Radio review: Coronation Day Across the Globe

Coronation Day 1953 could have marked the end of radio as we know it. No one wanted to listen to the commentary from Westminster Abbey. Everyone wanted to see what was going on. Hearing could not, it was thought, be as effective an act of witness as viewing the glittering diamonds, the gleaming satin, the pageantry, the pomp and the extraordinary sight of the weight of royalty, both physical and metaphysical, being bestowed on so slight a young woman. Those who had the money rushed out to buy a Regentone table TV or a Baird Townsman. Those who couldn’t afford to buy or rent a TV begged a neighbour to invite them in, or travelled to the nearest Odeon or holiday camp, where big screens were linked up to the TV transmitters that had been speedily (and controversially) installed to ensure there would be national coverage for this epic event.

That day in June marked the beginning of mass TV, with up to 20 million people experiencing their first-ever viewing of a television outside broadcast. Only half that number listened to the day’s events on the wireless. But radio fought back, valiantly. It might not have pictures but it was still, in 1953, technologically on top — quicker to respond, more adaptable and more reliable.

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On the evening of 2 June, the BBC’s radio team were determined to show off what they alone could do. The furthest their colleagues in TV could reach out to was Berlin, just 900 miles away. On the air, though, at the switch of a button, the BBC’s Home Service connected its listeners to voices in Fiji, Korea, Lusaka, Trinidad and Montreal. In Coronation Day Across the Globe, first broadcast in 1953 and not heard again until last Sunday on Radio 4 Extra, we were given a global tour of reactions to the day’s events gathered during the day and niftily edited for broadcast just a few hours later.