Simon J. Potter
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199568963
- eISBN:
- 9780191741821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568963.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
During the early 1930s, governments created more powerful public broadcasting authorities in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, including the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), the ...
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During the early 1930s, governments created more powerful public broadcasting authorities in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, including the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), and the New Zealand Broadcasting Board (NZBB). In Canada, the Canadian Radio League (CRL) enlisted the help of the BBC to make the case for public broadcasting. However, the world economic depression hampered plans to develop broadcasting, both on a national basis in these countries, and on an imperial footing. The BBC's underfunded Empire Service did little to link up the British world, despite attempts to use sport and the monarchy to generate interest in its broadcasts. BBC recorded programmes or transcriptions similarly met with a mixed response, and the BBC for its part seemed unenthusiastic about taking reciprocal programmes from the dominions. BBC attempts to operate overseas on a rigorously public-service basis compounded its problemsLess
During the early 1930s, governments created more powerful public broadcasting authorities in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, including the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), and the New Zealand Broadcasting Board (NZBB). In Canada, the Canadian Radio League (CRL) enlisted the help of the BBC to make the case for public broadcasting. However, the world economic depression hampered plans to develop broadcasting, both on a national basis in these countries, and on an imperial footing. The BBC's underfunded Empire Service did little to link up the British world, despite attempts to use sport and the monarchy to generate interest in its broadcasts. BBC recorded programmes or transcriptions similarly met with a mixed response, and the BBC for its part seemed unenthusiastic about taking reciprocal programmes from the dominions. BBC attempts to operate overseas on a rigorously public-service basis compounded its problems
Robert Gellately
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198205609
- eISBN:
- 9780191676697
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205609.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter discusses how Germans responded to other measures of the dictatorship that had little or nothing to do with race. Germans were subject to war measures acts that were introduced at the ...
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This chapter discusses how Germans responded to other measures of the dictatorship that had little or nothing to do with race. Germans were subject to war measures acts that were introduced at the outset of the war to regulate social, economic, cultural, and political life. The ‘extraordinary radio measures’ of 1 September 1939, which forbad listening to foreign radio stations, deserve special attention because they pertained to efforts to police the private sphere. Until that point in time, the dictatorship had relied on cooperation between the police and the people. The new system produced a radical version of surveillance and control. However, the new radio measures represented something new, because the object of the exercise was not only to control public behaviour, but to determine what people heard, even in the privacy of their homes.Less
This chapter discusses how Germans responded to other measures of the dictatorship that had little or nothing to do with race. Germans were subject to war measures acts that were introduced at the outset of the war to regulate social, economic, cultural, and political life. The ‘extraordinary radio measures’ of 1 September 1939, which forbad listening to foreign radio stations, deserve special attention because they pertained to efforts to police the private sphere. Until that point in time, the dictatorship had relied on cooperation between the police and the people. The new system produced a radical version of surveillance and control. However, the new radio measures represented something new, because the object of the exercise was not only to control public behaviour, but to determine what people heard, even in the privacy of their homes.
Asa Briggs
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780192129260
- eISBN:
- 9780191670008
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192129260.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter describes the content of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) radio programmes from 1923 to 1925. J.C.W. Reith believed that that to use a great invention for the purpose of ...
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This chapter describes the content of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) radio programmes from 1923 to 1925. J.C.W. Reith believed that that to use a great invention for the purpose of entertainment alone would a prostitution of its powers and an insult to the character and intelligence of the people. However, in practice, it was difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between entertainment and education. This chapter explains that jazz bands, popular music, radio drama, and sketches by humorists figured regularly in BBC programmes during this period.Less
This chapter describes the content of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) radio programmes from 1923 to 1925. J.C.W. Reith believed that that to use a great invention for the purpose of entertainment alone would a prostitution of its powers and an insult to the character and intelligence of the people. However, in practice, it was difficult to draw a sharp dividing line between entertainment and education. This chapter explains that jazz bands, popular music, radio drama, and sketches by humorists figured regularly in BBC programmes during this period.
Asa Briggs
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780192129567
- eISBN:
- 9780191670022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192129567.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter describes the role of broadcasting in Germany's blitzkrieg attack in Europe. Though there were regular radio messages that broadcast the move of German forces, they were not able to ...
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This chapter describes the role of broadcasting in Germany's blitzkrieg attack in Europe. Though there were regular radio messages that broadcast the move of German forces, they were not able to accurately predict the true target of the Germans. This is because Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and the Balkans were all equally possible objectives of Germany. In addition, attention to German plans on the Western Front was diverted by both the German and by the Italian radio.Less
This chapter describes the role of broadcasting in Germany's blitzkrieg attack in Europe. Though there were regular radio messages that broadcast the move of German forces, they were not able to accurately predict the true target of the Germans. This is because Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and the Balkans were all equally possible objectives of Germany. In addition, attention to German plans on the Western Front was diverted by both the German and by the Italian radio.
Pierluigi Petrobelli and Roger Parker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264348
- eISBN:
- 9780191734250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264348.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a ...
