BBC @ 100

Roy Jenkins looks back at a century of religious broadcasting on the BBC. With a motto inspired by a Biblical source, the early BBC was avowedly Christian, and largely Anglican at that. Sir John Reith (a man lacking in neither religious conviction nor self-belief) placed enormous importance on the radio as a means of disseminating the Christian message. Roy Jenkins looks at Reith's legacy of religious programmes on the airwaves, and subsequently on television, as producers tackled the increasingly complex make-up of multi-cultural Britain. From the broadcasting of services and state occasions to talks such as C.S. Lewis's hugely popular essays and Dorothy L Sayers' experimental drama The Man Born to be King, the BBC was at times innovative and prepared to court occasional controversy. Some of the BBC's religious programmes, such as The Daily Service - first broadcast in 1929 and still with us today - have a remarkable history almost as long as the BBC itself. Others, such as Songs of Praise, have faced diminishing audiences, as well as changes of slot times - a reflection on an increasingly secularised audience perhaps. Roy's guests include Sian Nicholas, Professor of Modern History at Aberystwyth University; Leslie Griffiths; Ian Tutton, a former member of the Central Religious Affairs Committee whose job it was to oversee religious broadcasting; and Caitriona Noonan, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at Cardiff University.