Foreign the film set designer and former fighter pilot, see Ken Adam.
Education
After attending Nottingham High School, Adam read history at Street John"s College, Cambridge and graduated with a First Class degree. While at Street John"s he was both President of the Union and President of the University Liberal Club. After graduating, he joined the staff of the Manchester Guardian newspaper as a journalist at the age of just twenty-two.
While working for the Guardian he also began working as a freelance broadcaster for British Broadcasting Corporation radio in Manchester, leaving the newspaper to join the British Broadcasting Corporation full-time in 1934 as a Home News Editor.
Career
Kenneth Adam, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1 March 1908 in Nottingham – 18 October 1978) was an English journalist and broadcasting executive, who from 1957 until 1961 served as the Controller of the British Broadcasting Corporation Television Service. However, he stayed in radio for just two years before returning to the world of print journalism, joining The Star in 1936. He worked for the paper as a Special Correspondent until 1940, when due to the journalistic restrictions of the Second World War he temporarily left the industry to become the press officer for the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
His time at BOAC was short-lived, however, as in 1941 he re-joined the staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation, this time serving as its Head of Publicity.
Adam spent nine years in this role, before in 1950 the Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, William Haley, took the perhaps surprising decision to appoint him as the Controller of the British Broadcasting Corporation Light Programme, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation"s most popular national radio stations. Adam took up the post at the end of the year and successfully ran the station for the next four years, although he apparently became frustrated at the lack of opportunities to move across into the newer medium of television, which was his latest ambition.
Perhaps due to this frustration, in 1955 he once more decided to leave the British Broadcasting Corporation, and indeed the full-time broadcasting industry as a whole, joining Hulton Press as the company"s Joint General Manager. This finally enabled him to make the move in television with the British Broadcasting Corporation"s commercial competitor, Independent Television, as he returned to appearing on the airwaves rather than behind the scenes, becoming a chairman of the programme Free Speech.
He also appeared occasionally on other television programmes, as well as on various British Broadcasting Corporation radio programmes.
In February 1957 he returned once again to the British Broadcasting Corporation to succeed Cecil McGivern as the Controller of Programmes at the British Broadcasting Corporation Television Service. He occupied this post for four years until 1961, when he was promoted to become the British Broadcasting Corporation"s overall Director of Television. He remained in this role until 1968, when he reached the British Broadcasting Corporation"s compulsory retirement age of sixty.
Following his retirement he often lectured on broadcasting matters at seminars in the United States, being made Visiting Professor of Communications at Temple University, Philadelphia.
In 1962 he had been awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Membership
He also wrote a frank series of articles on his time at the British Broadcasting Corporation for the Sunday Times newspaper in 1969, and in later years was variously a Governor of Charing Cross Hospital. Of the British Film Institute. A member of the councils of the National Youth Theatre.
The Tavistock Institute.
The British Travel Association and Industrial Design.