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Although the BBC had some success in promoting post-war imperial unity through radio, to some its efforts seemed too conservative. Complex collaborative radio projects were shunned in favour of simple contributions from overseas. Programmes from the Commonwealth were often deemed to be of an inferior standard, and were rejected. Moreover, when the BBC lost its domestic monopoly of television broadcasting, commercial competition undermined the position of public broadcasting both in Britain and the wider British world. The BBC lost audiences at home to Independent Television (ITV) stations, while overseas it failed to compete with American television exporters. The BBC acknowledged that it could not maintain its traditional, non-commercial approach to overseas operations, and instead began to sell television programmes at market prices. This commercialisation posed a major challenge to existing Commonwealth collaborative structures. Only in the field of news did Commonwealth collaboration seem to extend successfully to television.

The concluding chapter emphasizes the history and developments of television drama during the pre-war and post-war period. Drama producers during the late 1930s were striving for innovation and visual mobility, thereby developing their own styles of television technique, experimenting with studio design, script layout, and film-studio combinations. ITV television drama affected the changing fashions of the British theatre during the mid 1950s. ITV and Sydney Newman liberated new writers from the shackles of the shunned BBC television drama and theatrical chains.

This chapter deals with factual programming in the 1950s. The Talks Department was a rather powerful one and as it expanded it tended to overlap with both News and Documentary. In a sense documentary – central as it became to British television’s reputation for excellence, and despite its complex relation with drama – is a more straightforward generic descriptor than current affairs. In the latter, broadcast television’s direct engagement with the contemporary political process was overtly acknowledged both by those like Grace Wyndham Goldie in the BBC and Sidney Bernstein at Granada, who welcomed current affairs broadcasting as an extension to democratic debate. Documentary, by contrast, was typically conceived and executed over a much longer time span. Meanwhile, it was in the permeable boundary between news and current affairs that women found opportunities. For this reason, current affairs offered a more promising terrain for women than that bastion of masculinity, the newsroom itself.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the single play was the most prestigious form of drama on British television. Throughout the 1950s, Sunday Night Theatre provided the dramatic highpoint of the week on the BBC, and from 1957 the BBC Television World Theatre offered an additional showcase for classic literary adaptations. This was traditional BBC territory onto which ITV had begun to encroach, and this was despite ITV's commitment to more populist programming. The single play became an important part of the commercial network's schedules. The three ITV anthology play series, Television Playhouse (1956–64), Play of the Week (1956–67), and Armchair Theatre (1956–74), leant prestige to the ITV schedules and provided stiff opposition for the BBC. In addition to the work that was produced while Kennedy Martin was working as a scriptwriter/adapter at the BBC from 1959to 1961, there were several other projects that never went into production.

Sport is one of the most cherished forms of media content, and broadcasting rights to access sporting events have become a central feature of the media economy. A willingness to pay for the pleasure of watching sport has been long established. Understanding why sport is so important demands a knowledge of how the relationship between sport and broadcasting has developed and how the power relations between sports authorities and broadcasters have dynamically changed over time. This chapter first provides a brief history of televised sport in the United Kingdom, focusing on BBC and ITV. It then explores the rise of subscription sport and the consequences of the BSkyB deal in the UK, as well as the broadcasting of sport on terrestrial television, the fallout of ITV Digital, regulation of TV sports rights and competition issues, cultural citizenship and listed events, and new media sport. It also examines television broadcasting of horse racing, citing the case of Attheraces.

In this lecture, the author, a Labour MP and television producer, suggests that the broadcasting industry in Britain is suffering the most severe and sustained attack he can recall in the last twenty-five years. The assailants include politicians, government policy, new technology, free market economics and even broadcasting regulators. The author argues that the BBC has become closer to the model espoused by Annan, but the fifteen regional companies of ITV are ‘now bought and sold with little regard to their region’; the diversity of television programming produced in the regions is being lost. By contrast, the independent producers have brought ‘a quite new pluralism to British television’, although this may be compromised by a ‘Peacock afterthought’ which threatens to change advertising arrangements at Channel 4 and may result in a loss of ‘innovatory zest’. Similarly, ITV may be ‘dragged down’ by its investment in satellite and cable television if these innovatory services fail in the late 1990s. The author claims that a system of European-wide regulation is the ‘real answer’ to secure diversity and pluralism in broadcasting.

In this lecture, the author, chief executive of News International, offers a highly contentious and critical assessment of public service broadcasting, denouncing it as an ideology deployed by ‘propagandists’ to protect the interests of a narrow broadcasting elite, but with debilitating consequences for broadcasting in Britain. Most significantly, public service broadcasting and its ‘guardians’ militate against the prospects for viewer freedom and choice. The author's argument rests on a ‘simple principle’: ‘in every area of economic activity in which competition is attainable, it is much to be preferred to monopoly’. By contrast, public service broadcasting is nowhere clearly defined, although the author redresses this problem by suggesting that ‘anybody who, within the law of the land, provides a service which the public wants at a price it can afford is providing a public service’. He argues that the success of Sky Television will be as much a public service as ITV.

