Percy Edgar

Frederick Percy Edgar OBE (3 March 1884 – 21 April 1972) was an English broadcaster.

Edgar was the dominant figure in English regional broadcasting from its birth until World War II. In 1922 he was the founding General Manager and opening announcer for the first BBC station outside London - Birmingham's 5IT. Under Edgar 5IT pioneered many innovations, from employing the first full-time announcers to launching Children's Hour. He was the Director of the Midland Region – the first of the BBC Regions – from its foundation in 1927 and the BBC's senior Regional Director until his retirement in 1948.

Edgar was born and educated in Stafford, spending his early career on the concert platform. During World War I he organised series of concerts in military camps and hospitals, a role he combined after the war with touring theatres and music halls, where his speciality was presenting characters from Dickens. Frustration with constant touring and rowdy audiences led him to accept a post as director of a concert agency in New Street, Birmingham in 1921, and it was in this capacity that he was approached in October 1922 by the Western Electric Company, firstly to supply artists to perform on the radio station they were planning to open in Birmingham and, shortly afterwards, to manage the station itself.

He later recalled:

Despite being asked on one occasion "But tell me, Mr Edgar, what do you do in the daytime?", the early days of 5IT would often see Edgar working fifteen-hour days – planning the nightly programme, booking the performers and arranging their transport to the station's studio in Witton, reading the news, announcing the running order and working the gramophone. By late November, however, 5IT had been taken over by the newly established British Broadcasting Company and Edgar had recruited a staff of five, including an assistant manager, an announcer and two engineers.

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