The TV News Scheduling Game: When the Face of the Newscaster Matters

From the late 1920s, all radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom was undertaken by a public sector broadcaster—the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Television was also the exclusive preserve of the BBC until the mid-1950s, when advertiser-supported commercial stations came into existence. This form of competition for audiences, but not for finance, between two broadcasting sectors—called by some a 'comfortable duopoly'—persisted until the late 1980s when the government permitted competitive entry by cable and satellite operators, introduced competition for advertising revenue between terrestrial stations, and placed commercial television broadcasting on a more competitive footing by introducing tendering for franchises. As these changes have occurred, the BBC has maintained its traditional system of regulation and has continued to operate under a Royal Charter. Although the expiry of the current Charter at the end of 1996 has provoked a debate about the role of the BBC, the government has stated its intention to renew the Charter for another 10 years. It seems likely that, until the year 2002 at least, the current system of regulating and financing public Service broadcasting in the United Kingdom will remain intact. However, the proliferation of channels represents a threat to the BBC's audience base. There may also be difficulties in combining within the same organization a public service mission and highly commercial activities, undertaken in a very competitive world market.     

The Spectacle of Protest and Punishment: Newspaper coverage of the Melksham Weavers' Riot of 1738

The goal of this article is to demonstrate and analyse how two public broadcasters with cultural and technical mandates to foster identity formation, the BBC in Britain and the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) in Canada, came to terms with the fact that the British and Canadian identities were different, and growing more so, in the 1930s. The focus is on how two BBC officials, Malcolm Frost and Felix Greene, assessed the public broadcasting experiment in Canada and gradually came to understand that the CRBC, while a Dominion broadcaster and potential distributor of the Empire Service, was also a North American broadcaster striving to gain legitimacy and credibility with Canadian listeners accustomed to the popular commercial programming of the large American networks. It concludes with a discussion of Greene's role in the creation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the appointment of Canadian-born BBC official Gladstone Murray as its first general manager.     

Clogging the Machinery: the BBC's experiment in science coordination, 1949–1953

In 1949, physicist Mark Oliphant criticised the BBC's handling of science in a letter to the Director General William Haley. It initiated a chain of events which led to the experimental appointment of a science adviser, Henry Dale, to improve the ‘coordination’ of science broadcasts. The experiment failed, but the episode revealed conflicting views of the BBC's responsibility towards science held by scientists and BBC staff. For the scientists, science had a special status, both as knowledge and as an activity, which in their view obligated the BBC to make special arrangements for it. BBC staff, however, had their own professional procedures which they were unwilling to abandon. The events unfolded within a few years of the end of the Second World War, when social attitudes to science had been coloured by the recent conflict, and when the BBC itself was under scrutiny from the William Beveridge's Committee. The BBC was also embarking on new initiatives, notably the revival of adult education. These contextual factors bear on the story, which is about the relationship between a public service broadcaster and the external constituencies it relies on, but must appear to remain independent from. The article therefore extends earlier studies showing how external bodies have attempted to manipulate the inner workings of the BBC to their own advantage (e.g. those by Doctor and Karpf) by looking at the little-researched area of science broadcasting. The article is largely based on unpublished archive documents.     

Airtime for Newcomers

This article explores the British and West German public service radio’s abilities to reflect on and to address the specific needs and expectations of migrant groups in their programmes between the 1960s and 1980s. Mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion alike can be investigated here. Empirically, it is based on comparisons of radio broadcasts on and for different immigrant communities, produced by BBC Radio Leicester on/for the post-war Asian migrants in England and by West German public service broadcasting on/for ‘Gastarbeiter’ (foreign workers) as well as for ‘Spätaussiedler’ (German repatriates from East Europe). Radio is studied as an agent of identity management and citizenship education. Not only did radio talk about migrants and migration to introduce these topics and the newcomers to the local population. It also offered airtime to selected migrant communities to cater for their needs and interests as well as to facilitate their difficulties of adjusting to an unfamiliar environment.     

Public Service Broadcasting in the United States

In the past few years, American public broadcasting has faced severe pressures from conservative politicians, the challenge of preparing for new technologies, and fickle audiences. Yet it may be as well-off today as it ever has been, in part because public broadcasting has always been on the margins of American broadcasting. It has been in more parlous circumstances and in fact has certain advantages at this point. Public broadcasting in the United States is not essentially a public service broadcaster, although it sometimes acts as one. It thus has a certain flexibility in a time of great change. American public broadcasting is not a unified structure, but an ad hoc assemblage of stations united both by the fluctuating patronage of the institutions that fund them and in their cultivating the capricious support of the audiences they serve.     

