Wartime Broadcasting Service - Operation

Operation

The decision to activate the service would have been taken at Cabinet level late in the crisis phase. On being given the order, the BBC and ITV were to suspend normal programming, broadcast the frequencies for the Wartime Broadcasting Service and go off-air an hour later (with television used only to broadcast Protect and Survive public information films and unavailable after an attack due to its susceptibility to electromagnetic pulse). At this point, one single national programme would have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from Wood Norton. This would have consisted of official government announcements and information interspersed with filler material, such as music, news and warnings. The four-minute warning itself was to have been injected from a special studio at Broadcasting House and been broadcast nationally on all television and radio stations when a coded signal from RAF High Wycombe was given. This studio would also have been used by government ministers to broadcast messages and announcements until the government left London late in the crisis phase (or during the precautionary period).

After an attack, there would also have been a regional service tailored to local needs located in regional seats of government. Regional controllers were to use these smaller BBC studios to give out local messages to communities and would have been manned by BBC staff. If conventional air attacks destroyed peacetime broadcasting facilities, the Wartime Broadcasting Service would also have been activated.

Regular drills and training exercises were held to give an air of realism, but many BBC staff saw them as pointless or declined to serve during a national emergency because they couldn't take their families with them. One anonymous insider said:

"I can't blame them for deciding there were better ways to go than to sit in a bunker with a group of local radio engineers."