Week 1 - Television and Public Service Broadcasting: Industry, Institution and History

In Creeber Glens: The Origins of Public Service Broadcasting the writing starts off by

introducing the audience to some history of of broadcasting. ‘Institutions: From

Origins to Stability’ it focuses on the more successful broadcasters to date, talking about

when “radio ruled the airwaves.” (Creeber, 2004: 22)

Over time however to avoid the UK falling in the same trap the US did having a ‘wild-west

free-for-all’ waveband they decided to create the BBC by licencing some of the major radio

manufactures soon developing its BBC Media Monopoly. (Creeber, 2003: 22). It then goes

onto look into the origins of broadcasting in the US, Creeber approaches this looking at post

World War I finding out US government shut down many amateur stations and replaced

them with state owned ones. BBC is the main study whilst CBS, ABC and ITV are secondary

sources.

Paul Long and Tim Walls: Media Studies chapter on Media histories looks at defining media

history and historiography, focusing on key terms such as: the past, history, media history,

historiography, chronology, timeline and much more.

The lecture paired hand in hand with the two readings lecture focused predominately on

the BBCs rich history and the steps it took to become the sole provider for media at a

certain time, it also explored that over time the terms defined by Paul and Tim bring us the

issue that we make the mistake thinking we are superior to our predecessors due to media

evolution (Long, 2012:453)

This shone light onto the readings I found, ‘Telecommunications Policy’ – this explored the

history of the BBC and how its been regulated over the years. Also ‘Growing Pains of

Channel 4’ revealed how channel 4 grew over the years, moving from being self-dependant

to a corporation managing to establish itself with growing audiences. However, the problem

which occurred was finding the full version of both these articles online, I imagine they go

into detail.

The reading I did find focused upon accusations made towards the BBC surrounding its

censorship of 1965s The War Game. The BBC refused to air this documentary as it was ‘too

horrifying for the medium of broadcasting’ (Chapman, 2006). Director Peter Watkins had to

fight to get the distribution rights back, when he did in the end it was concluded it was a

political conspiracy to keep the ‘truth’ of nuclear warfare off British television at the time.

(Chapman, 2006: 75-94)

References:

Centaur Communications Ltd. (2007) “CHANNEL 4: Growing pains of Channel 4” IN Marketing Week. London

Chapman, J. (2006) The BBC and the censorship of The War Game (1965). Journal of Contemporary History., 41(1), pp. 75-94.

Creeber, G (2003) The Origins of Public Service Broadcasting (British Television Before the War) in Michele Hilmes (ed.) (2003)

Datis Khajeheian (2016): 135-141 Telecommunication Policy: Communication Act Update

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) ‘Media Histories’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson.