He pioneered commercial radio

PHILIP DORTÉ, ATV’s Midlands Controller, was only 22 when he was offered a job by the General Electric Company of America to work on the development of radio at their Schenectady works in New York.

From Downside he had gone to Cambridge but finding no provision there for the study of electrical engineering he attended Faraday House instead.

After reading a paper on radio to students at the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the young Dorté was approached by a member of his audience.

“Would you like to work for us in New York?” asked the G.E.C. man [sic: American General Electric was known as G.E.; the unrelated British General Electric was G.E.C. – Ed]. The young radio engineer jumped at the chance.

At New York, however, his sense of humour at once got him into trouble.

“Do you suffer from moral turpitude?” asked the immigration official.

“I said ‘Yes'” recalls Mr. Dorté “and I spent the night on Ellis island. The next morning the G.E.C. people had to come and get me out”.

In America he worked on the development of both TV and talking pictures and when his company secured the contract to build Toronto’s first high powered radio station, Mr. Dorté was put in charge.

While in Canada, he had the idea of approaching the French Government to secure a concession for broadcasting commercial radio programmes to Britain.

The French agreed and Mr. Dorté formed Radio Publicity Ltd. — in opposition to Mr. John Reith, as he then was, and his British Broadcasting Company.

“I suppose, I must have been the first Englishman to see the possibilities of commercial radio” he recalls.

“These were sponsored programmes and we had plenty of advertisers too — Black Cat cigarettes; Revelation suitcases and Grosvenor House Hotel…”

Transmissions were beamed to London on long wave. Tom Ronald, BBC sound radio producer, was one of the announcers.

Soon after this, Captain Leonard Plugge obtained a similar concession to operate Radio Normandy — on medium wave.

“Captain Plugge suggested an amalgamation” says Mr. Dorté, “I was agreeable but the rest of the Board were against it. I resigned.”

From commercial radio, Mr. Dorté switched to talking pictures. Basil Dean was just starting Ealing Studios and with his knowledge gained in America, Mr. Dorté was put in charge of the sound recording side.

From Ealing he joined Michael Balcon at Gaumont British, working in the old Lime Grove studios, now used by the BBC.

“I went on location abroad for all the big British films of that time” he says “This kept me out of the country for months on end. My wife took a dim view of this.

“Then one day I met an old friend of mine, John Hytch at the BBC, He told me the BBC were just about to start a television service and why didn’t I join them?”

Mr. Dorté thus became the BBC’s first TV Head of Outside Broadcasts. And for the next few years everything he organised was a FIRST.

“The first O.B. was the Coronation of George VI and Queen Elizabeth in May 1936″ he says. “Then there was Wimbledon, the Boat Race, a show a week from the London Coliseum and both the 38 and 39 Derbies.”

In the Spring of 1939, Mr. Done joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve. It was while he was doing an O.B. from the London Zoo that his wife came round with his calling-up papers.

With his TV and engineering background, he was a natural for radar.

Demobilised with the rank of Group Captain, he was awarded the OBE (Military Division) for his services.

As BBC TV expanded, Mr. Dorté switched over to films, becoming Head of TV Films in 1949.

“It was a constant battle with the film industry” he recalls “I fought them all the time. Finally I told them that if they wouldn’t co-operate with us over the question of newsreel coverage, we would start our own.

“They roared with laughter. They reminded me that cinema newsreels were fast going out of business. They said I didn’t stand a chance.”

Events proved Mr. Dorté right. He even put out a better service than the cinemas — by providing the BBC with a different newsreel daily as against the twice a week offering in the cinemas. And he started a Children’s TV Newsreel too.

In 1954 he quit the BBC to join Mr. Norman Collins as a senior executive of the original Associated Broadcasting Development Company which later merged with Moss Empires and other interests to become ATV.

In the early days of ITV he was seconded to Independent Television News for a year, then — as he puts it — Val Parnell asked him if he’d start the Company’s Midlands Operation.

“I’m still starting it” he says.