In this lecture, the author, a producer and director who has worked at the BBC and ITV, examines what can be done to preserve quality in the context of a broadcasting system experiencing deregulation, reflecting both government policy and the emergence of multichannel broadcasting. She begins with definitions but acknowledges that the notion of ‘quality’ is contested, and suggests that money is central since it allows high production values, well-researched television programmes, a good programme mix and funds innovation, risks and the occasional mistake. The inclusion of a ‘quality threshold’ in the Broadcasting Act 1990 is a significant amendment for Britain, but the Independent Television Commission must hold ITV companies to their programming commitments, especially the production and airing of documentaries and current affairs in prime time and the BBC and Channel 4 must ‘not lose their nerve’ when confronted by falling ratings. The author concludes by considering the role of programme makers (in-house and independents) in sustaining quality, focusing on independent production. Establishing an association for independents would help eliminate the fragmentation and competition between them which can reduce programme quality.

In this lecture, the author, former chief executive of Channel 5, explores British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's legacy to broadcasting which, he argues, is characterised by a shift away from social values to market forces as the key engines driving broadcasting. The Peacock Committee initiated this ‘sea-change’ by introducing notions such as consumer sovereignty and competition into television programming considerations. The author argues that the 1988 White Paper (Broadcasting in the 1990s: Competition, Choice and Quality) and the subsequent Broadcasting Act 1990, with their requirements for the allocation of ITV franchises by auction, the financial restructuring and sale of ITN, the separation of Channel 4 from ITV and the creation of Channel 5, will have damaging effects on the commercial sector of broadcasting and lead to the ‘demise of those high-cost, high-quality programmes like Poirot [and] Who Bombed Birmingham?’. He suggests that the licence fee will continue to provide funding for the BBC although his preference is for subscription, which he argues provides ‘the safest, most socially equitable, most politically insulated form of funding the BBC’.

In this lecture, the author, former director general of the BBC, attacks what he describes as the ‘culture of dependency’ in British television which subjects broadcasters to an increasing dependence on government ‘in some cases for their very existence and, in the commercial sector, for their financial success’. The Broadcasting Act 1990 sent a message to the ITV companies that ‘being a business was more important than being a broadcaster’. The result has been a shift in power to business executives rather than managers with a background in programme making; television programming promptly loses it critical edge. The author claims that it was the relationship between Ruper Murdoch and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher which ‘really changed the nature of the game’. This Faustian pact meant Thatcher enjoyed the political support of the Murdoch press while News International's majority ownership of BSkyB was exempted from consideration by broadcasting legislation. The author concludes by calling for the creation of a Government Commission on Broadcasting, the appointment of more independent regulators, and a guaranteed income for the BBC for ten years.

In this lecture, the authors, comedy writers whose independent production company Alomo has produced popular programmes such as Birds of a Feather (1983–1998), Love Hurts (1992–194) and Wall of Silence (1993), explores the relative powerlessness of the creative workers (writers, producers and directors) — ‘the talent’ — in television and the other creative industries. Establishing an independent production company provides writers with creative control over their work but even independent producers can end up being treated as little more than ‘a glorified freelance at the mercy of the market’ without ownership and distribution rights over programmes. It is still preferable, however, to working directly for a broadcaster such as the BBC or ITV which often involves being ‘under-respected, under-consulted, [and] under-rewarded’. At the BBC, the problem reflects the fact that creative leaders and their ability to commission work have been undermined by ‘legions of lawyers…and policy unit apparatchiks’. These new ‘gatekeepers’ have little enthusiasm or interest in television programming and apply to television ‘the same discipline they would apply to the production of biscuits’.

In this lecture, the author, founder of the independent production company Bazal (now Endemol UK) and recipient of the Royal Television Society's Judges award for his outstanding contribution to British television, suggests that television is confronting a revolution in which power is shifting away from the ‘sleek barons of British broadcasting’ in favour of the viewer. However, television is still plagued by regulators who apply ill-informed and outmoded criteria of ‘quality’ to programmes and content. They also fail to achieve healthy competition, which benefits the consumer: the key ambition for any regulatory regime. The author argues that ‘we need an end to the era of over-regulation’ and offers a wide-ranging agenda for change, such as abolishing the existing and ‘absurd’ regulators of television content; removing the public service remit from Channel 3 and Channel 5 and reviewing Channel 4's remit for diversity; phase out the ITV companies' payments for their licence to broadcast, along with their entire capacity for in-house production with the sole exception of local and regional news; privatising BBC Worldwide; and preserving and strengthening BBC's public-service role.

