BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television broadcasts is dated to 2 November 1936.
The BBC's domestic television channels have no commercial advertising and collectively they account for more than 30% of all UK viewing. The services are funded by a television licence.
As a result of the 2016 Licence Fee settlement, the BBC Television division was split, with in-house television production being separated into a new division called BBC Studios and the remaining parts of television (channels and genre commissioning, BBC Sport, BBC Three and BBC iPlayer) being renamed as BBC Content.
The BBC operates several television networks, television stations (although there is generally very little distinction between the two terms in the UK), and related programming services in the United Kingdom. As well as being a broadcaster, the corporation also produces a large number of its own programmes in-house and thereby ranks as one of the world's largest television production companies.
John Logie Baird set up the Baird Television Development Company in 1926; on 30 September 1929 he made the first experimental television broadcast for the BBC from its studio in Long Acre in the Covent Garden area of London via the BBC's London transmitter. Baird used his electromechanical system with a vertically-scanned image of 30 lines, which is just enough resolution for a close-up of one person, and a bandwidth low enough to use existing radio transmitters. The simultaneous transmission of sound and pictures was achieved on 30 March 1930, by using the BBC's new twin transmitter at Brookmans Park. By late 1930, thirty minutes of morning programmes were broadcast from Monday to Friday, and thirty minutes at midnight on Tuesdays and Fridays after BBC radio went off the air. Baird's broadcasts via the BBC continued until June 1932.