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Shepherd's Bush. It was her role to decide which BBC department would be given the necessary resources to make programmes. The demand was much higher than the supply and she controlled who would have priority. In 1974, she was promoted from being an OBE to a
262:. She was described as BBC Television’s top programme planner and that she "ran BBC Television single handed." Holding, as she did, a key job during an important time in the history of British television, the veteran broadcaster
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She was involved in an emerging technology. The ability to record television would transform its creation, but the new technology created management problems. In June 1953, Spicer had to inform
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When she reached the retirement age at the BBC (in 1966), unusually for the time, her contract was renewed. She was offered a lucrative position as independent television's representative at
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Spicer became the assistant controller of planning at the BBC and was one of those who backed the idea of creating a science fiction series for
Saturday evenings. This resulted in
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243:, but the BBC wanted to retain her expertise. She eventually retired from the BBC in 1973, but still had the compulsion to work. Spicer spent a decade working with historian
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who wrote a multi-volume history of broadcasting in the UK. He had been surprised to find that an important figure like Spicer was not in
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described her over 30 years after her death as a “great woman” who “today would be
Director-General”, although
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in 1906. Her parents were Alice Mary (née Smith) and Andrew Owen Gibbon. She gained a place at
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She married in 1937 and two years later she found work in the broadcasting section of the
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334:"Spicer [née Gibbon], Joanna Ravenscroft (1906–1992), television executive"
210:. The BBC credit Spicer as being the main proponent of it being initially based at
135:(29 April 1906 – 17 March 1992) was a British television executive employed by the
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The
Franchise Affair: Creating Fortunes and Failures in Independent Television
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as "virtually unknown", she was involved with discussions leading to
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The
Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama
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501:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
404:Briggs, Asa; Spicer, Joanna (1986).
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464:How the BBC Began, op. cit.
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173:in Oxford after attending
119:Robert Henry Scanes Spicer
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194:The Quatermass Experiment
126:Joanna Ravenscroft Spicer
111:back office BBC executive
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182:Ministry of Information
175:St Paul's Girls' School
377:Jacobs, Jason (2000).
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260:Charing Cross Hospital
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496:Television executives
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93:Television executive
295:"Joanna Spicer CBE"
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441:9 November
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354:9 November
304:9 November
274:References
245:Asa Briggs
241:Eurovision
207:Doctor Who
148:Doctor Who
90:Occupation
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249:Who's Who
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