Reith, John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith of Stonehaven

Reith, John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith of Stonehaven (1889-1971), creator of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), born in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire. Wounded during World War I, Reith worked for the Ministry of Munitions (including the period 1916-1917 in the United States) controlling supplies.

In 1921 Reith married, and while working in Scotland took on the job of General Manager of the infant BBC in December 1922. By 1927 he was its Director General, and by 1938 had developed radio as a public service, inaugurated short-wave broadcasts, and established the first regular television transmissions in the world. His view that broadcasting should encompass education, religion, and culture, along with information, and should not be narrowly commercial, had triumphed.

In 1938 Reith became chairman of Imperial Airways, merging it with British Airways to form the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). Made a peer in 1940, he served in the wartime Cabinet as Minister of Transport, and, briefly, as Minister of Works. Dismissed by Winston Churchill (who “couldn't work with him”) in 1942, he was commissioned a lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, and from 1943 to 1944 organized the movement of supplies and transport for the D-Day invasion. Post-war chairmanships of official committees were balanced by commercial boardroom appointments, but the call to major office never came. He wrote two autobiographies, Into the Wind (1949) and Wearing Spurs (1966). Reith died in Edinburgh on June 16, 1971.