Histories of British broadcasting suggest that the BBC monopoly was never seriously challenged until the coming of ITV in 1955. Crossing the Ether counters this view, telling the story of commercial radio's first challenge to the Public Service monopoly between 1930 and 1939. In the telling, this account provides substantial primary evidence that radio in Britain during the 1930s was a battleground between continental-based stations, run by British and American commercial interests, and the BBC, beset by paternalistic and sabbatarian principles.

This book provides a narrative history of the BBC Radio Variety Department exploring, along chronological lines, the workings of, tensions within and the impact of BBC policies on the programme-making department which generated the organisation’s largest audiences. It provides an insight into key events, personalities, programmes, internal politics and trends in popular entertainment, censorship and anti-American policy as they individually or collectively affected the Department. Martin Dibbs examines how the Department's programmes became markers in the daily and weekly lives of millions of listeners, and helped shape the nation's listening habits when radio was the dominant source of domestic entertainment. The book explores events and topics which, while not directly forming part of the Variety Department’s history, nevertheless intersected with or had an impact on it. Such topics include the BBC’s attitude to jazz and rock and roll, the arrival of television with its impact on radio, the pirate radio stations, and the Popular Music and Gramophone Departments, both of whom worked closely with the Variety Department.