Search Results

This chapter argues that all creative thought ultimately reduces to creative action. On this account, action schemata are activated creatively and rehearsed, issuing in globally broadcast imagery (including inner speech). It is argued that the proper function of childhood pretend play is to practice creative supposition, and the absence of pretence in autism as a test case is examined. The chapter closes with some discussion of creative hypothesis generation and creative language use in adulthood.

This chapter focuses on the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) offering of a ‘extensive broadcasting’ service to meet the demand of the public. The company built eight main broadcasting stations linked by simultaneous broadcasting. It also opened relay stations in crowded industrial areas and started experimental work with a new high-powered long-wave transmitter in 1924. J.C.W. Reith regarded this extension of broadcasting facilities as a justification of the national claims of broadcasting as a public service.

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

During the later 1930s the BBC made more progress with its imperial mission, expanding its domestic monopoly of broadcasting into a monopoly over broadcasting to the empire from Britain. Collaborative relations with other public broadcasting authorities in the British world improved, particularly following the establishment of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and New Zealand's National Broadcasting Service (NBS). More broadcasting officers travelled overseas, and more resources were devoted to the Empire Service. Alongside coverage of sport and royalty, the BBC now provided talks, music, and comedy. Empire Day and Christmas Day remained important fixtures. However, accents were a problem for the BBC, provoking criticism of the Corporation's elite, metropolitan voice. The BBC also began to consider the role of broadcasting in the dependent colonies and in Britain's informal empire, and played a role in the founding of All India Radio (AIR) and other colonial broadcasting authorities.

This chapter reflects on ‘remembrance’ after the Great War — memorials and services. It notes a new modern world and the advent of radio broadcasting. It considers currents of belief and unbelief. Internationally, Christian-Jewish relations, missionary activity and imperialism, and the issues posed by the new Europe come to the fore. The 1926 General Strike is placed in the context of contemporary Church social and economic thinking, but the political limitations are exposed. In England, both the new Church National Assembly and the Revised Prayer Book controversy of 1927-8 reveal church-state tensions. The partition of Ireland, British-Irish church and political relations, and church-state relations in the new Irish structures (Irish Free State and Northern Ireland), are considered. Disestablishment in Wales and post-war change in Scotland place these developments in context. Evidence of social division and political dislocation partly explains renewed interest in church unity, but no rapid change is evident despite the reunification of the Church of Scotland.

This chapter focuses on the emergence of wireless amateurs and broadcasting professionals in Great Britain in 1920. It argues that the enthusiasm of the amateurs filed the gap between the cessation of the Marconi Company's experiments and the authorization of short regular broadcast programmes of words and music in January 1922. It explains that the Postmaster-General rescinded his veto on broadcasting after receiving a petition signed by representatives of sixty-three wireless societies with more than 3,000 members. After the decision of the Postmaster-General, the Marconi Company was able to launch its first broad on February 14, 1922 in Writtle, which served as the nucleus of the brain trusts of the technical side of British broadcasting.

This chapter describes the activities of the Marconi Company's people at the Writtle broadcasting station in England and compares them with their rivals. It discusses the technical difficulties of the staff and the problems of the broadcast programmes. It also mentions the Marconi Company's broadcasting at an experimental station at Marconi House in the Strand, and describes the programme and technical equipment of this station, called 2LO.

This chapter discusses parallel dense matrix computations, in particular the solution of linear systems by LU decomposition with partial pivoting. A general Cartesian scheme is presented for the distribution of matrices. Based on BSP cost analysis, the square cyclic distribution is proposed as particularly suitable for matrix computations such as LU decomposition or Gaussian elimination. The chapter introduces two-phase broadcasting of vectors, which is a useful collective communication method for sending copies of matrix rows or columns to a group of processors. These techniques are demonstrated in the specific case of LU decomposition, but they are applicable to almost all parallel matrix computations. The performance of the parallel LU program is examined in detail using a graphical BSP profiler.

