made for ten separate commentaries in different languages to be fed by land-line to the International Trunk Exchange of the British Post Office, whence the programmes will be distributed to the countries concerned. Some 472 miles of special wiring are involved in the whole installation, which is being carried out by the General Post Office in co-operation with the B.B.C. Engineering Division. This one outside broadcast will involve the use of fifty-eight microphones, and, not least among the technical difficulties, is the necessity of rendering the installation of these as inconspicuous as possible, particularly inside the Abbey.