Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

Thomas Marcus Brownrigg

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

DSO RN (Retired) (8 July 1902 – 9 October 1967) was a British

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

officer before and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

who later became the first General Manager of

Bracknell Bracknell () is a town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, the westernmost area within the Greater London Built-up Area, Greater London Urban Area and the administrative centre of the borough of Bracknell Forest. It lies to the east of Re ...

New Town New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz (South Korean band), The Boyz * New (album), ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 ** New (Paul McCartney song), "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013 * New (EP), ''New'' (EP), ...

Development Corporation before becoming the first General Manager of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

's first commercial television station,

Associated-Rediffusion Associated-Rediffusion, later Rediffusion London, was the British ITV franchise holder for London and parts of the surrounding counties, on weekdays between 22 September 1955 and 29 July 1968. It was the first ITA franchisee to go on air, ...

Naval career

Brownrigg began his naval career as a

midshipman A midshipman is an officer of the lowest Military rank#Subordinate/student officer, rank in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Royal Cana ...

in 1919. He progressed through the ranks, becoming a

lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a Junior officer, junior commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations, as well as fire services, emergency medical services, Security agency, security services ...

in 1923 and a captain in 1942. He saw service on numerous ships, including pre-war stints on the flotilla leader HMS ''Montrose'', the aircraft carrier , and the light cruiser HMS ''Cairo''.Houterman, Hans and Koppes, Jeroe
Unithistories.com
Netherlands (undated), Retrieved 27 November 2008.

World War II

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Brownrigg served on the battleship HMS ''Warspite'' as Navigating Officer before taking a staff position under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham in the planning department of the Naval Expeditionary Force, preparing for

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

. He then became commanding officer of HMS ''Scylla'' for D-Day itself, whilst also serving as Flag Captain for the Eastern Task Force during the landings. He finished the war in command of the Royal Navy Air Station at Rattray ( HMS ''Merganser'').

Post-war

After the war, Brownrigg served briefly on HMS ''Theseus'' before taking a series of land-based naval positions. He served as Director of Plans for the Admiralty, Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief for the Mediterranean and finally, in 1952, being briefly Naval Aide de Camp to the Queen. Nevertheless, he had made enemies within the Admiralty due to his idiosyncratic nature and failed to progress beyond the rank of captain. He was placed on the retired list in July 1952.

Bracknell New Town

Following his retirement from the navy, Brownrigg became General Manager of the

Development Corporation.Henry, Brian (Ed.) ''British Television Advertising: The First Thirty Years'' London: Century Benham 1986 With his experience in planning for

Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allies of World War II, Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Front (World War II), Western Europe during World War II. The ope ...

, he was considered the ideal choice for implementing the development of a New Town as envisaged by

Patrick Abercrombie Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie ( ; 6 June 1879 – 23 March 1957) was an English architect, urban designer and town planner. Abercrombie was an academic during most of his career, and prepared one city plan and several regional studies prior ...

and

Lord Reith Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...

in their eponymous reports.

Associated-Rediffusion

The experience of managing Bracknell was put to use in Brownrigg's next post, the one where he would, his war service notwithstanding, gain the most fame. The

Television Act 1954 The Television Act 1954 ( 2 & 3 Eliz. 2. c. 55) was a British law which permitted the creation of the first commercial television network in the United Kingdom, ITV. Until the early 1950s, the only television service in Britain was operated ...

had created the framework for commercial broadcasting in the United Kingdom.Graham, Russ
Vital vulgarity
, The Authority from Transdiffusion 1 April 2005, Retrieved 27 November 2008

British Electric Traction British Electric Traction Company Limited, renamed BET plc in 1985, was a large British industrial conglomerate. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but was acquired by Rentokil in 1996, and the merged company is now known as Ren ...

's Broadcast Relay Services subsidiary and

Associated Newspapers DMG Media (stylised in lowercase) is an intermediate holding company for Associated Newspapers, Northcliffe Media, Harmsworth Printing, Harmsworth Media and other subsidiaries of Daily Mail and General Trust. It is based at 9 Derry Street in ...

formed a joint company,

(A-R), to bid for a commercial television contract.Graham, Russ
A Short History
, Television House from Transdiffusion 1 January 2004, Retrieved 27 November 2008 Because of the extensive planning and construction involved, they approached Brownrigg to become their General Manager. He accepted and put his imprint across the entire structure and output of the company. Contemporaries reported that he commanded A-R as though it were a battleship. His "Official Office Memoranda", giving instructions and setting rules for everything down to the frequency of filing and the decoration on the walls,Copy of OOM
, Transdiffusion archives became a legend throughout ITV.Thomas, Howard ''With An Independent Air'' London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1977 Under his leadership, the company went from having one employee (himself) to becoming Europe's first and largest commercial television broadcaster in under a year.Graham, Russ
London Calling
, Television House from Transdiffusion 1 January 2004, Retrieved 27 November 2008 In that time, he supervised the conversion of the former headquarters of the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force and civil aviation that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the ...

