BBC Experiments in Local Radio Broadcasting 1961–62

In the early 1960s, the BBC was given the opportunity to demonstrate that it had the skills and resources to create localized broadcasting, by organizing a series of experimental stations across the UK. Although the output was not heard publicly, the results were played to the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, who were deliberating about the future direction of radio and television. Using archival research, featuring contemporary BBC documents, this paper argues that these experimental stations helped senior managers at the BBC to harness technological innovation with changing attitudes in society and culture, thus enabling them to formulate a strategy that put the BBC in the leading position to launch local radio a few years later in 1967.     

Queer in Your Ear: Connecting Space,Community, and Identity in LGBT BBC Radio Programs, 1992–2000

This article analyses two long-running gay and lesbian radio programs from the BBC from the 1990s to highlight different approaches to notions of identity and definition, based on items that focused on interactions with physical space, both public and private. The weekly program Gay and Lesbian London broadcast in London on BBC GLR94.9 contained items that constructed a different relationship between gay identity and locations, compared to Gaytalk on BBC GMR, and its relationship with Manchester. By exploring the significance of gay and lesbian radio in relation to ideas around community, and its relationship with the editorial narrative, the paper argues there is fluidity between community and identity. The subsequent analysis of the radio output in the two programs focuses on the intersection between spatial relationships and sexuality. Content from the Manchester program foregrounded the prominence of the city’s commercial area, the Gay Village, in queer lives, while in London, domesticity and dispersed community apart from the gay scene dominated the narrative. The way these two programs mediated the relationship between communities of listeners and their locations throws light on gay and lesbian experiences during an important period of social and political change.     

谁在操纵BBC——公众?政府?——透视英国政府关于BBC公共广播改革的“绿皮书”

英国政府就BBC颁布的“绿皮书”(近12万字,全称为“BBC皇家管理宪章分析———一个独立于政府的强大的BBC”),由三大部分20个问题组成。它为BBC的运营做了详细的规划。本文透过BBC“绿皮书”,分析了BBC董事会分解的原因和背景,同时解答了广为人们关注的诸多问题:BBC托管真的能在未来代表付执照费者的利益吗?BBC能够履行其责任并有权利批准预算和计划吗?“绿皮书”公布之后各方的反应如何?BBC真的独立于政府吗?     

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.     

THE BLOGGING BBC

Blogging has shifted from an activity largely taking place outside established media to a practice appropriated by professional journalists. This study explores how BBC News has incorporated blogging in its journalism, looking at the internal debates that led to the adoption of blogs and charting how they became a core part of the corporation's news output. Using a case study approach, it examines the impact of blogging on BBC editorial values and considers how journalists have sought to maintain their authority in a digital media environment by integrating a new form of journalism within existing norms and practices. The BBC offers a unique case study as its long-standing editorial values of accuracy, impartiality and fairness appear at odds with the notion of blogs as immediate, uncensored and unmediated. The research reveals that blogs emerged initially as an activity peripheral to the main newsgathering functions of the organisation and were rapidly transformed into key mechanisms for communicating analysis and commentary to the public. It contends that, for now, blogging has had a greater impact on the style, rather than substance, of BBC journalism. While the systems whereby journalists deliver information have evolved, the attitudes and approaches have, so far, remained relatively static.     

Book Review—Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith,Dirty Discourse: Sex and Indecency in American Radio

For most of the 20th century, international broadcasting was characterized by state-run broadcasts carried over shortwave radio. Such broadcasting was at the core of the Cold War and World War II, as well as the decade leading up to World War II. After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the geopolitical context that had structured international broadcasting for so long dissolved, allowing for the possibility of significant changes in international broadcasting. One of these changes since the end of the Cold War is the development of Web radio. The year 1995 marks the point when broadcasting over the Web began in earnest. Included in this movement were a number of the primary broadcasters who had been, and still were, active in international shortwave broadcasting. Then, in 2001, after gradually reducing shortwave output to North America, Australia, and New Zealand, the BBC World Service terminated official shortwave broadcasts to these areas. In place of shortwave, listeners were directed to receive BBC World Service programming primarily through Web broadcasts and secondarily through local AM/FM rebroadcasts. The announcement of the termination of these shortwave broadcasts provoked a large and vocal opposition to the cuts from shortwave listeners, professionals in international broadcasting, and even the British Parliament. This article documents the BBC World Service's announcement as well as the reaction it generated.     

BBC Radio Ulster: Public Service Radio in Northern Ireland’s Divided Society

BBC radio has been broadcast in Northern Ireland since shortly after the establishment of the country in the early 1920s. Throughout this period it has been faced by the challenge of how to deliver public service radio in a divided society, one that has for many years experienced violent conflict. Today as BBC Radio Ulster, the station has the highest audience reach of any BBC network radio service or those nations services in Scotland and Wales. This article outlines how BBC policy serves to deliver this performance, by examining a BBC Trust Service Review in relation to culture and diversity.     

Dial the Difference—How and Why BBC Local Radio and Independent Local Radio Developed Different News Services

This article is principally concerned with how and why these 2 types of radio news developed. It discusses the culture, ethos and practices of the 2 services and, in particular, if and how each was influenced by the other. Much of the article is concerned about how the new commercial stations developed practices and styles that were consciously different from, and in some cases in direct opposition to, those at the BBC, both nationally and locally. The article argues that it was the BBC which adopted and integrated commercial radio’s style and practices, rather than, as is often supposed, the other way around.     