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Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for his broadcasts and reviews, and above all for his books on Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Indeed, his passing leaves a huge gap in the field of opera studies. Budden was born in Hoylake, near Liverpool, on April 9, 1924, the only child of Lionel Budden and Maud Budden. In 1951 he started at the BBC, where he remained for his entire working life. Budden's first post was as a clerk and script editor; he then rose through the ranks to become a producer, Chief Producer of Opera, and finally External Services Music Organizer. Two aspects of Budden's background were likely to have been fundamental to his scholarly achievement: his exposure to Classics at Oxford University and his career in BBC Radio.Less
Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for his broadcasts and reviews, and above all for his books on Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Indeed, his passing leaves a huge gap in the field of opera studies. Budden was born in Hoylake, near Liverpool, on April 9, 1924, the only child of Lionel Budden and Maud Budden. In 1951 he started at the BBC, where he remained for his entire working life. Budden's first post was as a clerk and script editor; he then rose through the ranks to become a producer, Chief Producer of Opera, and finally External Services Music Organizer. Two aspects of Budden's background were likely to have been fundamental to his scholarly achievement: his exposure to Classics at Oxford University and his career in BBC Radio.
Corey Ross
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278213
- eISBN:
- 9780191707933
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278213.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments. Few developments have more profoundly ...
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Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments. Few developments have more profoundly shaped the nature of modern politics. Nowhere in Europe were the tensions and controversies surrounding the rise of mass culture more politically charged than in Germany — debates that fatefully played into the hands of the radical right. This book provides an account of the expansion of the mass media in Germany up to the Second World War. In essence, it provides a social history of mass culture by investigating the role and impact of film, radio, recorded music, popular press, and advertising on everyday leisure as well as on shifting patterns of social distinction. Furthermore, it also analyses the political implications of these changes as part of a radically altered public sphere. Straddling the Imperial, Weimar, and Nazi periods, it shows how the social effects and meaning of mass culture were by no means straightforward or ‘standardizing’, but rather changed under different political and economic circumstances. By locating the rapid expansion of communications and commercial entertainments firmly within their broader historical context, it sheds light on the relationship between mass media, social change, and political culture during this tumultuous period in German history.Less
Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments. Few developments have more profoundly shaped the nature of modern politics. Nowhere in Europe were the tensions and controversies surrounding the rise of mass culture more politically charged than in Germany — debates that fatefully played into the hands of the radical right. This book provides an account of the expansion of the mass media in Germany up to the Second World War. In essence, it provides a social history of mass culture by investigating the role and impact of film, radio, recorded music, popular press, and advertising on everyday leisure as well as on shifting patterns of social distinction. Furthermore, it also analyses the political implications of these changes as part of a radically altered public sphere. Straddling the Imperial, Weimar, and Nazi periods, it shows how the social effects and meaning of mass culture were by no means straightforward or ‘standardizing’, but rather changed under different political and economic circumstances. By locating the rapid expansion of communications and commercial entertainments firmly within their broader historical context, it sheds light on the relationship between mass media, social change, and political culture during this tumultuous period in German history.
Simon J. Potter
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199568963
- eISBN:
- 9780191741821
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568963.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This book analyses the attempts of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to use broadcasting as a tool of empire. From an early stage the corporation sought to unite home listeners with their ...
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This book analyses the attempts of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to use broadcasting as a tool of empire. From an early stage the corporation sought to unite home listeners with their counterparts in the wider British world, particularly in the British settler diaspora in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The BBC saw this as part of its public-service mandate, and also as a means to strengthen its position at home: by broadcasting to and about the empire, it built up its own broadcasting empire. The BBC encouraged overseas the spread of the British approach to broadcasting, in preference to the American commercial model. During the 1930s it tried to work with the public broadcasting authorities that were established in the ‘dominions’: initially, these efforts met with limited success, but more progress was made in the later 1930s. High culture, royal ceremonies, sport, and even comedy were used to project Britishness, particularly on the BBC Empire Service, the predecessor of today's World Service. Commonwealth broadcasting collaboration intensified during the Second World War, and reached its climax during the late 1940s and 1950s. Belatedly, at this stage the BBC also began to consider the role of broadcasting in Africa and Asia, as a means to encourage ‘development’ and to combat resistance to continued colonial rule. However, during the 1960s, as decolonization entered its final, accelerated phase, the BBC staged its own imperial retreat.Less
This book analyses the attempts of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to use broadcasting as a tool of empire. From an early stage the corporation sought to unite home listeners with their counterparts in the wider British world, particularly in the British settler diaspora in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The BBC saw this as part of its public-service mandate, and also as a means to strengthen its position at home: by broadcasting to and about the empire, it built up its own broadcasting empire. The BBC encouraged overseas the spread of the British approach to broadcasting, in preference to the American commercial model. During the 1930s it tried to work with the public broadcasting authorities that were established in the ‘dominions’: initially, these efforts met with limited success, but more progress was made in the later 1930s. High culture, royal ceremonies, sport, and even comedy were used to project Britishness, particularly on the BBC Empire Service, the predecessor of today's World Service. Commonwealth broadcasting collaboration intensified during the Second World War, and reached its climax during the late 1940s and 1950s. Belatedly, at this stage the BBC also began to consider the role of broadcasting in Africa and Asia, as a means to encourage ‘development’ and to combat resistance to continued colonial rule. However, during the 1960s, as decolonization entered its final, accelerated phase, the BBC staged its own imperial retreat.
