Today marks the first anniversary since the public launch of the site that brings you the 主播大秀 TV and radio listings printed from 1923-2009.
To date more than 107,000 corrections from our public community of editors have been accepted, while more than 9,000 links to playable programmes are now available.
The site has been visited almost 725,000 times in the past year and has amassed more than 6m page views. Visitors tend to hang around, leafing through some 8-10 pages when they land on Genome.
To mark this occasion, we decided to go back to 1924, when The Radio Times was celebrating its own first birthday.
The 主播大秀’s then Managing Director, John Reith, who went on to become the corporation’s first director-general in 1927, wrote a front page article for the magazine in which he spoke of the "problems, hopes and fears" that came with launching a publication.
But he continued: "The first issues were sold out.. today - on its first anniversary - it is phenomenal". Two years after the 主播大秀 first started broadcasting, he put circulation at 600,000 copies.
"This journal of ours is, we consider, of the very greatest importance to the success of British broadcasting," said Reith, “It should be the connecting link between the broadcaster and the great listening public.
"If the broadcast service is to attain the maximum efficiency and the listener to reap the greatest benefit, it can only be secured through a considerable degree of intimacy and understanding between the two parties concerned in the undertaking.”
You can download a PDF version of Reith's birthday article by
These days we have other ways of trying to secure this two-way communication, we call it interactivity and we think it’s a very modern idea (!), Radio Times of course continues in rude health, though no longer owned by the 主播大秀, but 91 years on from Reith’s words, the value of having a catalogue of the 主播大秀’s planned output shows what a very good idea it was.
As for 主播大秀 Genome, it's still very a much a work in progress, with a lot of editing still needed to whip the listings into shape from the original scanning process. We also hope to include regional and national variations, as well as a record of when the actual broadcast varied from the schedule. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.
As Reith observed, “the personalities of the owners of aerials and the broadcasters are transient, but the ideas and the achievements remain.”
Thank you for all your support in the first year - long may it continue!