BBC Portuguese Service during World War II

This article analyses the editorial line of the BBC Portuguese Service during World War II, presenting evidence of how the output of the broadcasts was influenced by the need of the Foreign Office to maintain a good relationship with the authoritarian regime led by Oliveira Salazar. Focusing on the internal guidelines that ruled the Service, this history demonstrates how Portuguese language broadcasts never threatened the survival of the regime that ruled in Portugal, despite the fact that towards the end of the war the station was used as a weapon to pressure Salazar to give in to British demands, namely to end exports of tungsten to Germany. A discussion is presented on the difficult task the Portuguese Service had to accomplish throughout the war: to praise a dictatorship while promoting British views on the war.     

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.     

Revisiting Transnational Broadcasting

This article introduces a collection of original papers and research project reports considering the history of the BBC foreign-language services prior to, and during, the Second World War. The communication between the British government and foreign publics by way of mass media constituted a fundamental, if often ignored, aspect of Britain's international relations. From the 1930s onwards, transnational broadcasting, that is, broadcasting across national borders, became a major element in the conduct of Britain's diplomacy, and the BBC was employed by the government to further its diplomatic, strategic and economic interests in times of rising international tension and conflict. A review of the literature on the BBC's foreign-language broadcasts sets the stage for the presentation of the articles that compose this special issue of Media History.     

The Greater London Council’s Initiatives: A Precursor of British Asian Radio Broadcasting

By the mid-1970s, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Independent Local Radio (ILR) sector started catering to the local Asian migrant listener community in England, by producing Asian radio programming output in English and in Asian languages such as Hindi and Urdu. In the 1980s, the Greater London Council (GLC) came up with its own initiatives to cater to London’s Asian migrant community. This article describes GLC’s initiatives through its Community Radio Unit, which encouraged independent British Asian radio broadcasting in England.     

BBC Radio Leicester in 1976: Kick Starting British Asian Radio

This article examines how, in 1976, BBC Radio Leicester revolutionized broadcasting to Asian communities in England by launching a 5-nights a week Asian program. Aimed at helping to diffuse the toxic racial atmosphere in the city and improve community relations, the program proved to be a huge success and a direct forerunner of the BBC Asian Network.     

BBC's Wednesday Magazine and Arts Television for Women

Wednesday Magazine (1958–1963) was an innovative BBC television afternoon arts and culture strand produced by the specialist BBC women's programme unit, which had been built up and nurtured by the first dedicated head of women's programmes Doreen Stephens, who was appointed in 1953. Stephens was responsible for the development of a diverse and extensive range of women's programming; highly ambitious in the offering that it presented to its female viewers. This article will examine the series Wednesday Magazine exploring the wealth of arts and culture items broadcast, whilst considering the programme's significance in critical histories of both women's programming and arts television. The article will also make an intervention into historical debates around what constituted women's television in Britain.     

The BBC,Group Listening,and ‘The Changing World’

This article examines the content and impact of a series of BBC lecture courses broadcast in the early 1930s. The Group Listening Scheme was established in 1928: experts working in a variety of fields were invited to broadcasts a series of evening lectures. Adults across the country were encouraged to gather for the lectures and stay on afterwards to discuss them. ‘The Changing World’ consisted of half-hour talks over six evenings a week during a six-month period. The broadcasts amounted to a two-term syllabus, with 24 talks devoted to each of the six themes (the modern dilemma, industry and trade, literature and art, science, the modern state, and education and leisure). This article will sample some of these broadcasts and explore the listener response to the series in order to reach an understanding of the BBC’s achievements in adult education during the interwar period.     

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.     

Who are We?

This article scrutinises the usage of the words “we”, “us” and “our” by BBC radio journalists when reporting and discussing news and current affairs. By analysing reports and discussions on the “flagship” Radio 4 Today, a daily news programme whose centrality to political and public debate is widely recognised, the article raises substantive questions about clarity, accuracy and impartiality in senior broadcast journalists’ choice of language. In exploring the assumptions which may underlie the invocation, via such language choices, of an implied community, and against the backdrop of the BBC's commitment to impartiality in its Editorial Guidelines, the article identifies numerous recent examples where the choice of words and identifiers can be seen as undermining the BBC's impartiality and which show several of its senior journalists adopting the first-person plural “we” when reporting on matters of public policy. The findings therefore indicate a general need to codify norms which are seen to integrate the need for accuracy as well as impartiality, and for these norms to take into account issues which might at first glance seem to be inconsequential, micro-level features of the journalists’ language. The evidence suggests that more fine-grained guidelines on permissible circumstances for BBC journalists’ usage of “we” and “our” need revising and disseminating in the light of these findings.     

The BBC Polish Service During the Second World War

During the Second World War the broadcasts of the BBC Polish Service became a major source of information in occupied Poland. Although listening to, or possessing, a radio was punishable by death under the German occupation, Poles were willing to risk their lives in order to hear the news from London. For many, the BBC remained the only contact with the outside world, whilst listening itself became a symbol of resistance. The Polish Service was required to follow the official line of British government's policy, presenting a positive picture of the USSR. Anything considered anti-Soviet was expunged. Given that the BBC European Service was designed as an instrument of British propaganda, the Polish Service was recognised as a powerful medium in territorial and political disputes between Poland and the USSR.     

The American Origins of BBC Local Radio

In November 1967 the first BBC Local Radio station was launched, following a successful campaign to establish the service by “founding father” Frank Gillard. He had been strongly influenced by what he had seen during a tour of U.S. broadcasters in 1954. Radio historians often cite 1 Pennsylvania station, WVPO, as having particularly impressed him. But little is known about WVPO and less still is known of the other stations, which could share some credit for influencing Gillard. Using local newspaper reports and documents held at the BBC’s Written Archive Centre, this paper looks at the American influence on BBC Local Radio.