Decade by Decade
At 7:30pm on 5th July 1954 BBC presenter Richard Baker introduced "The latest film of events and happenings at home and abroad" - and television new in Britain was born. Over the next 50 years, BBC reporters covered all the major events that have shaped our world. In this series, five of the BBC's top journalists chronical this fascinating half century and how the BBC television news reported it.
01. 1954-1963
Michael Buerk looks back at the birth of BBC Television News and how it showed the post-war world taking shape: the black and white era of Winston Churchill, the death of John F Kennedy and the birth of the pill, the Beatles and the permissive society
02. 1964-1973
Charles Wheeler reflects on an age which saw America embroiled in the war in Vietnam, violent clashes over civil rights and Watergate; an age when 'mods' fought 'rockers' - and man landed on the moon.
03. 1974-1983
Kate Adie remembers the three-day week, the IRA's mainland bombing campaign, Charles and Diana and the arrival of Britain's first woman Prime Minister, whose political fortunes were transformed when she took the country to war over the Falklands.
04. 1984-1993
John Simpson looks at a decade of profound change. The Berlin Wall came down, while apartheid collapsed along with communism. Thatcher's Britain was transformed and tragedy came to Lockerbie, Enniskillen - and Ethiopia.
05. 1994-2004
Jeremy Bowen introduces the age of 24-hour news, when the world watched the September 11th attacks live on television. Diana was killed in Paris; Concorde made its last flight; there were ware in Europe, Afghanistan and Iraq; and a new war - the War on Terror.