WEEK 1 : Television and Public Service Broadcasting: Industry, Institution and History

This week we have explored the history of British television, mainly the BBC and ITV as they first started out. The key readings allowed us to understand what television was like when it first started out and what things altered the way in which things happened. The lectures also taught us this along with showing us the different elements of British TV and Radio and how a lot of it was government led and therefore controlled by the them. The lecture also taught us the theories that people had towards early British TV and how different classes had access different media outlets and that it was ‘all very elitist’ in the beginning. That however has now all changed.

In Creeber’s reading he approaches the topic of the introduction and origin of the BBC and also of the commercial network system of the USA. One main point Creeber talks about is the competition the BBC faced when ITV was released, as before then BBC had been the only channel on air. ‘BBC’s freedom from commercial interests should allow it to pursue higher social and moral ideas’[1] (Creeber 2012:22) was believed to be the BBC’s strong point, as it was government led it meant that there was no need for advertisement and could focus on all of their content instead of trying to sell someone else’s product as well as their own. Creeber also talks about the fact that the BBC ‘was clearly heavily censored during the war’[2] (Creeber 2012:26) this was most probably because they wanted to make the British public believe that we were doing well, even if they were not. This shows the power that the government had over what was released to the public as they went as far as lying to reduce panic.

A reading that I found personally, by David Hutchinson, mentions that ‘There have been several defining moments in the development of broadcasting in Britain, most obviously the founding of the BBC in 1922 as a non-profit organization financed by taxation.’[3] Linking to Creeber’s article in which he mentions that when the BBC was first launched the British public would pay a small fee to be able to access it, therefore making it so that they needed no income from anywhere else, such as advertising.

Overall from this week I have learnt that the introduction of Public Service Broadcasting was a big step for Britain as it opened it up for a wider scale of opportunities and the fact that it is still going today shows us that it is has been successful in every way.

[1] Creeber, Glen (2003) The Origins of Public Service Broadcasting (British Television Before the War) in Michele Hilmes (ed.) (2003) The Television History Book. London: BFI. Pp.22-26

[2] Creeber, Glen (2003) The Origins of Public Service Broadcasting (British Television Before the War) in Michele Hilmes (ed.) (2003) The Television History Book. London: BFI. Pp.22-26

[3] HUTCHINSON, D., 1999. Remoulding public service broadcasting: the British experience. Canadian Journal of Communication, 24(1), pp. 5-24.