The History of Television in the UK: from Baird to Freely

British television began with John Logie Baird’s first public demonstration in 1926 and the BBC’s launch of the world’s first regular high-definition service from Alexandra Palace in 1936. Since then the UK has moved through ITV in 1955, colour on 625 lines in 1967, satellite TV in 1989, the digital switchover completed in 2012, and internet-delivered Freely in 2024. Terrestrial broadcasting is guaranteed until at least 2034.

That’s a century of television, condensed. The longer version is one of the better stories in British engineering — and because we spend our working lives pointing aerials at the transmitters this history built, we think it’s worth telling properly.

Baird and the mechanical era (1926–1935)

On 26 January 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated a working television system to members of the Royal Institution in an attic laboratory at 22 Frith Street, Soho. His “televisor” was mechanical — a spinning Nipkow disc (a perforated rotating disc that scans an image line by line) producing a flickering 30-line picture. It was crude, orange-tinted and tiny, but it was unmistakably moving pictures transmitted by radio, and it was first.

Baird spent the next decade improving the system and lobbying the BBC, which began experimental 30-line broadcasts using his equipment in 1929. But mechanical television had a ceiling. The future belonged to fully electronic systems using cathode ray tubes, being developed in parallel by EMI-Marconi in Britain and others abroad.

Alexandra Palace and the world’s first regular service (1936)

On 2 November 1936, the BBC launched the world’s first regular “high-definition” television service from Alexandra Palace in north London. High definition then meant something very different: the BBC ran Baird’s improved 240-line mechanical system and EMI-Marconi’s 405-line electronic system in alternate weeks, a head-to-head trial that the electronic system won decisively. Baird’s system was dropped within three months, and 405-line television became the British standard for the next half-century.

The audience was tiny — a few thousand wealthy households within roughly 40 miles of London — and a television set cost about as much as a small car. But the infrastructure pattern was set: a powerful transmitter on high ground, and a rooftop aerial at every receiving home. That pattern still defines our trade today.

The wartime shutdown (1939–1946)

On 1 September 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany, the television service was switched off mid-schedule — famously partway through a Mickey Mouse cartoon. The official concern was that the Alexandra Palace transmissions could act as a navigation beacon for enemy aircraft. Britain’s television engineers spent the war on radar instead, which turned out to be excellent preparation for what came next.

The service resumed on 7 June 1946, in time to cover the Victory Parade the following day.

The Coronation and the television boom (1953)

The single biggest catalyst in British television history was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953. An estimated 20 million people watched — most of them crowded around a neighbour’s set, since only around 2 million households owned one. Television licences roughly doubled in the years around the event, and the aerial installation trade as a recognisable industry dates from this boom.

The BBC had also begun building out national coverage. Sutton Coldfield opened in 1949 as the first high-power transmitter outside London, bringing television to the Midlands. Others followed rapidly through the early 1950s, including Holme Moss for the North.

ITV and the two-channel era (1955)

The Television Act 1954 broke the BBC’s monopoly, and on 22 September 1955 ITV (Independent Television — a network of regional commercial companies funded by advertising) launched in London. ITV built its own transmitter network on Band III VHF frequencies, separate from the BBC’s Band I, which meant many households needed a second aerial or a combined one — good news for installers, less good for rooflines.

ITV’s regional structure — Granada in the North West, ATV in the Midlands, and so on — is why UK television still has regional news opt-outs today, and why which transmitter your aerial points at still determines which regional news you receive.

625 lines, BBC2 and colour (1964–1969)

The 405-line standard was showing its age by the 1960s. The solution was a new standard — 625 lines on UHF (Ultra High Frequency — the band roughly 470–860 MHz that UK television still uses today) — introduced with the launch of BBC2 on 20 April 1964. The launch night itself was blacked out by a major power failure in west London; BBC2 actually began the following evening.

Colour arrived on BBC2 on 1 July 1967, using the German-developed PAL system (Phase Alternating Line — the analogue colour encoding standard adopted across most of Europe), with the Wimbledon Championships among the first colour broadcasts. BBC1 and ITV followed in colour on UHF in November 1969.

The move to UHF is the single most important event in this story for the aerial trade. UHF signals carry more information but travel less well around hills and obstructions than VHF, so the UK needed a far denser transmitter network — powerful main stations like Crystal Palace in London, Winter Hill for the North West and Emley Moor for Yorkshire, backed by hundreds of low-power relays filling the gaps. Emley Moor earned its place in history the hard way: its cylindrical steel mast collapsed under ice loading in March 1969, and its replacement — a 330-metre concrete tower — remains the tallest freestanding structure in the UK. Every home also needed a new UHF aerial, which kept the industry busy for a decade. The old 405-line VHF service was finally switched off in 1985.

