BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, primetime drama and entertainment, and live BBC Sport events.
The channel was launched on 2 November 1936 under the name BBC Television Service, which was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution. It was renamed BBC Television in 1960 and used this name until the launch of the second BBC channel, BBC Two, in 1964. The main channel then became known as BBC1. The channel adopted the current spelling of BBC One in 1997.
The channel's annual budget for 2024–2025 was £1.28 billion. It is funded by the television licence fee together with the BBC's other domestic television stations and shows uninterrupted programming without commercial advertising. The television channel had the highest reach share of any broadcaster in the United Kingdom as at 2019, ahead of its traditional rival for ratings leadership ITV. In 2013, a study conducted across 14 countries by the polling organisation Populus found BBC One to be the station most favourably viewed by its country, with BBC Two coming in third place.
Availability
BBC One is available via most major television providers in the United Kingdom.
Terrestrial
Freeview: Channel 101 (HD), Channel 1 (SD)
Satellite
Freesat: Channel 101 (HD)
Sky: Channel 101 (HD)
Cable
Virgin Media: Channel 101 (HD)
IPTV
Sky Glass: Channel 101 (HD)
Freely: Channel 1 (HD)
Streaming
BBC iPlayer (UK only)
History
Early years and launch
The BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of Broadcasting House, London, on 22 August 1932. The channel officially began regular broadcasts on 2 November 1936 at three o'clock in the afternoon from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London.
Initially, programmes ran from three o'clock to four o'clock in the afternoon and nine o'clock to ten o'clock in the evening. Television director Gerald Cock described his rationale for the timings of the service as to "avoid eye strain" for home viewers in breaks between programmes, and to have a five-hour break between both periods in order not to interfere with home routines, such as mealtimes and children's bedtimes. The BBC also depended on newsreels from other companies as it did not have a television news service of its own until 1948.
On 1 September 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany, the station was taken off air with little warning, with the last programme to be shown being a Mickey Mouse cartoon (the 1933 short Mickey's Gala Premier); the government was concerned that the VHF transmissions would act as a beacon to enemy aircraft that could bomb London.
BBC Television returned on 7 June 1946 at three o'clock in the afternoon. Jasmine Bligh, one of the original announcers, made the first announcement, saying, "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?". Twenty minutes later, BBC Television again aired the Mickey Mouse cartoon that they had broadcast in 1939. It carried the 1948 Summer Olympics, which tested the limits of new television equipment, the most ambitious outside broadcast that the BBC had ever done to date. The channel was made available outside of London for the first time on 17 December 1949, when the Sutton Coldfield transmitting station in the Midlands opened. The BBC hoped for the service to reach 70% of the British population by 1952, then 80% by 1954. The BBC made its first cross-country broadcast on 27 August 1950, crossing the English Channel in cooperation with its French counterpart RTF in Calais, lasting for one hour. From this experiment, the term "Eurovision" was coined, which was later adopted by the European Broadcasting Union as the name of its network, which in 1954 was already fully operational.
Creation of BBC1
The BBC held a statutory monopoly on television broadcasting in the United Kingdom until Associated-Rediffusion, the first Independent Television (ITV) station, began to broadcast on 22 September 1955. Lord Reith, which had long left his position at the corporation, compared its introduction to a plague at the House of Lords. While Reith's predictions did not come to pass, BBC Television's viewing share fell down to less than 30% by the end of the decade.
The competition quickly forced the channel to change its identity and priorities, following a large reduction in its audience, as noted in the 1962 Pilkington Report on the future of broadcasting. Simultaneously, the Pilkington Report decided to award an additional television station to the BBC on the basis that ITV was in comparison lacking in serious programming.
BBC Television became BBC1 when BBC2 launched on 20 April 1964, transmitting an incompatible 625-line image on UHF. The only way to receive all channels was to use a complex "dual-standard" 405- and 625-line receiver with both a VHF and a UHF aerial (405-line-only sets became obsolete in 1985 when VHF transmissions ended). BBC1 moved to purpose-built facilities at Television Centre on 20 September 1969. Television News continued to use Alexandra Palace as its base and by early 1968 had even converted one of its studios to colour. In the weeks leading up to 15 November 1969, BBC1 unofficially transmitted the occasional programme in its new colour system in order to test it. At midnight on 15 November, simultaneously with ITV and two years after BBC2 had done so, BBC1 officially began 625-line PAL colour programming on UHF with a broadcast of a concert by Petula Clark. Colour transmissions could be received in monochrome via monochrome 625-line sets until the end of analogue broadcasting.
