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Test Your Knowledge on the BBC

This quiz tests your knowledge about the BBC, its origins, significant figures, and various related topics.

#BBC #media #British Broadcasting Corporation #quizzes #trivia #information

1 Where does BBC come from?

2 What entity owns BBC World Service?

3 Well-known buildings in the White City and Shepherd's Bush area include the ________, White City, Media Centre, Broadcast Centre and Centre House.

4 Who of the following is a key person at BBC?

5 The term ________ (Received Pronunciation) refers to the former use of Standard English with this accent.

6 What does the following picture show?  Weekly reach of all the BBC's services in the UK[54]   The headquarters of the BBC at Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London.   Weekly reach of the BBC's domestic television services[54]

7 ________ produced soundtrack albums, talking books and material from radio broadcasts of music.

8 Who of the following people founded BBC?

9 Where does BBC come from?

10 BBC News received some 1 billion total hits on the day of the event (including all images, text and ________), serving some 5.5 terabytes of data.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • author Jacqueline Wilson described Dustbin Baby, the BBC dramatisation of her novel of the same name, as the best ever film adaptation of her work.
  • after organist Dudley Savage's radio request programme was cancelled in 1968, the BBC faced a protest described as "perhaps the biggest demonstration of its kind".
  • during his tenure as India's cricket coach, Kapil Dev, broke down in a BBC interview about alleged match-fixing.
  • far right British National Party leader Nick Griffin feared for his safety over his first ever appearance on the BBC's Question Time panel.
  • in 2006 Devon County Council first raised the flag of Devon, which was designed by a member of the public in 2002 via an online poll on BBC Devon.
  • a 2002 BBC World Service global poll voted A Nation Once Again the world's most popular tune.
  • a 1927 Wolseley motor car used in the 2008 BBC television adaptation The 39 Steps was previously used in the 1960s BBC television series Dr. Finlay's Casebook.
  • Blackadder II, the second series of the BBC sitcom Blackadder, contains many tongue-in-cheek references to the plays of William Shakespeare.
  • Blackadder Goes Forth, the final series of the BBC situation comedy Blackadder, is noted for its sensitive depiction of World War I trench warfare, and was placed 16th in the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes by the British Film Institute.
  • Planet Earth Live is a BBC nature documentary that will premier with orchestral accompaniment in large cities throughout the United States during the 2010 summer.
  • The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister is a BBC drama film based on the life of a 19th-century lesbian industrialist.
  • British comedians Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie made one of their earliest television appearances in their 1983 television pilot The Crystal Cube, a show the BBC hated.
  • parts 2 and 3 of the BBC television documentary series Berlin were watched by approximately one million people in the United Kingdom.
  • the BBC drama The Last Days of Lehman Brothers was filmed in an office vacated by Lehman Brothers and that some of their furniture was used to dress the set.
  • the reality television series Junior Apprentice was delayed until after the 2010 United Kingdom general election because of the BBC's political impartiality regulations.
  • the composer Zbigniew Preisner wrote the title music for the monumental BBC documentary People's Century, which spans 26 parts.
  • the flamboyant TV appearances of British rock and roll singer Wee Willie Harris led to concerns about the BBC's role in promoting teenage decadence.
  • the proposed BBC television special Planet Relief, created to raise awareness of climate change, was cancelled before it was made, for fear that it would be biased against climate sceptics.
  • writer Charles Hamilton's estate complained to the BBC that the character played by Peter Stephens in The Celestial Toymaker too closely resembled Hamilton's Billy Bunter.
  • the BBC's Bitesize online study resource has sections in Welsh and Gaelic.
  • the BBC reported that the John West Salmon's "Bear Fight" videos have been viewed over 300 million times making it the sixth most viewed online video.
  • the BBC program Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas was described in the press as Oz Clarke and Hugh Dennis divining that the true spirit of Christmas is "getting hammered".
