Gerald Cock was appointed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1935 to run its first television service (under the title “director of television”). At the time many BBC executives were skeptical about the value and potential of the new medium, and Cock’s achievement during his short reign—the pre–World War II service began in November 1936 and was closed in September 1939—was to push for the expansion of the television service in the face of the BBC’s reluctance to fund adequately what became known as the “Cinderella Service.” Unlike many senior BBC executives, Cock regarded television as a natural successor to radio, rather than as a luxury or novelty.

Before joining the BBC during the 1920s, Cock spent a colorful youth in the Americas, gold mining and ranching in Alaska, Utah, and Mexico; he also worked as an extra in Hollywood. He started working for BBC radio during the 1920s and was appointed director of the Outside Broadcasts Department in 1925, where he encouraged the deployment of new technology and the development of new program forms, while often dealing with a competitive press.

The Selsdon Report of 1935 recommended that the BBC be given responsibility for the development of a regular high-definition television service; at the time television’s potential as a medium of live immediacy meant that Cock’s experience in the Outside Broadcasts Department—which aspired to be topical and contemporary—made him an obvious choice to head the new division.

The service began regular transmissions in 1936 from Alexandra Palace. Despite few staff and two small studios, Cock was able to build up an effective and successful repertoire of program achievements— including the live televising of the coronation of George VI, tennis from Wimbledon, and even a program where Cock himself answered viewers’ phoned-in questions. In fact, every type of program that was to become popular after the war was already attempted during these prewar years, in part because of the freedom to experiment that Cock allowed his producers.

The programming policy of the prewar service was overseen by Cock. He instigated a policy of “variety and balance,” which was coordinated through Cecil Madden, program organizer and chief liaison with the producers. This policy was congruent with Cock’s realization that television’s main attraction was that it allowed viewers to “see at a distance” contemporary events. For him, this aspect of the medium was relevant not only to the relay of current showbiz personalities and sporting events but also to early television drama. As he put it in a 1939 Radio Times article:

Television is essentially a medium for topicalities....An original play or specially devised television production might be a weekly feature. If a National Theatre were in being, close co-operation between it and the BBC might have solved an extremely difficult problem. Excerpts from plays during their normal runs, televised from the studio or direct from the stage, with perhaps a complete play at the end of its run would have attractive possibilities as part of a review of the nation’s entertainment activities. But, in my view television is from its very nature more suitable for the dissemination of all kinds of information than for entertainment.

Cock’s view of television was clearly inflected by his previous career as director of Outside Broadcasts for BBC radio, where the broadcasts were conceived as informative and enabling rather than as entertainment; hence, the broadcast of “scenes” from current plays, congruent with Cock’s overall attitude, served as informative views on the nature of contemporary drama and performance, while also providing a “what’s on” function. Cock regarded television’s function to be as a relay service, its key benefits and attractions provided by the Outside Broadcast. For Cock, therefore, there was no need for large studios to house spectacular drama productions.

However, the “Theatre Parade” relay of “scenes” from the West End theater was far less popular than the studio production of complete plays. This meant that the demands on studio time and space were heavy, demands that were exacerbated as the ambitions of producers and the length of programs increased.

Cock’s vision for a topical television service was also undermined by underfunding and a general distrust of television by sports promoters and theater managers; contrary to received history, outside broadcasts of West End plays and scenes from plays were the exception after 1937, and the prewar television service largely consisted of what would later be considered studio-based light entertainment.

Unfortunately—and despite Cock’s determined enthusiasm—current-affairs television was not developed until the mid-1950s, and BBC Television News in vision was not introduced until 1954 (this was because senior executives assumed that seeing the news announcer in vision would distract the viewer from important information).

However, Cock himself was indirectly responsible for the gradual development of current-affairs television. When the television service was closed in 1939, Cock went on to work as North American representative for the BBC in New York and California. He later gave evidence to the Hankey Committee, which was appointed to consider the resurrection of the television service after the war, and he wrote a key 1945 document, “Report on the Conditions for a Post-War Television Service,” which stressed that news and current affairs should be “a main feature of the new service.” However, senior BBC management were to disregard Cock’s suggestions for another ten years.

By the late 1940s, Cock was seriously ill. In 1948 a young radio producer, Grace Wyndham Goldie, had been offered a post in the television service; at the time she was working for the prestigious and highbrow Third Programme. Despite discouragement from two senior radio executives, it was Cock who encouraged her to work in television. Goldie was to become the single most important personality in the development of British current-affairs television, overseeing the development of programs such as Panorama and Tonight—precisely the kind of programs that Gerald Cock had envisaged as the sine qua non of television programming.