Competition tactics with ITV flared up again in the early 1970s, when the channel opted to air its key sitcoms at 7:30 pm, countering Coronation Street (at the time airing two nights a week) and related drama series. During the early years of BBC2, some programmes made for the channel were repeated on BBC1, attracting higher attention there, such as The Forsyte Saga when it gained a repeat on this channel. Between 1973 and 1977, BBC1 achieved an average audience share of 45% under Bryan Cowgill. This was the channel's most successful period in terms of audience share.
On 30 December 1980, the BBC announced plans to introduce a new breakfast television service to compete with TV-am. They stated that the new show would be broadcast before TV-am but included the caveat that the new show would not launch until at least November 1981, whereupon new licence fee income could finance the necessary extension of broadcasting hours. On 17 January 1983, one year after originally planned, the first edition of Breakfast Time was shown on BBC1, becoming the first UK wide breakfast television service and continued to lead in the ratings until 1984.
Michael Grade era (1984–1987)
In 1984, Bill Cotton become managing director of Television at the BBC, and set about overhauling BBC1, which had been slated with poor home grown shows, its heavy reliance on US imports, with Dallas and The Thorn Birds being BBC1's highest rated programmes and ratings being over 20% behind ITV. Cotton recruited Michael Grade to become Controller of BBC1 from 1 September 1984 the first time the corporation had recruited someone outside of the BBC, replacing Alan Hart.
The first major overhaul was to axe the unpopular Sixty Minutes current affairs programme: this was a replacement for the news and magazine show Nationwide. Its replacement was the BBC Six O'Clock News, a straight news programme in a bid to shore up its failing early evening slot. It was believed the BBC were planning to cut short the evening news and move more light entertainment programming in from the 18:20 slot, but this was dismissed. The Miss Great Britain contest was dropped, being described as verging on the too offensive after the January 1985 contest, with World's Strongest Man and International Superstar also being cancelled.
BBC1 was relaunched on 18 February 1985 with a new look, new programming including Wogan and EastEnders, and a revised schedule to help streamline and maintain viewers throughout the course of the evening. Grade started to gear most programmes to either on the hour or half past the hour, while Panorama and Omnibus were both moved after the Nine O'Clock News. Grade was also determined to end the dated and inept BBC1 scheduling which was hampering the channel and holding back good programmes. Grade said "When I took over BBC1, I discovered there were wonderful things, it was just a case of where to put them." Wogan had been scheduled for a 10 pm slot, but Grade moved it to a 7 pm slot as he believed the show had potential.
From February to August 1985, a high number of American mini-series were broadcast while filming took place of a number of new home grown programmes, including 'Allo 'Allo!, In Sickness and in Health, and Open All Hours. Further improvement came about when the corporation strengthened its drama output costing £30 million, with eight new series, including Howards' Way, All Creatures Great and Small, Hold the Back Page, and Bluebill, along with the return of Bergerac and Big Deal. The increase in the drama department was achieved by switching the money away from the administrative service over a three-year period, after BBC1 was criticised for failing to match ITV's output in drama. EastEnders was moved to a 19:30 slot, where it managed to soar to 20 million, helping the BBC1 audience share increase to nearly 50% for the first time since 1982.
On 27 February 1985, Doctor Who was placed on an 18-month hiatus. The BBC originally planned to axe the series as they wished to spend its budgets on new programming for the channel, but was forced to back down from public pressure and Doctor Who returned in September 1986. At the time Michael Grade and Jonathan Powell were blamed for the decision (Grade was the target of death threats).
On 9 September 1985, the long-standing children's programming block was overhauled and rebranded as Children's BBC, which gave it dedicated idents for the first time and had a live in-vision presenter, similar to rival ITV's Children's ITV block which had been running since January 1983. Previously the BBC had broadcast children's programming using BBC1's team of regular duty announcers. The launch presenter for this block, and thus the first Children's BBC presenter of the current format, was Phillip Schofield.
On 23 May 1986, long-running lunchtime magazine show Pebble Mill at One was broadcast for the last time after being on air for 14 years. On 27 October 1986, BBC1 launched its daytime television schedules. In a statement, BBC Daytime head Roger Laughton said:
It was the natural extension of the corporation's commitment to public service broadcasting, since half the population had access to television during the day mainly the retired, unemployed and housewives.
