Huw Wheldon - Broadcasting Career

Broadcasting Career

After the war Wheldon joined the Arts Council of Wales, and then in 1951 became the Arts Council's administrator for the Festival of Britain, work for which he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1952.

In 1952 he joined the BBC as a publicity officer, but he was keen to make programmes, and he made his first appearance on television running a nationwide conker competition, and thence became a familiar face on children's TV with his programme All Your Own.

He also began to produce and present adult programmes, such as Men in Battle with Sir Brian Horrocks, and Portraits of Power with Robert McKenzie. He was also responsible for Orson Welles' Sketchbook (1955).

It was with the arts magazine programme Monitor that Wheldon truly made his mark on the cultural scene. He was the editor of the programme - in the sense in which a newspaper has an editor, a title still employed by Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show - and he set about molding a team of exceptional talents, including John Schlesinger, Ken Russell, Patrick Garland, David Jones, Humphrey Burton, John Berger, Peter Newington, Melvyn Bragg, Nancy Thomas and Alan Tyrer.

"Making the good popular and the popular good has
been a core purpose of the BBC since its foundation." — Huw Wheldon

Monitor ranged in subject over all the arts — the hundredth show was a film directed by Ken Russell and written by Wheldon, the celebrated Elgar. Monitor was ground-breaking because it featured films, sometimes just one full-length item, using actors to re-enact the subjects' lives. Prior to this, only photos or location shots had been used in programmes.

Wheldon's Monitor lasted until he had "interviewed everyone I am interested in interviewing", and he was succeeded by Jonathan Miller for the series' last season.

In 1967 he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. He chose the subject 'Perspectives on Television'.

Wheldon now entered BBC management, becoming by turns Head of Documentaries and then Controller, BBC1. In 1968 he became Managing Director, BBC TV, a position he held until compulsory retirement in 1975. During this time he again gathered a team of the talents about him, promoting fellow programme makers such as David Attenborough and Paul Fox to high executive office, and the period of his administration, which has come to be known as 'the Golden Age of British Television,' included programmes such as Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, Dad's Army, Alistair Cooke's America, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (these three immensely successful in America, too), and plays by Dennis Potter and David Mercer among many others.

After he retired from management Wheldon co-wrote, with J. H. Plumb, and presented Royal Heritage, a thirteen-part series on the history of the British monarchy as expressed through the Royal Collections. Produced by Michael Gill, it achieved immense popularity ratings in 1977, the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Two other major documentaries followed, The Library of Congress and Destination D-Day.