This chapter develops the historical consideration of Shanghai opera begun in Chapter 1, looking now at huju in mid-20th-century Shanghai. Other than the appearance of female performers, in the period from approximately 1920 to 1949, there was an expansion of troupes with a concomitant increase in specialization; the rise of new performance venues and media, most obviously recorded sound and radio broadcasting; the influence of other artistic forms, such as the spoken drama and film; and changing modes of musical learning. Distinctive schools of performance were created, several of which remain significant in terms of musical style today. Discussion of these factors is enclosed within an examination of musical place.

This chapter discusses the work of the Sykes Committee in evaluating the broadcasting sector in Great Britain. It describes the organization of the committee, headed by Sir Frederick Sykes, which included ten members, four of which were members of Parliament. One of the contentious recommendations of the committee is that a single broadcasting license should be substituted for the existing experimental and broadcasting licences. While the committee paid a warm tribute to the ability of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), it did not endorse the existing system of finance by royalties.

During the inter-war years, BBC officers sought to encourage the spread overseas of the British approach to broadcasting, and prevent the American model of commercial network broadcasting from being adopted around the British world. This chapter examines the nature of those two models, and how hybrid versions were devised in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The chapter also looks at how the BBC sought to apply key ideas about public-service broadcasting, first developed for use at home, to its overseas operations. The role of John Reith, the BBC's first director-general, is discussed. The chapter surveys how broadcasting was organized around the British Empire during the 1920s. It analyses in detail the BBC's plans of 1929 for an empire broadcasting service, and the reasons why the Imperial Conference of 1930 refused to provide funding.

This chapter, written by Steven Clayman, provides an overview of questioning in broadcast news interviews and news conferences, synthesizing the author's main findings from previous research. Clayman identifies two journalistic norms that influence the design of questions in these contexts—neutralism and adversarialism—and demonstrates the tensions that exist between these two norms. While journalists attempt to appear neutral in their questioning of politicians, they, at the same time, are meant to adopt a critical stance vis‐à‐vis public figures in accordance “with the ideal of the press as an independent watchdog.” Clayman argues that the balance struck between these two conflicting norms varies according to the proclivities of the individual interviewer, the type of news programs on which interviewers appear, and the ethos of different historical periods. Clayman ends his chapter with observations about the changing nature of journalistic questioning over the last half century in the United States.

This chapter, written by Joanna Thornborrow, examines question‐answer sequences in TV talk shows and radio call‐in programs. While these genres tend to be more conversational than other media genres such as broadcast news interviews, Thornborrow argues that they are nonetheless highly structured in terms of the organization of turn taking and the distribution of turn types. Thornborrow's primary argument is that institutional roles in these contexts are constituted through the asymmetrical distribution not only of turn types (e.g., questions versus answers) but also of question types and answer types. For example, in TV talk shows, the hosts ask questions that elicit narratives and/or opinions from lay participants, all the while maintaining their neutrality vis‐à‐vis the issues discussed. By contrast, lay participants' questions express opinions in relation to the issues being discussed.

This chapter starts out with the 1941 broadcasting ban, which made Ellington record Strayhorn originals such as Take the “A” Train, Chelsea Bridge, and Rain Check. Analysis of these works displays their main characteristics: advanced harmonies, chromatic melodies, a tight structural design, and a clear compositional concept, partly based on classical techniques. The chapter then turns to the first major Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration: Jump for Joy. A study of unused, vanguard 1941-2 works follows, including Blue Star and Pentonsilic. The final section summarizes Strayhorn’s importance in those years: he wrote or co-wrote some of the Ellington band’s stalwarts, he revitalized or fleshed out other pieces, and he arranged most of the band’s pop material. Strayhorn added an entirely new stylistic wing to the Ellington building, of which Ellington was still believed to be the sole architect.

This chapter examines how the landscape of American broadcasting in the second half of the twentieth century evolved from a situation in which values of liberal independence acted as a front for the sway of network corporations to one in which the incremental fragmentation of the increasingly global media market posed a challenge to the rhetoric of national space. It considers how the spatial dynamics inherent within American culture have been represented in American writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, and Don DeLillo, and contrasts this with the perspectives of a younger generation, in particular those of David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers. It explains how the “Voice of America” (VOA), the official radio and television service of the U.S. federal government, became “the nation's ideological arm of anti-communism,” while the minds of supposedly free-thinking citizens at home were also shaped surreptitiously by the new power of electronic media.