The Marconi Award 2022

Today (21 May 2022) the BBC has received a rather extraordinary award. The birthplace of Radio's inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, chose to honour the BBC. The town is called Citta Sasso Marconi, based in central Italy near the city of Bologna, and with these words it acknowledged the milestone of 100 years of continuous BBC broadcasting:

"For the importance of the BBC radio and television network, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary and in which Marconi played an important role. The first British Broadcasting Corporation's radio programme was broadcast from Marconi's London studio on November 14, 1922. In the following years, BBC would become one of the most important broadcast public companies, being able to educate, enlighten, and entertain the entire nation, and evolving into one of the world's largest and most important radio and television networks."

It is both an historic and highly significant award, as it reminds us of the intertwining story of Marconi and the BBC at the dawn of radio.

Where radio began

Marconi had begun his experiments with radio in his native Italy at the end of the 19th century. Passionate and obsessive about his new discovery, he met with little interest at home, so left for England in 1896 to pursue the venture there. He had the luck to be Anglo-Italian so was fluent in both languages and also had some advantageous social connections through which he managed to interest the British Post Office in his experiments with wireless telegraphy.

Shortly afterwards he set up the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in 1900 and by 1914 it had progressed to the transmission of speech. By the early 1920s there were Marconi stations at Writtle near Chelmsford and in London (with its famous code name 2LO).

2LO calling

When the British Broadcasting Company was created on 18 October 1922, the Marconi Company would be one of its six major founding members. When the first broadcast was made a month later it would be from the Marconi HQ in central London, beginning with the immortal words: 2LO calling…

Radio quickly evolved, with one radio 'first' following another: first news bulletin, first children's programme, first weather forecast, first concert, first play. Soon, it was the passion of the age, and daily lives and public discourse were changed forever.

Marconi's key role in the BBC's history was never forgotten. When he died in 1937, the flags on Broadcasting House in central London were lowered in his memory, and all BBC Radio networks fell silent for two minutes in recognition of its founding father.

The use which may be made of these new powers

With incredible prescience, Marconi had broadcast on the BBC in 1929: "I must leave to your imaginations the use which may be made of these new powers. They will probably be as wonderful as anything of which we have experience today."

We take Marconi's pioneering spirit of wonder into our celebration of BBC 100, as we look to a future of continued innovation and creativity. And we are also mindful of 'the use which may be made of these new powers', of the key role of the BBC and of public service broadcasting in general - more important now than ever - to be a voice of clarity and truth for all our audiences.

With many thanks to the Citta Sasso Marconi and the Fondazione Marconi for this touching and prestigious award, and for the reminder of our beginnings.