The handful of viewers who watched the BBC's earliest public television broadcasts in 1936 would have seen little of the diversity we now expect from the medium. The short transmissions, following patterns established by radio and the music hall, offered a variety of light music, dance, comedy turns and conversation - almost all of it transmitted live, as it continued to be well into the 1950s. The genres and formats we know today emerged later.

The arrival of ITV in 1955 ended the BBC monopoly, and many new formats are the result of the rivalry between the two broadcasters. Light Entertainment became a big draw, with Rediffusion's Sunday Night at the London Palladium winning huge audiences away from the complacent BBC. The newly-formed ITN reinvigorated news broadcasting, while This Week was Britain's first modern-style current affairs programme, introducing a previously unknown critical edge to political reporting.

In 1956, the BBC transplanted Tony Hancock's successful radio show Hancock's Half Hour to television and in the process created Britain's first recognisably home-grown situation comedy. Over the next few years, the sitcom became the form by which the BBC reasserted its strength, with shows like Steptoe and Son (1963-65; 1970-74) and Till Death Us Do Part (1966-75) attracting massive audiences.