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.     

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.     

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.     

Ghiglione,CBS's Don Hollenbeck: An Honest Reporter in the Age of McCarthyism,and Radio's Revolution: Don Hollenbeck's CBS Views the Press

This paper evaluates the evolution of community radio in postapartheid South Africa where a three-tier broadcasting system—public, commercial, and community—has replaced the monopoly of a state-run behemoth, the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The paper commences with an overview of South Africa's institutionalized culture of exclusion in the broadcasting sector and in other social spheres. A conceptual review of participatory communication precedes and provides foundation for the examination of the operations of two community radio stations located in two of South Africa's previously marginalized and disenfranchised communities. Although South Africa's adoption of community radio answers perpetual questions about the sustenance of community radio, the ongoing experience poses a few challenges.     

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.     

Books of the Month: The BBC's 50th Anniversary

Edward Pawley's BBC Engineering: 1922-1972 (London: BBC, 1972—L 7.00, or about $18.00)

Peter Black's The Biggest Aspidistra in the World (London: BBC, 1972—L2.00, or about $5.00)

BBC Handbook 1973 (London: BBC, 1972—75p, or about $1.75, paper)

British Broadcasting: 1922-1972—A Select Bibliography (London: BBC, 1972—75p. or about $1.75, paper)

Broadcasting Technology—Past, Present and Future (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, P. O. Box 8, Southgate House, Stevenage, Herts. SG1 1HQ, England, 197 2—L5.O0 or about or about $12.50, paper)

Andrew Boyle's Only the Wind Will Listen: Reith of the BBC (London:Hutchinson, 1972—L4.50, or about $11.25)

John Snagge and Michael Barsley's Those Vintage Years of Radio (London: Pitman, 1972—L3.00, or about $7.50)

Violence on Television: Programme Content and Viewer Perception (1972, 220 pp., L2.00, or about $5.00)

Charles Curran, "The BBC in the Eighties" (1972, 22 pp., gratis)

Taste and Standards in BBC Progammes: A Study by the BBC for its General Advisory Council January 1973, 11 pp., gratis

BBC Record (bi-monthly, gratis on request)

Annual Report and Accounts of the British Broadcasting Corporation (annual, cost varies but now approximates $4.00 per year)

George Hills, Broadcasting Beyond One's Frontiers (1971, 59 pp., gratis from BBC, P.O. Box 76 Bush House Strand, London WC2B 4PH)

Brian Groombridge's Television and the People: A Program for Democratic Participation (Baltimore: Penguin Educational Specials, 1972—$1.95)     

Regulating the Radio Pirates: Rethinking the Control of Offshore Broadcasting Stations Through a Maritime Perspective

Offshore broadcasting pirates, transmitting radio shows from international waters back into the borders of nation-states, have been largely examined from a media-communications perspective. Drawing on pirate stations broadcasting into Britain I argue that new insights into the regulation of this phenomenon can be formed if it is considered not only as a media-communications venture, but likewise a maritime one. Following the Marine &c. Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967, Section 42 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, and the surveillance missions which ensued, I contend that these were not only aerial strategies designed to deal with an aerial problem (that of broadcasting), but also sea-based strategies, designed to deal with a maritime problem (that of broadcasting from ships and forts at sea). I thus propose re-thinking the ways in which successive British administrations regulated the radio pirates, paving the way for an alternative understanding of this phenomenon in media history.     

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.     

Predictors of Localism in Public Television Scheduling in the United States

In the United States, public television claims itself a champion of localism. A prime-time schedule analysis of the Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) member stations establishes localism scores, and discriminant analysis finds variables that predict differences among stations. Market level variables (income, education, ethnic diversity, geographic component) and organizational level variables (Community Service Grants, membership funding, overall revenue) affect localization of member stations' schedules. This is the first empirical study utilizing a structural operationalization of localism, inclusive of all programming genres, applied to PBS member stations.     

