19 December 1932: BBC World Service begins
In 1922, the BBC began regular broadcasts to radio owners in Britain. These were an instant hit. A year later, work began in the US on using shortwave radio signals to increase the distance over which radio signals could be carried. This led to calls for the BBC to begin broadcasts to other countries, and eventually the British Empire Service was set up to send broadcasts to Britain's overseas colonies. Then-director Sir John Reith warned that the programmes "will neither be very interesting nor very good". The weekly budget stretched to ten hours of broadcasts a day, mainly repeats from th...
Source: moneyweek.com