The Bernstein holdings eventually encompassed interests in publishing, real estate, motorway services, retail shops and bowling alleys, as well as the hugely profitable television-rental business.

Bernstein was a co-founder of the London Film Society[6] in 1925, where he met and befriended the young Alfred Hitchcock, who became a lifelong friend and, briefly, a producing partner.

He also ventured into theatre, building an elegant new venue which housed the premiere of Private Lives by Noël Coward, the hit which cemented that playwright's reputation.

Bernstein travelled to America frequently during the 1930s, where he met with Hollywood studio executives and organised meetings to persuade them to support the anti-fascist cause, and, after war broke out between Britain and Germany, to join the British in their fight against the Nazis.

By this point, Bernstein joined the newly formed Ministry of Information, and continued his role of producing and bringing anti-Nazi and pro-British films before the American people during the critical years 1939–1941, when the United States remained neutral while Britain struggled alone against the Blitz and potential Nazi invasion.

[7] As the invasion of France loomed, Bernstein brought his friend Alfred Hitchcock back from Hollywood to Britain to work on two short documentary films for the post-invasion French audience.

The original plan to complete a feature-length documentary film of the camps was abruptly cancelled in July 1945, as the British Foreign Office claimed the material was too incendiary in light of the need for post-war co-operation from the defeated Germans.

In 1954, Bernstein won a franchise licence to broadcast commercial television to the north of England including key urban areas such as Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield.

Granada preferred the North because of its tradition of home-grown culture, and because it offered a chance to start a new creative industry away from the metropolitan atmosphere of London... the North is a closely knit, indigenous, industrial society; a homogeneous cultural group with a good record for music, theatre, literature and newspapers, not found elsewhere in this island, except perhaps in Scotland.

Paintings from Bernstein's art collection and portraits of Edward R. Murrow and showman P. T. Barnum adorned the interior of the studios to inspire creativity among Granada employees.

Despite objections to a commercial franchise being awarded to a company with overtly left-wing leanings, Granada began broadcasting from Manchester in May 1956, proudly proclaiming its origins with the slogan 'From the North' and labelling its new constituency 'Granadaland'.

The first night's programming opened, at Bernstein's insistence, with an homage to the BBC, whose public broadcasting pedigree he had always admired, and closed with a public-spirited statement of advertising policy which suggested an ambivalence about the commercial imperative to maximise profits.

Bernstein's brother Cecil felt the same way about it;[11] upon hearing the proposal for what was then to be known as Florizel Street, Sidney stated that scriptwriter Tony Warren had "pick[ed] up all the boring bits and strung them together one after another".