Asa Briggs
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780192129307
- eISBN:
- 9780191670015
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192129307.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Cultural History
This is the second volume of a four-volume history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom. This volume covers the period from the beginning of 1927, when the BBC ceased to be a private company and ...
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This is the second volume of a four-volume history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom. This volume covers the period from the beginning of 1927, when the BBC ceased to be a private company and became a public corporation, up to the outbreak of war in 1939. The acceptance of wireless as a part of the homely background of life and the acceptance of the BBC as the ‘natural’ institution for controlling it, distinguish this period from that covered in the first volume. From 1927 to 1939 the system of public control that had evolved from the early struggles was never seriously in jeopardy and the one big official inquiry, the Ullswater Report, favoured no major constitutional changes. The main theme of the second volume, therefore, may be called the extension and the enrichment of the activity of broadcasting. Different chapters deal with the programmes and programme-makers; the listeners and the ways in which their needs were (or were not) met as the system expanded; public attitudes to the BBC and the increasing complexity of its control and organization; the coming of television and the early experiments of Baird and others; and the retirement of Sir John Reith — not only the end of a regime but the end of an era. The volume ends with preparations for war.Less
This is the second volume of a four-volume history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom. This volume covers the period from the beginning of 1927, when the BBC ceased to be a private company and became a public corporation, up to the outbreak of war in 1939. The acceptance of wireless as a part of the homely background of life and the acceptance of the BBC as the ‘natural’ institution for controlling it, distinguish this period from that covered in the first volume. From 1927 to 1939 the system of public control that had evolved from the early struggles was never seriously in jeopardy and the one big official inquiry, the Ullswater Report, favoured no major constitutional changes. The main theme of the second volume, therefore, may be called the extension and the enrichment of the activity of broadcasting. Different chapters deal with the programmes and programme-makers; the listeners and the ways in which their needs were (or were not) met as the system expanded; public attitudes to the BBC and the increasing complexity of its control and organization; the coming of television and the early experiments of Baird and others; and the retirement of Sir John Reith — not only the end of a regime but the end of an era. The volume ends with preparations for war.
David Goodman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195394085
- eISBN:
- 9780199894383
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394085.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
The passage of the 1934 Communications Act was a decisive but qualified defeat for the radio reformers who favored alternatives to commercial radio (and often admired the BBC). Public interest ...
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The passage of the 1934 Communications Act was a decisive but qualified defeat for the radio reformers who favored alternatives to commercial radio (and often admired the BBC). Public interest regulation had effects, and there was far more high cultural, educational and civic programming on American radio after 1934 than the commercial broadcasters left alone would have provided. In a comparative broadcasting history perspective, the American network broadcasters (NBC, CBS) can be seen as struggling to combine public service broadcasting functions with the profitable sale of entertainment. James Rowland Angell's public service broadcasting work at NBC exemplified these tensions. The broadcasters portrayed national choices about broadcasting policy as between two stark alternatives – free radio or complete state control. That obscured the many effective hybrids and compromises that other nations found satisfactory, but also the distinguished history of government broadcasting in the US – exemplified by the Department of Agriculture's radio activities.Less
The passage of the 1934 Communications Act was a decisive but qualified defeat for the radio reformers who favored alternatives to commercial radio (and often admired the BBC). Public interest regulation had effects, and there was far more high cultural, educational and civic programming on American radio after 1934 than the commercial broadcasters left alone would have provided. In a comparative broadcasting history perspective, the American network broadcasters (NBC, CBS) can be seen as struggling to combine public service broadcasting functions with the profitable sale of entertainment. James Rowland Angell's public service broadcasting work at NBC exemplified these tensions. The broadcasters portrayed national choices about broadcasting policy as between two stark alternatives – free radio or complete state control. That obscured the many effective hybrids and compromises that other nations found satisfactory, but also the distinguished history of government broadcasting in the US – exemplified by the Department of Agriculture's radio activities.
Thomas Hajkowski
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079443
- eISBN:
- 9781781702314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079443.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter offers an introduction and reconsideration of regional broadcasting in Britain. As part of this effort, it examines an important, but overlooked, aspect of broadcasting history and ...
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This chapter offers an introduction and reconsideration of regional broadcasting in Britain. As part of this effort, it examines an important, but overlooked, aspect of broadcasting history and regional broadcasting during the Second World War. For, although the BBC suspended its regional networks during the war, regional programmes continued to be made and broadcasted on the home service and forces programme, which is a completely ignored part of the broadcasting history. Another example of English disregard for the Scots, Welsh and Irish, wartime regional broadcasting saw the BBC, for the first time, project a truly multi-national image of Britain as regional productions had to be carried by the one of the two national networks.Less
This chapter offers an introduction and reconsideration of regional broadcasting in Britain. As part of this effort, it examines an important, but overlooked, aspect of broadcasting history and regional broadcasting during the Second World War. For, although the BBC suspended its regional networks during the war, regional programmes continued to be made and broadcasted on the home service and forces programme, which is a completely ignored part of the broadcasting history. Another example of English disregard for the Scots, Welsh and Irish, wartime regional broadcasting saw the BBC, for the first time, project a truly multi-national image of Britain as regional productions had to be carried by the one of the two national networks.