Michael H. Kater
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195165531
- eISBN:
- 9780199872237
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195165531.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Nazi faithfuls who might have thought that jazz music had vanished from the Reich could be proven wrong just a few weeks into World War II. These Nazis were deploring a state of affairs which, ...
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Nazi faithfuls who might have thought that jazz music had vanished from the Reich could be proven wrong just a few weeks into World War II. These Nazis were deploring a state of affairs which, unbeknownst to them, was in perfect accord with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels's own directives. For the sake of social peace, but initially also because the war had been planned as a short interlude, Goebbels conjured up a myth of continuity, of normalcy, from peace to wartime. By blanking out the unaccustomed consciousness of stress and pain, the hardships of this new war could be more easily legitimized. Toward that goal, cultural events of all kinds, in content and in form not significantly different from their prewar proportions, would help the propaganda machinery that was busily at work on so many other facets of the nation's collective life.Less
Nazi faithfuls who might have thought that jazz music had vanished from the Reich could be proven wrong just a few weeks into World War II. These Nazis were deploring a state of affairs which, unbeknownst to them, was in perfect accord with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels's own directives. For the sake of social peace, but initially also because the war had been planned as a short interlude, Goebbels conjured up a myth of continuity, of normalcy, from peace to wartime. By blanking out the unaccustomed consciousness of stress and pain, the hardships of this new war could be more easily legitimized. Toward that goal, cultural events of all kinds, in content and in form not significantly different from their prewar proportions, would help the propaganda machinery that was busily at work on so many other facets of the nation's collective life.
Michael H. Kater
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195165531
- eISBN:
- 9780199872237
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195165531.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
After the summer of 1942, the tide began to turn against the Nazi Reich. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was losing out in the North African war arena and, in Russia, the Wehrmacht suffered more ...
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After the summer of 1942, the tide began to turn against the Nazi Reich. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was losing out in the North African war arena and, in Russia, the Wehrmacht suffered more opprobrium. By May 1945, the denouement had been marked by three or four altogether disastrous developments. First, on February 3, 1943, Adolf Hitler had to concede defeat at Stalingrad. The Allied armies then landed on the Normandy coast during D-Day, the sixth of June. The Red Army entered Berlin in the last week of April 1945. On the eighth of May, a mere eight days after Hitler and Joseph Goebbels committed suicides, the government capitulated unconditionally. To a large extent, the fate of German jazz was tied up with these events. The most immediate phenomenon that increasingly affected jazz and dance music, as well as its resilient subculture, was the recurrent bombing raids, especially when they targeted Berlin.Less
After the summer of 1942, the tide began to turn against the Nazi Reich. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was losing out in the North African war arena and, in Russia, the Wehrmacht suffered more opprobrium. By May 1945, the denouement had been marked by three or four altogether disastrous developments. First, on February 3, 1943, Adolf Hitler had to concede defeat at Stalingrad. The Allied armies then landed on the Normandy coast during D-Day, the sixth of June. The Red Army entered Berlin in the last week of April 1945. On the eighth of May, a mere eight days after Hitler and Joseph Goebbels committed suicides, the government capitulated unconditionally. To a large extent, the fate of German jazz was tied up with these events. The most immediate phenomenon that increasingly affected jazz and dance music, as well as its resilient subculture, was the recurrent bombing raids, especially when they targeted Berlin.
Corey Ross
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278213
- eISBN:
- 9780191707933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278213.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter considers one major aspect of the heterogeneous responses of cultural and political elites to the rise of the media and burgeoning entertainment industry. It focuses on efforts, above ...
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This chapter considers one major aspect of the heterogeneous responses of cultural and political elites to the rise of the media and burgeoning entertainment industry. It focuses on efforts, above all through means of state regulation, to reassert elite values and standards by establishing a formal framework of control over popular culture, including literary and film censorship as well as state ownership of broadcasting. While the censorship of cultural forms as a means of social control was of course nothing new at the time, the avowedly commercial orientation of most popular amusements and their unprecedented dissemination via new communications technologies elicited a new brand of cultural interventionism among the educated elite, a belief not only in their ability to improve the tastes and cultural practices of the masses, but indeed in their right — even duty — to do so.Less
This chapter considers one major aspect of the heterogeneous responses of cultural and political elites to the rise of the media and burgeoning entertainment industry. It focuses on efforts, above all through means of state regulation, to reassert elite values and standards by establishing a formal framework of control over popular culture, including literary and film censorship as well as state ownership of broadcasting. While the censorship of cultural forms as a means of social control was of course nothing new at the time, the avowedly commercial orientation of most popular amusements and their unprecedented dissemination via new communications technologies elicited a new brand of cultural interventionism among the educated elite, a belief not only in their ability to improve the tastes and cultural practices of the masses, but indeed in their right — even duty — to do so.
