Hacker News Reader

Comment by Supernaut | Hacker News Reader

Should the title not read, "BBC marks centenary of its first radio broadcast"?

Other entities had been broadcasting for many years before the BBC's services began.

I don't think this is correct. The Marconi Company started broadcasting a couple of years earlier, but I don't know of any others. The BBC was one of the first, and I certainly don't think that there had been any "broadcasting for many years before".

The title came from the BBC News front-page link to the article that I copy-pasted since the article's own title is so vague!

See the current (2022-11-15) Features and Analysis sub-section at

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment_and_arts

Being as the article is on the BBC I suppose they expect the context to be understood :)

The article's own title isn't that vague and fits well enough with the content, i.e. what is traditionally thought of as the first BBC broadcast may well have been preceded by broadcasts from the north of England.

Yes, I agree having revisited it! I'm almost sure it was much more wordy when it was first published which was why I used the shorter headline.

I've changed the submission title to the article title "Mystery of BBC radio's first broadcasts revealed 100 years on".

And this is why editorialising the title is discouraged, and especially so in this case because the article isn't really directly about that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com