1990s
Stereo audio transmissions, using the NICAM digital stereo sound format began on BBC1 in late 1987, to coincide with the sale of the first consumer NICAM-enabled equipment, a year after BBC2, and were gradually phased in across BBC TV output, although it took until 31 August 1991 for the service to begin officially on both channels. During this time, both commercial analogue broadcasters, ITV and Channel 4 had officially begun stereo transmissions using the BBC-developed NICAM system. Widescreen programming was introduced on digital platforms in 1998.
For the first 50 years of its existence, with the exception of films and programmes purchased from the United States and elsewhere, almost all the channel's output were produced by the BBC's in-house production departments. This changed following the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, which required that 25% of the BBC's television output be out-sourced to independent production companies. By 2004, many popular BBC One shows were made for the channel by independents, but the in-house production departments continued to contribute heavily to the schedule.
In March 1991, as part of the £63 million programme package for spring and summer line up on BBC1, it was announced an extra £20 million was to be spent on rejuvenating the channels drama and comedy output during peak times, to keep the channel in a healthy state once the new Channel 3 licences were awarded.
In December 1991 Wogan was to be cancelled, due to falling ratings against a number of ITV shows, in which Wogan only managed six million viewers compared to double that for This Is Your Life, The Krypton Factor and The $64,000 Question. Additionally an extra £40 million a year was spent on narrowing the gap on ITV's ratings lead, since a few months prior to this the channel had been criticised for its Autumn schedule, having tired formats, uninspiring scheduling of new programmes and poor scripts. Wogan was replaced with Eldorado, in early July 1992, but this was itself cancelled a year later.
Alan Yentob launched the 1993 Autumn schedule calling it "My first try with a lot of help from my friends", with the channel still under criticism, following the start of new programming which Alan introduced a year earlier, and the number of summer repeats. £175 million was spent on 80 hours of original drama produced, enchantment to the arts with an extended 26-week run for Omnibus, and documentaries with The Downing Street Years, new wildlife series and an eight-month look at Sheffield's Children's hospital, while Goodnight Sweetheart, Grace & Favour and The Danny Baker Show were new comedy series. Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman included in the Saturday night line up to increase variety.
Following the public disapproval of filling its schedule with 25% of repeats during the summer months of 1993, BBC1 agreed to broadcast an extra 110 hours worth of original programming over the same period during the summer in 1994, which included giving EastEnders an additional episode per week. Efficiency savings of £25 million were found and redeployed to the new productions. The savings were seen as a vindication for Producer Choice, the controversial internal market introduced in April 1993.
By March 1999, the channel admitted defeat in its ratings war with ITV, with its spring line up emphasising more on serious factual and educational programmes, and drama. This change in strategy came about after continuing complaints that the channel was appealing to the lowest common denominator to increase viewership. Reliance on docusoaps and the dropping of the vilified Noel's House Party were chastened by the hoax guests on The Vanessa Show. Alan Yentob said "The spring package is to remind people of what the BBC is here for, range and ambition you won't find anywhere else at peak time". The changes helped the channel distinguish itself from (as one BBC executive said) "its down-market rival and would not compete for viewers on ITV's terms."
2000s
Lorraine Heggessey became Controller of BBC One, a post she took up on 1 November 2000. She had previously been sounded out about the job in 1997 following Michael Jackson's departure, but had turned down the opportunity as she felt she was then not yet experienced enough.
During Heggessey's five years in charge, BBC One's audience share fell by 19.9%, to 23%, although this was in the context of declining audience figures across all British television channels due to increased competition from multichannel digital television. However, in 2001 BBC One overtook its main rival ITV in terms of annual audience share for the first time since the rival channel had launched in 1955, although much of this was down to the success of the channel's daytime television line-up, which had its own Controller: Jane Lush.
When Heggessey arrived at the channel in November 2000, she inherited two controversial schedule changes which had been implemented the previous month, at the behest of Director-General of the BBC Greg Dyke; the Nine O'Clock News had been moved to the later time of 22:00 and Panorama moved from Monday night prime time slot to a later slot on Sunday nights. The moving of Panorama attracted criticism that BBC One was sidelining serious programming in favour of more populist output. Heggessey publicly defended the decision, despite it not being hers, claiming that Panorama's ratings would have "dwindled" in its previous slot.
