BBC Television resumed broadcasting on 7 June 1946, and the service began in much the same way it had ceased in 1939, with many of the 1930s drama producers returning. In 1949 there was a major development in drama when Val Gielgud was made the new head of department, a position he had previously and successfully occupied at BBC Radio. Since producing the first television play in 1930, Gielgud had worked in television again, serving on attachment to the service at Alexandra Palace in 1939 and directing a half-hour adaptation of his own short story "Ending It", starring John Robinson and Joan Marion and broadcast on 25 August 1939, less than a week before the service was placed on hiatus.