BBC Transcription Services

The BBC Transcription Services started life in the mid-1930s as the London Transcription Service to license BBC Radio programmes to overseas broadcasters who were authorised to broadcast the programmes for a set period, usually two or three years. The programmes sold to overseas broadcasters in this way covered every part of the BBC's output, including all types of music, drama, religious and children's programmes and comedy. It is now called BBC Radio International.

Whilst the BBC destroyed most broadcast recordings it produced for its various outlets, BBC Transcription Services often retained their copy and many of the surviving radio programmes from the 1940s onwards owe their survival to the fact that Transcription Services issued the material.

The original releases were in the form of 12-inch 78 rpm discs. Each of these discs contained no more than three or four minutes per side and so a radio operator would have needed to cue the start of many discs as the previous one finished… More