  • the BBC have used Appreciation Index ratings to gauge reactions of children to their programming.
  • the BBC radio producer R.D. Smith, husband of Olivia Manning and model for a character in her Fortunes of War novels, was identified as a Soviet spy by MI5.
  • the BBC recorded live performances of Hancock's Half Hour, The Goon Show and Steptoe and Son at the Playhouse Theatre (pictured) in London.
  • the BBC reduced actor Alan Davies' fee for the Jonathan Creek episode "The Judas Tree" by 25 percent.
  • Richard Marson, former chief editor of the BBC's Blue Peter also worked freelance for such companies as Disney, Planet 24 and LWT.
  • Patricia Kirkwood was the first woman to have her own series on BBC TV.
  • Jamaican-born poet, playwright and screenwriter Evan Jones wrote the 1963 BBC television play Madhouse on Castle Street in which Bob Dylan made his acting début.
  • BBC traffic reporter Sally Traffic has also narrated poetry albums for the blind.
  • Ireland's reality show Fáilte Towers takes its name from the BBC sitcom, Fawlty Towers.
  • Irish journalist Richard Downes secretly entered Zimbabwe disguised as a tourist to film an undercover report for the BBC's Newsnight during the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election.
  • Scottish actor Richard Madden began his career at age 11 when he was cast in the film Complicity, followed by his 1999 role in the BBC television series Barmy Aunt Boomerang.
  • BBC journalist Leonard Miall worked on psychological warfare in New York and San Francisco with the Political Warfare Executive during World War II.
  • BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt was born in Australia and adopted by a British diplomat.
  • Anita West, one of the presenters of Blue Peter, was on the show for such a short period that no footage of her exists in the BBC archives.
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber is concerned about casting a dog in the forthcoming BBC television series Over the Rainbow.
  • BBC television series Watchdog helped uncover the Hoover Company "free flights" scam.
  • BBC terrorism consultant Crispin Black survived the bombing of RFA Sir Galahad (pictured) during the Falklands War.
  • BBC cameraman Charles de Jaeger got the idea for the Panorama April Fools report on the Swiss spaghetti harvest from a phrase used by one of his school teachers in Vienna.
  • Stephen Fry asked on Twitter for suggestions to name a BBC television series on the impact of the Internet, now called The Virtual Revolution.
  • Thai government and army officials have insisted on the effectiveness of the GT200 "remote substance detector", despite the BBC having found it to consist of an empty plastic case.
  • Kari Blackburn, daughter of Irish educationist Robert Blackburn, taught in a primary school in Tanzania before joining the BBC.
  • Jacqui Oatley is the first female football commentator in the history of BBC football programme Match of the Day.
  • Lizzy Clark, in the 2008 BBC film Dustbin Baby, is the first actor with Asperger syndrome to portray a character having it.
  • Manor Community College, a Cambridge school, has a headteacher who used to present a BBC childen's programme.
  • Marcel Boulestin, who appeared on the BBC's experimental television broadcasts in 1937 was the first television chef.
  • Howard Thomas created three of the most popular wartime radio programmes for the BBC and discovered Vera Lynn, but was forced to resign from the company.
  • Dennis Berry was a musician, composer, arranger and producer who not only produced the music to the first Monty Python film, but has also had his music featured on the BBC's Little Britain, MTV's The Osbournes and the Nickelodeon cartoon Spongebob Squarepants.
  • American music critic and editor Smokey Fontaine is the son of English documentary filmmaker Dick Fontaine, the maker of the 1984 BBC documentary Beat This: A Hip-Hop History.
  • British Postmaster General Reginald Bevins's promise in November 1962 to "do something" about the BBC programme That Was The Week That Was was immediately countered by the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
  • Angus Purden, regular presenter of the BBC's Cash in the Attic, modelled for Giorgio Armani for three years in Milan.
  • Anne Gregg, best known as former presenter of the BBC's travel programme Holiday through the 1980s, was one of the first people from Northern Ireland to become a national British television personality.
  • Charles Ancliffe's waltz Nights of Gladness became famous enough that BBC named a whole series of programmes after it.
  • "Tuesday's Child", an episode of the BBC medical drama Holby City, was filmed entirely on location in Ghana.
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