Ally Pally celebrates 90 years of BBC's TV service
BBCThe 90th anniversary of the BBC's first television service will be celebrated this year at the north London venue it was broadcast from.
Alexandra Palace, affectionately known as Ally Pally, is set to host a series of events to mark the birth of British TV, launched in November 1936.
A television heritage season will also run this autumn "for public engagement with interested groups and individuals", that has an "overarching theme of innovation".
Visitors will have the chance to get "closer to the palace's television heritage" through tours of the historic BBC studios and a behind-the-scenes look into the broadcaster's archive collections, the organisers said.
Organisers hope to use the anniversary to also mark "the significance of the site of the first television station".
On the BBC website, David Hendy, professor in media and cultural history at the University of Sussex, said the world's first regular, "high-definition" television service was broadcast from Ally Pally on Monday 2 November 1936.
At the time, the BBC argued that "high-definition" meant pictures made up of 240 lines or more.
It was something Hendy believes the broadcaster did to mark itself out against a German TV service that began the year before, but only used 180 lines to transmit its images.
Ally Pally also plans to host a "television heritage season" from September to November "for public engagement with interested groups and individuals".
A report for the board of the historic venue said there would be "a programme of talks, screenings and performance" leading up to the anniversary later this year, "aimed at family and inter-generational audiences".
The anniversary is set to be commemorated with a World Origin Site plaque. These are used to mark the people and places where "something truly ground-breaking was invented, discovered or first used".
In the report Kirsten Forrest, curatorial and interpretation manager at Alexandra Park and Palace Charitable Trust, said the season represented "an ideal opportunity" to raise the profile of Ally Pally in regards to its place in TV history.
Visitors will have the chance to get "closer to the palace's television heritage" with a behind-the-scenes look into the broadcaster's archive collections.
Forrest added: "We already know that tours of the south-east wing and former studios are very popular, but we need to learn more about the appetite for different types of heritage engagement for the future."
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