The BBC’s Programme Index incorporates BBC Genome: a website containing BBC listings from 1923-2009.

The data in BBC Genome was drawn from Radio Times, the listings magazine published by the BBC from 1923 until 2011, when it was sold to the company Immediate Media. This data was extracted by scanning a copy of Radio Times from each week between 1923-2009, and using OCR (optical character recognition) technology to recreate the schedules for most of the BBC’s broadcast history.

As a result of the scanning process, much of the data extracted from Radio Times needed to be tidied up. We have run a crowd-sourcing exercise, asking members of the public to correct typos and errors in the text to make them accurately reflect the Radio Times magazine entries.

Radio Times published the planned broadcast schedule of BBC radio and television. Schedules, then as now, were subject to change for various reasons, so what was listed in Radio Times did not always remain accurate and many unscheduled transmissions are therefore not included in the database at present.