Repatriated Germans and ‘British Spirit’

Following the end of the Second World War, the ideals of public service broadcasting that had first been exemplified by the BBC came to lay the groundwork for a new type of broadcasting system in Northern Germany. This led to intensive discussions between British Military Officers and their German counterparts about the principles of public service broadcasting. Repatriated Germans came to play a crucial role. Having worked for the BBC German Service during their years of exile, some of them helped to nurture a new generation of democratic journalists. Focusing on these men, this article reveals the difficulties in transferring and adapting public service ideals. Making use of a wide range of sources, we highlight the multifaceted roles of the repatriated Germans, as both intermediaries and transmitters of public service broadcasting. We show how many of them came to play a pivotal role in resisting pressure from conservative forces in West German society.     

浅析美欧公共电视发展的法律环境

本文讨论的是美国民营公共电视机构所处的法律环境,以及欧盟各国对公共电视发展的法律支持,旨在提供对国外公营广电的基本了解。     

Development Broadcasting in India and Beyond: Redefining an Old Mandate in an Age of Media Globalization

This study examines the fate of the development model of public broadcasting in the face of rapid global media commercialization. Using the Indian broadcaster Doordarshan as an example, the authors illustrate how a public media outlet with a development mandate has responded to new pressures and examine the consequences for development broadcasting in general. This inquiry challenges not only the strategies of this broadcaster but also some of the assumptions by media scholars regarding development broadcasting. The study concludes by advocating a new type of development broadcasting that establishes a distinct brand and plays a vital role in creating an informed citizenry.     

The continental marketplace: Authority,advertisers, and audiences in Canadian news broadcasting, 1932–1936

The development of radio news broadcasting in Canada, as in the United States, was delayed by bitter conflict between newspaper and radio interests. This paper looks at news broadcasting in Canada between 1932 and 1936, during the era of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), Canada's first public broadcasting body. It focuses mainly on authority, advertisers, and audiences with respect to the news broadcasting policy and practices of the CRBC itself, but it places these issues in the context of the mixed public/ private and Canadian/American environment in which the Commission operated and raises questions about the narrow margins of maneuver available to the public broadcaster then and now.     

Digitalizing Diversity: Public Service Strategies and Television Program Supply in Finland in 2002

In this article, we examine content supply as a public service strategy in Finland, one of the forerunner countries of digital terrestrial television in Europe. Regarding digitalization, European broadcasters face several options from full service to a specialized mission. The case at hand is the first full digital year of 2002 in Finland. The focus is on one of the traditional principles of public service broadcasting, the diversity of programming, as it is realized in the new, digital, multichannel environment. We examine content diversity by comparing channel profiles as well by analyzing indexes of the horizontal and vertical breadth and dissimilarity of programming. In a market of two public service and two commercial analogue generalist TV channels, the five new thematic digital channels have radically altered the amount of system-wide supply, but the diversity of programming has not suffered. This is due to the specializing strategy of the public service broadcaster. Its approach to focus on factual programming is clear in its digital output but can be detected in moderation also in its analogue supply. However, with the expected increase on commercial digital supply also in terrestrial networks, there is the possibility of the generalist public service broadcaster to turn into a fragmented one.     

No Longer One-to-Many: How Web 2.0 Interactivity is Changing Public Service Radio’s Relationship with its Audience

The relationship between public radio and its audience has undergone significant change since the adoption of Web 2.0 technology. Web 2.0 allows an audience to interact easily and speedily with a public service broadcaster, forming an inclusive, two-way listening environment. This contrasts with the traditional one-way model of public broadcasting. This research project used New Zealand public radio broadcaster RNZ National as a case study. The phenomenon was studied from the perspective of those who listen to content, and those who create it. Findings include the ready adoption of Web 2.0 technology by the audience and the validation of that participation by RNZ National hosts and producers.     

The Great British Broadcasting Competition

The business reasons behind the decision to start the BBC television service in 1936 remain unclear despite the volume of literature on the subject. Additionally, controversy has persisted regarding foreign involvement in what has been considered a fully British system. What is apparent from the literature is an emphasis placed on the technical development, generally under-representing other aspects of television. A new multi-disciplinary approach is proposed and applied here to explore the circumstances around the emergence of the service, together with hitherto neglected industry aspects: the business and commercial issues relating to broadcaster and suppliers. This paper highlights the primacy of the BBC television service as providing the first instance of what became a common template for live television creation whilst illustrating, with new evidence, foreign influence on British engineering development for the BBC service.     