, Adastral House, into

Television House Television House is the former name of a building on Kingsway in London. From 1918, it was the base of the Air Ministry. From 1955, the building was the headquarters of Associated-Rediffusion/Rediffusion London, Independent Television News (ITN) ...

, A-R studios and administration headquarters, which also served as the headquarters for

ITN Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based media production and broadcast journalism company. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York City, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washin ...

, the

TV Times ''TV Times'' is a British television listings magazine. From 1955 until 1991, it was the only source of seven-day listings for ITV and, from 1982, Channel 4 (as well as S4C in Wales in an enclosed local supplement titled '' Sbec''). The magaz ...

and, at first,

Associated TeleVision ATV Network Limited, originally Associated TeleVision (ATV), was a British broadcaster, part of the ITV (TV network), ITV (Independent Television) network. It provided a service to London at weekends from 1955 to 1968, to the Midlands on week ...

, A-R's main rival. At the same time, he was also actively involved in defining the station's identity, formulating the programme plans, creating an advertising market for television, chairing ITN and negotiating

industrial relations Industrial relations or employment relations is the multidisciplinary academic field that studies the employment relationship; that is, the complex interrelations between employers and employees, labor union, labor/trade unions, employer organ ...

with the film and broadcasting unions. Many stories are told by old ITV hands about Brownrigg's idiosyncrasies, especially his dominant - or domineeringBromsgrove, Mar
Brian Masters MBE
, TV Heroes from Transdiffusion, Retrieved 27 November 2008 - manner, his name-dropping, his willingness to generalise outrageously on any subject and his requirement for very junior staff to salute him and his fellow directors. However, personal friends also point out that he had a great sense of humour and an ability to laugh at himself - many of the

anecdote An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Anecdotes may be real ...

s about him may therefore have derived from him in the first place.

Retirement

Brownrigg's A-R pitched itself as a formal, rigid broadcaster. In order to avoid comparison between A-R and the American networks, Brownrigg ensured that A-R was more "British" and "Empire" in its attitudes and identity than even the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

. This had the desired effect, removing the accusation the commercial television would be "vulgar" or too light.Rediffusion
, Ident from Transdiffusion 24 May 2004, Retrieved 27 November 2008 However, by the 1960s, increased competition and a change in spending-power demographics was evident in the United Kingdom. With the planned launch of BBC-2, aimed at the young and the upper middle-class, the new

pirate Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...

offshore radio Offshore radio is radio broadcasting from ships or fixed maritime structures. Offshore broadcasters are usually unlicensed but transmissions are legal in international waters. This is in contrast to unlicensed broadcasting on land or within a nat ...

stations and a rejuvenated

Radio Luxembourg Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg). The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earlies ...

, the senior management of the company felt that the future lay in younger viewers. To counter the competition, they decided to relaunch the station as Rediffusion, London and introduce new programming aimed at younger people and a new identity designed to be less "stuffy" and more able to compete with BBC-2.Graham, Russ
1964 and all that
, Inside TV from Transdiffusion, Retrieved 27 November 2008 In this new environment there was no place for Brownrigg and he retired to

Finchampstead Finchampstead is a village and civil parish in the Wokingham Borough in the shire of Berkshire, England. Bordering northeastern Hampshire to the south, its northern extremity is south of Wokingham, west of Bracknell, south-east of Reading, ...

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

at the end of 1963, although he took on a directorship of the TV Times. One of his last acts before his death was to condemn the

Independent Television Authority The Independent Television Authority (ITA) was an agency created by the Television Act 1954 ( 2 & 3 Eliz. 2. c. 55) to supervise the creation of " Independent Television" (ITV), the first commercial television network in the United Kingdom. The ...

for forcing Rediffusion into (minority) partnership with

ABC Weekend TV ABC Television Limited, popularly known as ABC Weekend TV, was a British broadcaster which provided the weekend service in the Midlands and Northern England regions of the Independent Television (ITV) network from 1956 to 1968. It was one of ...

to create the new

Thames Television Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. Thames Television broa ...

. His letter to

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

doesn't mention ''Rediffusion, London'' once - he stuck to calling the company he created "Associated-Rediffusion" until the end.This is London: The Times 17 June 1967
, Photomusications from Transdiffusion, Retrieved 27 November 2008 He did not live to see the birth of Thames Television.

Family

Thomas Brownrigg was the son of Colonel H J W Brownrigg and Evelyn (née Huleatt). He married Joyce Chiesman in 1926 and they had a son and a daughter.

References

* Sendall, Bernard ''Independent Television in Britain: Volume 1 - Origin and Foundation, 1946-62'' London: The Macmillan Press Ltd 1982 (1984 reprint); pp116–117, 147-148

External links

Television House from Transdiffusion
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brownrigg, Thomas 1902 births 1967 deaths British television executives Royal Navy captains Royal Navy officers of World War II Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Companions of the Distinguished Service Order People from Finchampstead