Governing Sounds: Hate,Race, and Responsibility in Post-Apartheid Broadcasting

The bounds of permissible hate in post-apartheid broadcasting in South Africa have been shaped by the state's withdrawal from certain regulatory processes, as well as the emerging regulation by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA). The BCCSA—established, financed, and operated by South Africa's broadcasting industry—filled the regulatory void not just by governing post-apartheid hate; the BCCSA has sought to govern the racial constructs upon which hate depends. With the state's withdrawal, BCCSA officials have configured hate and race in neoliberal ways, shifting responsibility for post-apartheid hate away from apartheid's beneficiaries and toward those apartheid was intended to subjugate.     

Foreign Communications

Sue Pyne's “Current British Research on Mass Media and Mass Communication: Register of Ongoing and Recently Completed Research” (Documentation Centre for Mass Communication Research, Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, 104 Regent Rd., Leicester LE1 7LT, England---£2.00 in the UK and £2.50 outside, paper)

British broadcasting annual yearbooks (BBC and IBA)

David Ellis' Evolution of the Canadian Broadcasting System: Objectives and Realities, 1928-1968 (Canadian Government Printing Office, Mail Order Service, 270 Albert St., Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0S9 ---$3.90, paper)

John C. Merrill and Harold A. Fisher's The World's Great Dailies: Profiles of 50 Newspapers (New York: Hastings House, 1980---$18.50/9.50)

Australian media, eight recent items reviewed by Henry Mayer

Harold D. Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, and Hans Speier, eds. Propaganda and Communication in World History: Volume III, A Pluralizing World in Formation (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980---$25.00)     

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.     

‘WHAT DO YOU EXPECT OF THIS FRIEND?’

In Canada during the pre-television era, the perception of radio as an intimate medium profoundly affected the way people ordered their listening, production, performance and discussion of programming. With evidence drawn primarily from Canadian archival sources, this paper contends that radio's perceived intimacy deeply troubled those who considered themselves responsible for the physical and cultural welfare of listeners, and that Canada's early broadcasting experience provided a particularly good example of how worry could become action. Though thinking about intimacy had helped broadcasters before the mid-1930s to understand the function of radio in relation to other media, it also led the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) after its formation in 1936 to scrutinize and control commercial and unsponsored programming, advertising and public service messages alike. The CBC's self-assigned stewardship role – a reaction to plentiful and popular American programming and an emulation of the British Broadcasting Corporation and European services – pushed it toward protecting children and other listeners thought to be gullible or sensitive from programmes that abused the intimate relationship by stepping beyond established boundaries of taste or threatening the Corporation's ‘civilizing’ role.     

Historical Constitution of Public Radio Stations in Brazil

Educational, state, cultural, and university radio stations have already developed over more than 70 years of history in Brazilian radio broadcasting. Currently, there are hundreds of stations transmitting across the country, from the North to the South. Some of them—that in the 1990s included 100 broadcasting stations and among these, the oldest and nationally referenced—up to this decade operated and were referenced as a component of the educational radio system. Mainly from this period on, most of these stations began to call themselves public. And, especially due to their programming, they have been attempting to define themselves within the profile of public radio stations. The purpose of this article is to uncover the historical construction of this group of radio broadcasting stations, by means of a timeframe, from the advent of the non-commercial segment in the 1930s until today. It reconstructs referential models and presents main threads and features of the programming of these stations throughout these seven decades. In this way, it will also evince how Brazil is constructing its model of public radio.     

Loose lips on the air: The BBC's wartime radio blunder

In wartime, governments must develop methods of controlling information. During World War II, for the first time, the British government had to invent policies about speech that could be broadcast on radio. Problems inevitably surfaced. One occurred in 1943 during a transatlantic hookup, when a BBC presenter quoted General Montgomery whom she had seen at a London nightclub and whose whereabouts were classified. The mistake provides insight into three wartime phenomena: British censorship, the government's public relations efforts, and the emerging power of the BBC.     

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.