In this lecture, the author, former chief executive at ITV, predicts the imminent demise of public service television in Britain for three reasons. First, public service broadcasting relies on regulators who are increasingly overwhelmed by the expansive sources of broadcast information: this will result in inequities. Second, it relies on an active broadcaster and a passive viewer, but ‘at the end of a tiring day viewers don't always choose what's good for them’. Third, public service broadcasting lacks any agreed definition. The author insists that public service broadcasting must give way to public interest broadcasting, which will provide salvation for the BBC. ITV must be a public interest broadcaster if it is to draw large audiences. So must the BBC, S4C, Channel 4, and Channel 5. The difference between public-interest broadcasting at the BBC and ITV is that the former must try to achieve maximum weekly reach while commercial common sense will sustain an ITV that is unequivocally in the public interest by generating diverse and high-quality television programming.

In this lecture, the author, a producer and broadcaster, articulated his vision for the (at the time of writing) new fourth television channel in Britain. In the lecture he envisages broadcasting in the 1980s as being characterised by a confrontation between ‘a BBC on two channels and an ITV on two channels’; the former ‘poorly off and getting poorer’, the latter ‘rich’ and getting ‘richer’. While Pilkington's (1962) assessment of ITV was critical, Annan (1977) found much to praise. The change reflected the impact of Pilkington's remarks in shifting the Independent Television Authority (ITA) from being a ‘friend’ of the companies in the direction of more rigorous regulation. The BBC has always served as a sheet anchor for all television programming in Britain and the author's hope, as expressed in the lecture, for the 1980s is that ‘BBC television will be guaranteed the funding it will need’. The author concluded in the lecture with the hope that the competition between BBC and ITV will be competition ‘not to grind each other down, but competition to serve all the publics we strive to reach, competition to excel’.

Chapter 2 examines the history and development of regional broadcasting in the United Kingdom, from the beginnings of the BBC in the 1920s to the arrival of Channel Four in 1982, paying particular attention to the regional organisation of the ITV network and the development of regional broadcasting at the BBC. This chapter concludes with a case study of one aspect of regional broadcasting in the 1960s-70s: the structure and organisation of regional television in the Midlands, explored through the example of the Victoria Theatre Company in Stoke-on-Trent which produced TV dramas for four different Midlands TV companies from 1965-74.

This chapter traces the history of public service television. The history of British public service broadcasting policy in the 20th century is characterized by a series of very deliberate public interventions into what might otherwise have developed as a straightforward commercial marketplace. The creation of the BBC, the launch of an ITV network required to produce public service programming, and the addition of the highly idiosyncratic Channel 4 gave the UK a television ecology animated by quality, breadth of programming and an orientation towards serving the public interest. At each of these three moments, the possibilities of public service television were expanded and British culture enriched as a result. The 1990 Broadcasting Act and the fair wind given to multichannel services may have ended the supremacy of the public service television ideal. However, public service television has survived, through the design of the institutions responsible for it, because of legislative protection, and as a result of its continuing popularity amongst the public.

This chapter argues that despite the proliferation of channels made possible by the new technologies of cable, satellite, and digital compression, the overall impact on established broadcasters has not been as disastrous as sometimes predicted. They have retained their prominence due to regulation that keeps them at the top of electronic programme guides. Although ITV no longer dominates the landscape in the same way, it remains the UK's most watched commercial channel and retains the commercial clout that comes with that. The old broadcasters have also adapted to the new world by developing new ‘families’ of channels. Taking those channels into account, the combined audience share of BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 still represents 72 per cent of the total.

This chapter discusses five recommendations on how to strengthen public service television. The first is the need to maintain the UK's broadcasting ecology. The second is the need for the BBC to have its funding future-proofed to take account of changes in technology and consumption. It needs to be funded honestly and not continually raided by opportunistic governments using it to pay for media infrastructure projects or politically motivated schemes. The third is the need to set in stone Channel 4's status as a publicly owned publisher broadcaster. The fourth is the need to decide whether we really want ITV and Channel 5 to do public service television. The fifth is the need for public service television to be defined better, sold better, and to be better.

This chapter presents the recommendations of the Puttnam Report. It covers recommendations for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and Channel 5. It proposes the establishment of a new fund for public service content. It also discusses the dissatisfaction with the performance of public service television from ethnic, regional, national and faith-based minorities; the failure of the public service television system to reflect the changing constitutional shape of the UK such that audiences in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the English regions; the decline in investment in some of the genres traditionally associated with public service television: arts, current affairs and children's programming; and the need for a more consolidated approach to maximising entry-level opportunities and increasing investment in training and professional development at all levels of the industry.