Media in Cornwall
With the major slump in mining at the end of the nineteenth century, and the coming of the Great War, Cornwall was about to embark on a process of change, which has continued to the present day.
Although telegraphy itself is not generally regarded as mass media, as its communications are, in effect, on a one-to-one basis, the data and information that was transmitted through Porthcurno had both national and international importance.
To counterbalance this, the prominent Whig Party in Truro set up The West Briton in 1810, which is still published today, although now under the ownership of Cornwall & Devon Media / Northcliffe Newspapers Group.
Job vacancies were widely advertised, meaning that workers did not have to toil in their immediate village or town, This became especially important when the mining slump started in the 1880s.
Jobs and opportunities were advertised from far-flung places like South Africa, Australia, Bolivia and Canada, where Cornish entrepreneurs had already started new mining operations using skills they had learnt back home.
It ran until 1952, and offered the very best of Cornish writing on all aspects of the arts, including articles by Bernard Leach, R. Morton Nance, Peter Lanyon and Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin, as well as poetry by Charles Causley.
Excited audiences filled the hall and marvelled as moving images of Pearl White, Rudolph Valentino and later Charlie Chaplin flickered across the screen.
Parts of the building (which was converted to a bingo hall in 1954, and burnt down in 1984) still stand today in Penryn Street, and the interior of the ruins now house St Rumon's Gardens.
[13] In nearby Camborne, Mr Burrow, a local photographer put on the very first public Bioscope show, with a nightly open air presentation in the Market Square in 1909.
], Cornwall has cinemas in the following towns: Falmouth, Penzance, St Ives, Helston, Redruth (see image), Truro, Wadebridge, Padstow, and just outside Bude.
In August 2008 the exterior of the building was fully refurbished, including a new roof, with walls re-rendered and painted in blue with red stripes (The Regal's owners', Merlin Cinemas, branded colour scheme).
The Rebel closed in August 2007 and reopened in August 2011 after an ambitious transformation and complete refurbishment took place to bring the Rebel up to date with comfort, screen size and the latest digital sound formats which was all achieved commercially without grants, funding, or any other form of local or national subsidies so as to retain its position as a commercially run full-time cinema.
[20] The transmission, coming a long way from Cornwall, (from the centre of the English Midlands), was crackly and barely audible at night-time, and it was a solitary listening experience, as sets were only equipped with a single earpiece, and not a loudspeaker.
This resulted in the construction of the transmitter at North Hessary Tor on Dartmoor, Devon, which began transmitting FM radio signals for the Home, Light and Third Programme BBC stations in 1956.
The reasons were complex, but at the heart were two factors; the relatively suppressed state of the Cornish economy and the large surface area but light population density of Cornwall itself.
It used, at the time, a state of the art music play-out system, and bought in jingles from JAM Creative Productions in Texas, USA.
Two other RSLs were to set the background for the bidding war for Cornwall's second ILR radio station, Malibu Surf FM and CK-FM.
On 6 July 2007, OFCOM announced that Channel 4 Radio had won the licence to operate the second national commercial DAB multiplex.
However, Channel 4 Radio subsequently announced that they would invest a large amount of money in new transmitters, but that there would be no coverage for the new service in Cornwall (except, perhaps the far South East, as Plymouth will be covered) due to potential interference with stations in Republic of Ireland.
The future, with DRM, DAB+, DAB enabled mobile phones all now increasing and being tested, offers opportunities for radio diversification in Cornwall, but it remains to be seen whether this will result in more extensive coverage of all things Cornish.
Many future television presenters cut their teeth on this still running programme, including Kate Adie, Sue Lawley, Angela Rippon, Fern Britton, Juliet Morris, Jill Dando and Hugh Scully.
Only the Caradon Hill transmitter covered Cornwall, which meant that reception was virtually non-existent in the West of the county, until the Redruth transmitting station was built in 1964.
Despite this, those viewers in Cornwall who could receive a signal, the Westward service was a success, as it gave a different, and in some ways, lighter and friendlier media perspective from the BBC's television alternative.
Westward were soon keen to distant itself from its near neighbour and part rival, TWW and purchased white Volvos to capture filmed news items.
With financial troubles besetting the company, Westward lost the franchise in 1981, to be replaced by Television South West (TSW) (going on air on New Year's Day 1982), who inherited all the staff and the studios.
TSW were a far more professional company than Westward, and even made relatively high-brow programmes for their region; in the arts world, they had some big names who worked with them, including Saltash born Moura Lympany, who was one of Britain's leading concert pianists at the time, potter Bernard Leach, and St Ives sculptor Barbara Hepworth.
There is also a five-minute opt-out, broadcast from Redruth transmitting station of news stories specific to the west of the ITV Westcountry region (there are three others, based in Barnstaple, Plymouth and Exeter.)
Advertisers included coal merchants, car dealers, department stores, garden centres, theme or tourist parks and solicitors.
A facility in Cornwall, the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station, linked with Telstar and received the first live transatlantic television broadcasts from the United States.
Although satellite television was gradually available throughout the 1980s, it was only available to owners of large dishes and the channels were intended to supply cable networks across Europe and domestic reception was not the prime audience.
