on 22 september 1955 the itv network was launched in the uk, bringing commercial television to britain for the first time and ending the bbc's broadcasting monopoly in the country. the new network's creation had been established by the television act 1954, and the bbc had known in advance that they would need programmes to combat the new rival for television audiences. referring to the 1953 science-fiction serial "the quatermass experiment" in a memo written in 1954, bbc television's controller of programmes, cecil mcgivern, noted that: "had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every saturday night while ["the quatermass experiment"] lasted. we are going to need "many" more 'quatermass experiment' programmes."