BBC, a single company, licenced by the Post Office, financed by an annual licence fee:

British solution to wavelength scarcity

Broadcasting - a social invention

Lord Northcliffe, (press baron), promotional stunt for The Daily Mail - broadcasts Dame Nellie Melba

PO receives approx 100 applications for a broadcasting license

Limited spectrum space problems solved by PMG persuading rival manufacturers to invest jointly in a small broadcasting station

1923 Sykes Committee on BBC finance

"The wavebands in any country must be regarded as a valuable form of public property and the right to use them for any purpose should be given after full and careful consideration. Those which are assigned to any particular interest should be subject to the safeguards necessary to protect the public interest in the future."

1925 Crawford Committee

Reith's manifesto for PSB system:

Advocated public service as a cultural, moral and educative force for the improvement of knowledge, taste and manners

But radio also had a political and social function - the formation of an informed and reasoned public opinion as an essential part of the political process in a mass democratic society.

Finally Reith defended "brute force of monopoly" as essential guarantee of BBC’s ability to develop as a public service in the national interest. Favoured changing the BBC’s status from a company to corporation

BBC legitimised its broadcasting by reference to the cultured elite who educated and informed from the studios.

Reflected in programme policy based on assumption of cultural homogeneity - not that every one was the same but that culture was single and undifferentiated.

Reith determined that the audience should encounter everything that broadcasting could offer

Programming actively sought to ensure that listeners heard the serious as well as the trivial.

"It is occasionally indicated to us that we are apparently setting out to give the public what we think they need and not what they want - but few know what they want and very few what they need."

Variety of programming was not driven by attempt to cater for different audience groups but by the changing moods of the average listener

Royal broadcasts considered the triumph of outside broadcasting

BBC and political independence.

General Strike

"Assuming the BBC is for the people and that the Government is for the people, it follows that the BBC must be for the Government in this crisis too." - Reith

Reith seeks to further enhance public trust in the BBC's "authentic impartial news".

Yet essentially adopts government line on issues as diverse as anticommunism and appeasement

BBC and War

War forces reconsideration of paternalistic tone – "it represented them as a liberal, compassionate, reforming administrator might have seen them." (Curran and Seaton)

Announcers accents and names; populist shows

Wartime organisation of the BBC survived into peacetime

Move away from a view of society as an aggregate of individuals towards seeing it more as a set of particular groups with separate needs.

Wartime broadcasting informed by new psychology of the listener. Need to produce programmes for specific audiences

Role of the BBC changed - from guiding audiences towards the "correct" tastes to identifying audience needs.

Reflected in

The Third Programme - to broadcast highest possible cultural material, serious documentaries, education programmes, in-depth news analysis etc.

The Home Programme - populist but intended to "imperceptibly raise the standard of taste, entertainment, outlook and citizenship."

The Light Programme - diversion.

Competition

1947 Beveridge Report - recommends continuing BBC Monopoly

1951 - Tory Govt. accepts commercial broadcasting

(Pushed by TV Set Manufacturers, Talent Agencies, Advertisers.)

Lord Woolton - ITV would promote industry, commerce and the free market

Consistently asserted (then and since) that commercial broadcasting would revolutionise television broadcasting. Did it?

BBC television characterised as run by bureaucrats - but suceeded in creating national service

BBC had already faced external and internal competition

Arguably BBC and ITV duopoly limited innovation

Did ITV decimate BBC ratings? Won 80% of audience with two channels but by 1960 less than 60% of viewers had such sets.

In terms of actual content - ITV closer to the BBC than expected due to:

1954 Independent Television Act Requirements (ITA)

No other models available

Distinctions - ITV more variety, BBC - more dox, current affairs

ITV reinvents news presentation