7 January – The BBC Forces Programme begins broadcasting in the United Kingdom; it becomes the most popular channel among civilians at home as well as its primary target audience.
February
25 February – The Proud Valley is the first known film to have its première on radio when the BBC broadcasts a 60-minute version.[1]
29 February – Welsh Rarebit first broadcast by the BBC from its Cardiff studio;[2] the resident 25-strong male voice choir, the Lyrian Singers, premieres the song "We'll Keep a Welcome" with music by the programme's producer Mai Jones.
March
20 March – Antisemitic MP Archibald Maule Ramsay uses a Parliamentary question to set out the times and frequency of nightly broadcasts by the 'New British Broadcasting Service', a Nazi propaganda radio station broadcasting from Germany.[3]
April
No events.
May
May – The evacuated BBC Radio Variety Department relocates to Bangor in north Wales from where it will broadcast until August 1943.[4]
5 June – Yorkshire-born novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley broadcasts his first Sunday evening radio Postscript, "An excursion to hell", on the BBC Home Service, marking the role of the pleasure steamers in the Dunkirk evacuation, just completed.
8 June – BBC airs the first weekly episode of Radio Rhythm Club, a programme of jazz and rhythm music presented by Charles Chilton. On 29 June, it broadcasts its first associated jam session.[8]
26 June – Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden broadcasts to the British people.[10]
June – Mrs Olive Baker (mistress of Barry Domvile) is arrested for distributing leaflets promoting Nazi propaganda station Reichssender Hamburg in Britain. She tries to commit suicide in prison and is sentenced to five years' imprisonment.[11]
July
13 July – BBC newsreaders first identify themselves by name on air, beginning with Frank Phillips on today's lunchtime bulletin.[12]
14 July – The BBC Home Service 9.00pm news bulletin includes a vivid account of an air battle over the English Channel recorded live the previous day by reporter Charles Gardner.[13] The bulletin is preceded by a speech by Churchill, "The War of the Unknown Warriorsˮ,[14] and followed by J. B. Priestley's Postscript describing the seaside resort of Margate in wartime.[15]
19 July – Adolf Hitler makes a peace appeal ("appeal to reason") to Britain in an address to the Reichstag, broadcast simultaneously in English translation by Paul Schmidt.[16] BBC German-language broadcaster Sefton Delmer unofficially rejects it at once[17] and Lord Halifax, British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms in a broadcast reply on 22 July.
10 August – This and the following year's abbreviated seasons of The Proms are without sponsorship by the BBC.[19]
September
No events.
October
15 October – Seven staff are killed when an attempt to eject a delayed-action German bomb from Broadcasting House in London fails. Listeners to the nine o'clock evening news bulletin hear a dull thud as it explodes but newsreader Bruce Belfrage continues unperturbed though covered in debris.[12]
November
No events.
December
8 December – Explosion of a land mine outside Broadcasting House in central London causes the BBC's European service to be evacuated to its Maida Vale Studios.[12]
↑ Cerutti, Joseph (3 June 1940). "Four-Fifths of British Saved, Eden Asserts". Chicago Daily Tribune. p.1.
↑ Baade, Christina L. (2012). "5: 'Radio Rhythm Club': race, authenticity, and the British swing boom". Victory through Harmony: the BBC and popular music in World War II. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-537201-4.
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