TIL the last thing on BBC Television before it was switched off on the eve of the Second World War was a Mickey Mouse show which was aired at around 12.35pm on 1st September 1939. Seven years later BBC Television returned with a repeat of the same Mickey Mouse programme.

There are also reports of TV broadcasts being shutdown only 20 minutes after the cartoon had ended in 1939. But it did restart with the cartoon again in 1945.

I found this information interesting because no one never really talks about TV during WWII. There were very few broadcasts during the 6 year war as TV was recent and it was considered a niche. Most people got their information from theaters, before the feature filme there would be a small documentary (some of them are stored in British Pathé's account on Youtube)

The Army preferred to reutilize the TV radio signals to use them as a way to disarm potential enemy bombers of their explosive load, before they could reach British borders.

Broadcast shutdown on 1 September 1939, resumed later at 29 July 1945. -- during which BBC and most other networks would focus on radio as their mainstream method of informing the masses.

/r/todayilearned Thread Link - news.bbc.co.uk