Some values to the broadcaster of election campaign broadcasting

A great deal has been said about the value of political broadcasting to the public and to the politician. However, very little has been written about its effect upon the broadcaster. The following study was performed in an effort to arrive at some understanding of what monetary, public relations, and other values election campaign broadcasts have to the broadcast station manager or licensee.     

The Distributional Effects of State-Financed Broadcasting

This article examines distributional effects of the Irish public service broadcaster, RTE. Conditional probabilities of usage of, satisfaction with, willingness to pay for, and perception of improvement of, RTE's broadcasting services are estimated and compared. The regressive structure of the license fee funding mechanism is shown to represent a transfer toward females, those living outside Dublin, and those aged 35+. However, there is little support for a policy change toward a less regressive structure.     

图书馆权利案例研究——美国宗教组织诉图书馆限制会议厅使用案分析

美国信仰中心教会福音部诉康特拉克斯塔县立图书馆安条克分馆一案告知人们,公共图书馆不应因个人或团体的宗教信仰及其活动内容而限制其使用公共图书馆的会议厅。这一案件反映出公共图书馆在提供会议厅使用时存在理念与实际上的冲突,启发公共图书馆用户应该积极维权,提醒公共图书馆的管理者要在坚持公平原则的基础上谨慎地制订服务政策。     

Canadian Marconi: CFCF Television From Signal Hill to the Canadian Television Network

Canadian Marconi's CFCF was a focal point in Canadian broadcasting history. American students have a sense of RCA's historical role in US. telecommunications, but know little of the Canadian Marconi legacy. The Canadian Marconi Corporation was like RCA in the United States. It grew with technological advances, developed around established legal limitations, and was shaped by its community. It was influential in the Canadian system, the CN private Canadian network, and RTNDA-Canada. CFCF truly stands out in Canadian broadcast history.     

Part of imperial communications

From 1934 to 1941, three British-governed radio stations were established in the Middle East: Egyptian State Broadcasting (ESB) in Cairo (1934), the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS) in Jerusalem (1936), and the Near East Broadcasting Service (NEBS) in Jaffa (1941). These three stations were modeled on the BBC and run as colonial or imperial stations—but they were also considered national stations. As a result, they operated as hybrid entities with overlapping and sometimes conflicting mandates. Through the three case studies—a contentious hire at the ESB, the PBS' ‘Jerusalem Direct News Service’, and the NEBS' Islamic broadcasts—this article charts the evolving relationship between Great Britain and its Arab-world radio stations, examining these three stations in tandem tension between national and regional broadcasting mandates, as well as the challenge that managing each station raised for British officials in the UK and in-country. It moves away from a focus on the disembodied spheres of ideology and propaganda, and toward the messy administrative decisions that reflected British officials' on-the-ground efforts to navigate the administrative control and programming decisions in the perplexing world of semi-independent radio broadcasting stations in the Middle East. It closes by noting that while UK-based British officials saw these three stations as operating under the aegis of British governance and on the model of the BBC, the ESB and the PBS, in particular, reflected and projected not a British imperial identity but an Egyptian and a Palestinian nationalist one.     

The Contradictions of Public Service and Commercialisation in Mid-century South African Broadcasting

This study focuses on the 1950 introduction of the commercial radio station, Springbok Radio, into the South African Broadcasting Corporation, a Commonwealth inspired public service broadcaster (PSB) resulting from the Schoch Commission (1948). The paper argues that the introduction of Springbok Radio was prompted by the financial crisis faced by the Corporation; the broadcaster’s attempt to broaden its appeal beyond elite audiences serviced by PSB; and the national imperative to centralise and control the broadcast sector by dominating it completely. Thus, the study examines the motifs of PSB versus commercialisation; high culture versus popular culture; and nationalism versus internationalisation.     

Visualizing Critique: Montage as a practice of alternative media

Postwar religious broadcasting in Britain sought to accommodate diverging aims, with public radio as the established arena for Christian evangelism and yet also an emerging forum for dissenting viewpoints in an increasingly faith-averse age. A transitional figure within literary modernism, E. M. Forster embraced broadcast radio in the effort to disseminate ‘culture,’ even as he sought to make the ethical turn away from culture as religious. Since the 1930s, Forster had consistently supported the airing of such ‘minority’ viewpoints; after the war, his arguments for ethical alternatives to Christian broadcasting were bolstered by the rise of postwar ecumenism and the Beveridge reforms. Forster's defense of humanist broadcasts given by Margaret Knight in January 1955 effectively highlights the formated nature of on-air debates at the expense of unpopular viewpoints, even as BBC policy-makers were actively considering abandoning existing practices in favor of stand-alone ethical rebuttals to accepted Christian viewpoints.