The early days of BBC’s Romanian-language broadcasting

The BBC's Romanian language broadcasting and its role in the troubled 20th century.

Eugen Nasta, 16.09.2024, 14:00

In the world of radio broadcasting, the BBC needs no introduction. The BBC is one of the landmarks without which the history of radio broadcasting cannot be written. In its centenary existence, holding a special place is the BBC’s Romanian-language service.

The early days of the BBC’s Romanian-language broadcasting are linked to the outbreak of World War Two in September 1939, so in September 2024 we celebrate the service’s 85 years of broadcasting. We should emphasize, at this point, Great Britain’s extremely important influence which justified the very existence of the BBC, given that after 1945, at the end of the war, the world’s geopolitical stage became even more complicated that it had been before.

In 1997, Radio Romania’s Oral History Canter interviewed one of the first journalists who used to work for the BBC’s Romanian-language Service, Liviu Cristea. He was a BBC anchorman from 1939 to 1971.

Liviu Cristea reminisced the beginnings of the service and the tests that were made to that effect

”At this radio station trials were made like some sort of test time, carried by people who had been recommended by the Romanian Legation. Some of the Brits’ radio stations where thereby checking if the broadcast was audible in Romania, at once checking whether the voices behind the mic were suitable or not. However, the first team that took over the editing work was made of four people: a Finance Ministry official, Niculae Gheorghiu, who was in London on a training stage, a history professor, Ion Podrea, who was sent by the Iorga Institute to do his research, a legal expert furthering his comparative law studies, that was me, and a young student of the London Polytechnic, Jose Campus.”

In the beginning, the Romanian-language broadcast was a 15-minute news bulletin. It kept Romanian listeners informed with news from the international and British press. The war had broken out and the Poles, officials or ordinary people, were withdrawing to Romania, in a bid to reach the West. The slot was broadcast from the Broadcasting House in Portland Place lying in central London, it was from there that, for the first time ever in Romanian, the announcement was heard: “This is Radio London.”

When the German bombs damaged the building, the service was relocated to a hotel and from there to a skating rink. Liviu Cristea also said that fairly rapidly he and his colleagues adapted to the demands of the job. Here he is once again, giving us details on how the editorial work was organized.

”Shortly afterwards, the anchormen’s voices had become a reliable and identifiable source of information that also provided a gleam of hope in the grim days. At the same microphone science specialists offered their opinions, but also columnists, professors, trade union members, writers, army people, underground frontline fighters, refugees and prisoners who had escaped from the labour camps, or prisoners of war. The materials received by the editors of the Romanian section had already been processed in a central editorial office. The stuff had to be translated and commented upon by the Romanian editors so that it could become as accessible as possible to the average listener. The pieces of news after the outbreak of the war were checked but not censored by diplomatic and military bodies. The press commentaries were selected for each zone the broadcasts targeted, the talks given by prominent journalists sought to place the event or the news of the day against the backdrop that appeared at that particular moment. “

The state of war demanded that the BBC broadcasts in Romanian, just like in the other foreign languages, be closely monitored. Liviu Cristea:

”Available for us from the very beginning was a so-called monitoring service, that is a service listening to the broadcasts from the country and from other parts. Those who closely monitored the broadcasts proper in front of the mic were supposed to monitor closely that, behind the mic, we should not read something different than what was written in the news bulletins, we should not improvise anything even with one single word, we should not stray away from the text that had been approved of by the section head prior to going to the mic. And those gentlemen who kept an eye on us were George Campbell, doctor Morrison and a gentleman who back in the day used to be a high-ranking employee of an oil company in Romania and whose command of Romanian was excellent. “

In the building of the BBC, Liviu Cristea also recalled his seminal encounter with a character that would make history in the troubled 20th century.

“ As I was passing by the janitor’s desk, there was a French officer there who was somehow embarrassed because he and the janitor could not understand each other. The man was a French army officer, wearing a French uniform so offered him my help right away and I asked him to tell me what it was all about. He was extremely blunt and kind of vexed as he answered me: ‘ I am colonel de Gaulle, I come from the front line and I have a meeting. I am already 5 minutes late and I don’t understand why I am being kept here and why nobody welcomed me at the reception’. I was deeply touched when later on I discovered that the one-star colonel was general de Gaulle who, as we know, led the French resistance and then he was the one who created the first post-war political structure in France.”

The BBC’s Romanian-language service is now 85 years old. All along, the BBC was one of the citadels defending human rights, until 1989. It still is, to this day.