Channel 4 and the four-channel era (1982)

Channel 4 launched on 2 November 1982 — 46 years to the day after the Alexandra Palace opening — with S4C launching in Wales the day before. Four analogue channels was where UK terrestrial television settled for 15 years (Channel 5 squeezed on in 1997, with patchy coverage that generated plenty of aerial work of its own).

The satellite era (1989)

Sky Television launched in February 1989, broadcasting from the Astra satellite to 60 cm dishes, followed by rival BSB in 1990 with its distinctive “squarial”. The two merged into BSkyB within the year after both haemorrhaged money. Satellite broke the terrestrial spectrum bottleneck — dozens of channels instead of four — and made the dish a fixture of British streets. It also established the subscription model that dominated the following two decades. If you’re weighing satellite against terrestrial today, see our Sky vs Freesat and Freeview vs Freesat comparisons.

Digital: ONdigital, Freeview and the switchover (1998–2012)

Digital terrestrial television (DTT — TV broadcast through the air in digital form, carrying several channels on each frequency) launched on 15 November 1998 as ONdigital, a pay-TV service later rebranded ITV Digital. It failed commercially in 2002, undone by weak signal robustness and a subsidised set-top-box war with Sky it couldn’t win.

From its ashes, Freeview launched on 30 October 2002 — free-to-air digital terrestrial run by the BBC, Sky and transmitter operator Crown Castle. Freeview reframed DTT from a pay-TV also-ran into a free upgrade for every aerial-equipped home, and it worked: Freeview became the UK’s most-used TV platform.

The digital switchover then rebuilt the entire transmitter network region by region between 2007 (Whitehaven) and 24 October 2012 (Northern Ireland), switching off analogue for good and boosting digital power. HD arrived alongside it via the more efficient DVB-T2 standard (the second-generation Digital Terrestrial broadcasting standard) from 2009. Many households needed aerial upgrades or replacements during switchover, particularly where transmitters changed frequency groups — the origin of much of the aerial group confusion that persists today.

The 700 MHz clearance (2017–2020)

Mobile networks needed more spectrum, so Ofcom cleared television out of the 700 MHz band (UHF channels 49–60), moving Freeview services to lower frequencies. The clearance completed in August 2020, and the freed spectrum now carries 5G. It required another round of national retunes and left some homes with aerials optimised for frequencies their transmitter no longer uses — and some with new 4G and 5G interference problems where mobile signals sit directly above the TV band.

The streaming era and Freely (2010s–2024)

iPlayer (2007), Netflix’s UK launch (2012) and the smart TV changed viewing habits faster than any broadcast technology shift before them. Broadcast’s answer arrived in April 2024: Freely, a joint venture of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 that delivers live channels over broadband on smart TVs, with terrestrial broadcast as the fallback. It is best understood as Freeview’s internet-delivered successor — same broadcasters, no dish or aerial required if your broadband is good enough, though an aerial remains the more reliable option for many homes.

Timeline at a glance

Year	Milestone
1926	Baird demonstrates television in Soho
1936	BBC launches world’s first regular service from Alexandra Palace
1939–46	Wartime shutdown
1953	Coronation triggers mass adoption
1955	ITV launches
1964	BBC2 launches on 625-line UHF
1967	Colour begins on BBC2
1982	Channel 4 launches
1989	Sky satellite TV launches
1998	Digital terrestrial launches (ONdigital)
2002	Freeview launches
2007–12	Digital switchover, region by region
2020	700 MHz clearance completed
2024	Freely launches
2034	Earliest possible end of guaranteed DTT

What’s next

Ofcom and the government have committed to digital terrestrial television until at least 2034. Beyond that, some form of transition towards internet delivery is likely — but no switch-off date exists, several million households still rely wholly on broadcast, and Freely itself keeps terrestrial as its fallback. Freeview today carries around 75 channels via DVB-T and DVB-T2, and an aerial installed now will comfortably outlast any plausible transition timetable.

Ninety years after Alexandra Palace first went on air, the basic arrangement its engineers designed — a transmitter on a hill, an aerial on a roof — is still how most of Britain watches live television.

If your own piece of this history — the aerial on your roof — dates from the analogue era and is struggling with modern Freeview, we can help. Tell us your postcode via our contact page or postcode checker and we’ll route your enquiry to a local installer who covers your area; a standard aerial installation typically costs £150–£250.