Cynthia B. Meyers
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823253708
- eISBN:
- 9780823268931
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253708.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
In this book the author repositions the advertising industry as a central agent in the development of broadcasting in the USA and challenges conventional views about the role of advertising in ...
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In this book the author repositions the advertising industry as a central agent in the development of broadcasting in the USA and challenges conventional views about the role of advertising in culture, the integration of media industries, and the role of commercialism in broadcasting history. It describes the “golden age” of radio, from roughly the late 1920s until the late 1940s, when advertising agencies were arguably the most important sources of radio entertainment. The book is based largely on archival materials from academics, advertising agencies and contemporaneous trade publications and on the voluminous correspondence between NBC and agency executives held in the NBC Records at the Wisconsin Historical Society. It shows how admen combined “showmanship” with “salesmanship” to produce a uniquely American form of commercial culture. In recounting the history of this form, the author enriches and corrects our understanding not only of broadcasting history but also of advertising history, business history and American cultural history from the 1920s to the 1940s.Less
In this book the author repositions the advertising industry as a central agent in the development of broadcasting in the USA and challenges conventional views about the role of advertising in culture, the integration of media industries, and the role of commercialism in broadcasting history. It describes the “golden age” of radio, from roughly the late 1920s until the late 1940s, when advertising agencies were arguably the most important sources of radio entertainment. The book is based largely on archival materials from academics, advertising agencies and contemporaneous trade publications and on the voluminous correspondence between NBC and agency executives held in the NBC Records at the Wisconsin Historical Society. It shows how admen combined “showmanship” with “salesmanship” to produce a uniquely American form of commercial culture. In recounting the history of this form, the author enriches and corrects our understanding not only of broadcasting history but also of advertising history, business history and American cultural history from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Felix Harcourt
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226376158
- eISBN:
- 9780226376295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226376295.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter considers the interrelated development of the Ku Klux Klan and early radio and the impact of the Klan movement on broadcasting history. Even as fledgling networks were experimenting with ...
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This chapter considers the interrelated development of the Ku Klux Klan and early radio and the impact of the Klan movement on broadcasting history. Even as fledgling networks were experimenting with commercial broadcasting, Klan members were building an imagined community of the airwaves around the country, broadcast by sympathetic outlets like John R. Brinkley’s influential Kansas station. Klannish broadcasters like Franklin Ford were early innovators of talk radio. The Klan’s own radio station, WTFF, was a pioneer of high-powered broadcasting. The development of the station provides useful insight into the operation of the Federal Radio Commission. Regulation of the airwaves paved the way for national broadcasting syndicates but also provided an official imprimatur to the Klan movement.Less
This chapter considers the interrelated development of the Ku Klux Klan and early radio and the impact of the Klan movement on broadcasting history. Even as fledgling networks were experimenting with commercial broadcasting, Klan members were building an imagined community of the airwaves around the country, broadcast by sympathetic outlets like John R. Brinkley’s influential Kansas station. Klannish broadcasters like Franklin Ford were early innovators of talk radio. The Klan’s own radio station, WTFF, was a pioneer of high-powered broadcasting. The development of the station provides useful insight into the operation of the Federal Radio Commission. Regulation of the airwaves paved the way for national broadcasting syndicates but also provided an official imprimatur to the Klan movement.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226467597
- eISBN:
- 9780226466958
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226466958.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
In the competitive world of commercial broadcasting, science was dramatized, personalized, and eventually marginalized. Despite the efforts of dedicated science popularizers who sought to use radio ...
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In the competitive world of commercial broadcasting, science was dramatized, personalized, and eventually marginalized. Despite the efforts of dedicated science popularizers who sought to use radio (and later television) to convey the joys of scientific endeavor and the insights of the latest research, serious science faded from the airwaves. This book chronicles the efforts of these popularizers, from 1923 until the mid-1950s, as they negotiated for time on the air. This history of science broadcasting progresses through the experimentation of the 1920s, the social concerns of the Great Depression, the worsening European situation, and global conflict and into the postwar debate over government censorship of science and the opening decade of television. Understanding broadcasting's history is essential to understanding what happened to science's public messages across that time.Less
In the competitive world of commercial broadcasting, science was dramatized, personalized, and eventually marginalized. Despite the efforts of dedicated science popularizers who sought to use radio (and later television) to convey the joys of scientific endeavor and the insights of the latest research, serious science faded from the airwaves. This book chronicles the efforts of these popularizers, from 1923 until the mid-1950s, as they negotiated for time on the air. This history of science broadcasting progresses through the experimentation of the 1920s, the social concerns of the Great Depression, the worsening European situation, and global conflict and into the postwar debate over government censorship of science and the opening decade of television. Understanding broadcasting's history is essential to understanding what happened to science's public messages across that time.
Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474412599
- eISBN:
- 9781474449526
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412599.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter offers an introduction to the subject of ancient Greece on British television from the mid-20th century to the present and to the particular topics and debates addressed in the volume. ...
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This chapter offers an introduction to the subject of ancient Greece on British television from the mid-20th century to the present and to the particular topics and debates addressed in the volume. An opening analysis of The Drinking Party (BBC, 1965), a ‘modern recreation’ of Plato’s Symposium by Leo Aylen and Jonathan Miller, establishes the value of examining television’s engagement with ancient Greece and identifies avenues for wider investigation. In particular, it points to the significance of such televisual constructions of ancient Greece as part of wider historical conversations about British culture, society and politics; and it highlights tensions between education and entertainment, on the one hand, and ‘authenticity’ and authority, on the other, exploring what dominant ideas about national identity are being communicated. Earlier engagements with ancient Greece on British radio and television are broadly sketched out and set against relevant contours in the socio-cultural and televisual landscape, and wider cultural engagements with Hellenic antiquity. With the socio-historical and intellectual context mapped out, the contents and directions of individual chapters are outlined, with attention paid to their methods and approaches as well as their motivating questions and conclusions regarding the encounters with the Hellenic past on British television.Less
This chapter offers an introduction to the subject of ancient Greece on British television from the mid-20th century to the present and to the particular topics and debates addressed in the volume. An opening analysis of The Drinking Party (BBC, 1965), a ‘modern recreation’ of Plato’s Symposium by Leo Aylen and Jonathan Miller, establishes the value of examining television’s engagement with ancient Greece and identifies avenues for wider investigation. In particular, it points to the significance of such televisual constructions of ancient Greece as part of wider historical conversations about British culture, society and politics; and it highlights tensions between education and entertainment, on the one hand, and ‘authenticity’ and authority, on the other, exploring what dominant ideas about national identity are being communicated. Earlier engagements with ancient Greece on British radio and television are broadly sketched out and set against relevant contours in the socio-cultural and televisual landscape, and wider cultural engagements with Hellenic antiquity. With the socio-historical and intellectual context mapped out, the contents and directions of individual chapters are outlined, with attention paid to their methods and approaches as well as their motivating questions and conclusions regarding the encounters with the Hellenic past on British television.
Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474412599
- eISBN:
- 9781474449526
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412599.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of ...
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Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of Greece have been constructed through television’s distinctive audiovisual languages, and also in relation to its influential sister-medium radio, this volume explores the nature and function of these public engagements with the written and material remains of the Hellenic past. Through ten case studies drawn from feature programmes, educational broadcasts, children’s animations, theatre play productions, dramatic fiction and documentaries broadcast across the decades, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into the significance of ancient Greece on British television.Less
Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of Greece have been constructed through television’s distinctive audiovisual languages, and also in relation to its influential sister-medium radio, this volume explores the nature and function of these public engagements with the written and material remains of the Hellenic past. Through ten case studies drawn from feature programmes, educational broadcasts, children’s animations, theatre play productions, dramatic fiction and documentaries broadcast across the decades, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into the significance of ancient Greece on British television.
Des Freedman and Vana Goblot (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781906897710
- eISBN:
- 9781906897802
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9781906897710.003.0014
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
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 ...
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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.Less
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.
David Hendy
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781906897710
- eISBN:
- 9781906897802
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9781906897710.003.0012
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter discusses the two main challenges faced by public service television in Britain: one political, the other cultural; one external, the other internal. First, the political challenge: the ...
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This chapter discusses the two main challenges faced by public service television in Britain: one political, the other cultural; one external, the other internal. First, the political challenge: the inconvenient fact that people currently reside in a kakistocracy — ruled not by the best people, but by the worst. As with Brexit, as with Trump, as with all the ‘fake news’, as with the whole political ferment, people find themselves mesmerized and horrified as they lurch dazed and confused towards the BBC's Centenary year of 2022. The second challenge concerns the culture that seems to have taken root within the BBC over the past few years. Any length of time spent in the BBC's written archives shows that what's ended up on air for most of the past 95 years or so has usually been the result of a complex negotiation between individual personnel with hugely varied opinions and prejudices.Less
This chapter discusses the two main challenges faced by public service television in Britain: one political, the other cultural; one external, the other internal. First, the political challenge: the inconvenient fact that people currently reside in a kakistocracy — ruled not by the best people, but by the worst. As with Brexit, as with Trump, as with all the ‘fake news’, as with the whole political ferment, people find themselves mesmerized and horrified as they lurch dazed and confused towards the BBC's Centenary year of 2022. The second challenge concerns the culture that seems to have taken root within the BBC over the past few years. Any length of time spent in the BBC's written archives shows that what's ended up on air for most of the past 95 years or so has usually been the result of a complex negotiation between individual personnel with hugely varied opinions and prejudices.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. ...
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Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.Less
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.
