5IT was a British Broadcasting Company (later BBC) radio station which broadcast from Birmingham, England, between 1922 and 1927.
Birmingham was the first British city outside London to have a radio service from the newly formed British Broadcasting Company, with 5IT starting regular broadcasting from its temporary Witton base at 17:00 on 15 November 1922, [1] : 207 one day after 2LO started daily BBC broadcasting from London [1] : 157 and one hour before the 18:00 launch of Manchester's 2ZY. [1] : 161 The transmitter was located at Birmingham City Council's Summer Lane electricity generating station. [2]
5IT pioneered many innovations in early broadcasting, launching Children's Hour in 1922, [3] developing sophisticated methods of programme control and employing the first full-time announcers in 1923. [4] The station's first announcer on its opening night was its general manager Percy Edgar, [4] who was to be the dominant figure in Birmingham broadcasting and the BBC's most influential regional director until his retirement in 1948. [5] : 311
5IT moved its studios from Witton to a former cinema in New Street in 1923, moving again in January 1926 to a completely new, custom-designed building in Broad Street with two studios – one, at 45 by 50 feet (14 by 15 m), the largest in the country, [2] [6] if not Europe. The Broad Street studios now controlled and made programmes for a region stretching across central England from The Potteries to Norfolk.
From 21 August 1927 the low-powered city station 5IT was replaced by the 5GB (the BBC Midland Region) – the first of the BBC's regional services [7] – broadcast from the new high powered Daventry transmitting station at Borough Hill near Daventry. [5] : 282
