ABSTRACT
There are two accounts of the origins of the BBC. The first is that the Corporation was the personal achievement of John Reith. The second is that its emergence was accidental. According to the first view the BBC’s monopoly of broadcasting was an inevitable consequence of the Corporation’s cultural mission, while for the second, as R.H.Coase has written, ‘The problem, to which the monopoly was seen as a solution by the Post Office, was one of Civil Service administration. The view that a monopoly in broadcasting was better for the listener was only to come later.’
