Alexandra Palace to celebrate role as the birthplace of BBC TV

The 90th anniversary of the BBC's first television service will be celebrated this year at the north London venue it was broadcast from. Alexandra Palace, affectionately known as Ally Pally, is set to host a series of events to mark the birth of British TV, launched in November 1936. A television heritage season will also run this autumn "for public engagement with interested groups and individuals", that has an "overarching theme of innovation". Visitors will have the chance to get "closer to the palace's television heritage" through tours of the historic BBC studios and a behind-the-scenes look into the broadcaster's archive collections, the organisers said. Organisers hope to use the anniversary to also mark "the significance of the site of the first television station". On the BBC website, David Hendy, professor in media and cultural history at the University of Sussex, said the world's first regular, "high-definition" television service was broadcast from Ally Pally on Monday 2 November 1936. At the time, the BBC argued that "high-definition" meant pictures made up of 240 lines or more. It was something Hendy believes the broadcaster did to mark itself out against a German TV