Heggessey and the BBC's Controller of Drama Commissioning, Jane Tranter, took advantage of the weekday 21:00 slot opening up by moving the news to commission new popular drama output, such as the successful Waking the Dead (2000–2011) and Spooks (2002–2011). Celebrity dancing show Strictly Come Dancing (2004–present) was also a popular success on Saturday nights, although another Saturday night entertainment series, Fame Academy, faced accusations of being too derivative of the output of commercial rivals, and during Heggessey's era the channel frequently came under attack for being too populist and not providing enough serious programming.
Immediately after her arrival, Heggessey ordered a review of the "Balloon" idents the channel had been using for its between-programme idents since 1997. In her opinion, the balloon was "slow and distant" and so, on 29 March 2002, after much speculation, she decided to abandon the "Balloon" idents (and the traditional "Globe" idents the channel had used in a variety of forms since 1963). They were replaced by a new style of on-air identity for the channel, the "Rhythm & Movement" idents. The new idents attracted criticism for going against the traditions of the channel and pandering to "political correctness", as they featured activities performed by people of various ethnicities. The abandonment of a station clock, and perceived lack of a 'serious ident', also put the BBC in an embarrassing situation just one day into the new look with the death of the Queen Mother.
One of Heggessey's most notable decisions and last major success at the channel was the recommissioning of the science-fiction drama series Doctor Who, which had been a popular hit in previous decades but ceased production in 1989. Heggessey and Jane Tranter recommissioned the series in September 2003, after Heggessey had spent two years persuading the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, to abandon their attempts to make a feature film version of the programme and allow it to instead return it to BBC One. The new version of Doctor Who (2005–present) debuted on 26 March 2005 and became a critical and popular hit, with Paul Hoggart of The Times newspaper describing the series as "a joyful, exuberant reinvention and a fine legacy from Ms Heggessey."
Heggessey did later concede in a 2005 interview with The Independent newspaper that arts programming had suffered a cutback under her control of BBC One. However, she did respond to this omission following criticism from the Board of Governors of the BBC by commissioning programmes such as the arts documentary series Imagine... (2003–present) and A Picture of Britain (2005).
On 14 February 2005 it was announced that Lorraine Heggessey was to leave the BBC to take up the post of Chief Executive at production company Talkback Thames. She left on 15 April. Five months after her departure, BBC One was named "Channel of the Year" at the Edinburgh Television Festival, primarily on the strength of Heggessey's commissions such as Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who.
Joining the channel as Controller in 2005, Peter Fincham oversaw the commissioning of several successful BBC One programmes including Robin Hood (2006–2009), Jane Eyre (2006) and How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?, which was followed by similar shows Any Dream Will Do and I'd Do Anything because of its success. His first full year in charge of the channel saw a year-on-year growth in the audience share, with a rise from 22.2% in August 2005 to 23.6% in August 2006.
Fincham also directly initiated the creation of both The One Show (2006–present), an early evening, current-affairs and lifestyle magazine programme, which now runs all but two weeks of the year, and Davina (2006), a prime time chat show, the latter hosted by Davina McCall, who presented Big Brother. However, Davina was a critical and ratings disaster, which Fincham subsequently admitted was personally his fault, although he defended the strategy of experimenting with the BBC One schedule. This he continued in January 2007, when he moved the current affairs series Panorama from its Sunday night slot back to the prime time Monday evening slot from which it had been removed in 2000, most likely in response to a demand from the Board of Governors of the BBC for the channel to show more current affairs programming in prime time.
Fincham's judgement was again called into question, this time by The Telegraph, for his decision to spend £1.2 million replacing the channel's 'Rhythm and Movement' idents, which had been introduced by his predecessor Lorraine Heggessey several years earlier, with the 'Circle' idents, a set of eight ten-second films, some of which were shot abroad in locations such as Mexico and Croatia. Fincham later found himself having to publicly defend the £18 million salary that the BBC paid Jonathan Ross in 2006, although Ross's BBC One work—primarily consisting of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross—formed only part of his overall BBC commitment.
The channel was named Channel of the Year at the 2007 Broadcast Awards.
The One to Watch campaign
Following its rebrand in March 2002, BBC One launched The One to Watch campaign, during which animated blocks created the word "The" and moved into the BBC logo.