Frederick Percy Edgar

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(3 March 1884 – 21 April 1972) was an English broadcaster. Edgar was the dominant figure in English regional broadcasting from its birth until

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. In 1922 he was the founding General Manager and opening announcer for the first BBC station outside London -

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

5IT 5IT was a British Broadcasting Company (later BBC) radio station which broadcast from Birmingham, England, between 1922 and 1927. Birmingham was the first British city outside London to have a radio service from the newly formed British Broad ...

. Under Edgar 5IT pioneered many innovations, from employing the first full-time announcers to launching '' Children's Hour''. He was the Director of the Midland Region – the first of the BBC Regions – from its foundation in 1927 and the BBC's senior Regional Director until his retirement in 1948.

Life

Edgar was born and educated in

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 70,145 in ...

, spending his early career on the concert platform. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

he organised series of concerts in military camps and hospitals, a role he combined after the war with touring theatres and music halls, where his speciality was presenting characters from

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

. Frustration with constant touring and rowdy audiences led him to accept a post as director of a concert agency in

New Street, Birmingham New Street is a street in central Birmingham, England. It is one of the city's principal thoroughfares and shopping streets linking Victoria Square to the Bullring Shopping Centre. It gives its name to New Street railway station, although t ...

in 1921, and it was in this capacity that he was approached in October 1922 by the

Western Electric Company The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ...

, firstly to supply artists to perform on the radio station they were planning to open in Birmingham and, shortly afterwards, to manage the station itself. He later recalled: Despite being asked on one occasion "But tell me, Mr Edgar, what do you do in the daytime?", the early days of 5IT would often see Edgar working fifteen-hour days – planning the nightly programme, booking the performers and arranging their transport to the station's studio in Witton, reading the news, announcing the running order and working the gramophone. By late November, however, 5IT had been taken over by the newly established

British Broadcasting Company The British Broadcasting Company Ltd. (BBC) was a short-lived British commercial broadcasting company formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom. Licensed by the British General ...

and Edgar had recruited a staff of five, including an assistant manager, an announcer and two engineers. 1927 saw 5IT closed as the opening of the high-powered Borough Hill transmitter enabled the creation of the Midland Region transmitting the

BBC Regional Programme The BBC Regional Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing a number of earlier BBC local stations between 1922 and 1924 – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the Home Service, two days ...

. Edgar was the region's founding Director and fought for the role of regional programme-making within the BBC, writing to Director-General John Reith in 1929 that "the ever growing policy of centralisation in London has clearly gone a good deal further and more rapidly than public opinion here is prepared to accept" and running the Midland Region as a "kind of independent entrepreneur". By 1935 the Midlands Region was producing 40% of its broadcast output itself – more than any other region – and with 14 producers was largest BBC department outside London. Percy Edgar's son Barrie Edgar also worked for the BBC as a

television producer A television producer is a person who oversees one or more aspects of video production on a television program. Some producers take more of an executive role, in that they conceive new programs and pitch them to the television networks, but upon a ...

, and his grandson is the playwright David Edgar.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Edgar, Percy 1884 births 1972 deaths BBC executives Officers of the Order of the British Empire People from Stafford People from Birmingham, West Midlands