The Future of Broadcasting

A Report Presented to the Social Morality Council, October 1973

Social Morality Council

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415839945
• eBook ISBN: 9781135036812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

At the time when this book was originally published, broadcasting in Britain had become a huge industry undergoing major changes. There were questions over the release of a new television channel, and commercial radio.

This Report was commissioned to aid the citizen at the receiving end of the new technologies who could feel very remote from the plans and decisions. It represents a wide range of views and interests, to examine the important questions which were arising from broadcasting, from the point of view of the public benefit. It sets out clearly and fully the background and the arguments in broadcasting debate.

The report made many interesting and far-reaching recommendations, and looking back this reveals a lot about the inner processes of the broadcasting organisations of the time. This is a fascinating glimpse of past questions and solutions in which parellels can be drawn with the present time.

1 THE GOALS OF BROADCASTING

I believe television is going to be the test of the

modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see

beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either

a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace

or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or

fall by television — of that I am quite sure.

E. B. WHITE, 1938

The British Broadcasting Company, from 1926 the British Broadcasting Corporation, was inaugurated in 1922 and has provided domestic radio services ever since. In 1932 it began its overseas transmissions. In 1936 the television service was begun, and after closing down during the Second World War, re-opened in 1946. In 1954 the Independent Television Authority was set up by Act of Parliament to operate an alternative television service, and under its new title of Independent Broadcasting Authority will, from the autumn of 1973, oversee all commercial radio broadcasting. Within fifty years the hobby of a few private enthusiasts has grown into a vast industry and broadcasting become a pervasive factor in the life of the entire population. It seems an appropriate time to ask whether, in the light of social changes and new technical developments, the broadcasting services as we know them are pursuing the best possible goals and meeting whatever needs it is in their nature to satisfy; or whether radical changes or substantial adjustments are called for.

Television-viewing is far and away the most popular pastime in the country. Nearly half the population (Opinion Research Centre Survey, 1968) devotes most of its leisure time to viewing. Any evening of the week over seven million people will watch television and on special occasions, like the Eurovision Song Contest, the figure may rise to over twenty-five million (BBC Audience Research). The average time spent viewing is nineteen hours a week (BBC/IBA figure). The audience is roughly divided fifty-fifty between the BBC's two channels and the IBA's one. 95 per cent of all British households possess television and 20 per cent colour television, a figure which is rising.

In 1971/2 BBC 1 transmitted 4,417 hours of television, 3,671 of them in colour. BBC 2 transmitted 2,545 hours, 2,083 of them in colour. Including all regional variations, the Independent Television system as a whole provided 7,900 hours of television. In the same year the BBC provided 23,871 hours of radio transmission on its four national networks. To these figures must be added the output of the BBC's twenty local radio stations and, before long, that of the eighteen commercial radio stations which IBA expect to have in operation by the summer of 1976; and in five towns — Bristol, Greenwich, Sheffield, Swindon and Wellingborough — the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is supervising experiments in local cable television.

Not only is the sheer volume of television and radio output impressive, so too is its variety of subject matter. In theory, on one day chosen at random and allowing for regional variations, the listener/viewer could tune to programmes on: the private life of the herring gull, oil-painting, diplomacy, a nostalgic walk through the countryside, the history of Turkey, the US Senate's Un-American Activities Committee, Scottish dancing, people frightened of flying, and the painter Géricault, in addition to the usual ration of serials, feature films, educational programmes, light entertainment, plays, news and sport. In theory only, for in actual practice most people can only watch television or listen to the radio at certain periods of the day, a fact which will have some importance in later sections of this Report.

If the sheer volume, ubiquity and variety of broadcasting production is impressive so also is its cost. In 1971/2 BBC expenditure on domestic services, financed out of the licence fee, amounted to £112,424,000 and the cost of commercial services to approximately £100,000,000. One hour of television costs on average £7,000 and one hour of radio £934, but the most expensive items, such as an opera, a light entertainment spectacular, or an episode of a film series like The Persuaders, may cost as much as £100,000. In 1970 a Play for Today cost the BBC about £25,000, an episode of Dad's Army about £15,000 and a sports programme such as Grandstand about £4,000 an hour;^* inflation and rising cost would of course increase these figures considerably today. It is estimated that the capital costs of activating a fourth television channel would be in the region of £30 m. and the annual running costs, depending on the kind of service provided, between £15 m. and £30 m. Yet the costs of the broadcasting services as such are less than half of the total volume of money spent by the public on the means of reception — radio and television sets and the like.

In addition to their economic cost, the broadcasting services also make heavy demands on a national resource — airspace — which can be measured quantitively in terms of Hertz and MegaHertz. This point has been made dramatically by Brian Groombridge:^*

To send a telegram, a communications channel occupies only 200 Hz; a telephone circuit requires 3,000 Hz; but to send out a high quality television picture with sound takes up 8 million Hz (8 MHz). There is only one spectrum with a physical limit to the range of suitable frequencies. A society which invests in one television channel transmitting sound and vision in one direction, may have to do without a thousand two-way telephones or 40,000 teleprinters. Just as earth and water have to be conserved and their uses properly considered, so do radio waves.

Employees of the two broadcasting institutions number tens of thousands. In addition, the prosperity of a vast army of people ranging from those working in the manufacturing industry to freelance contributors depends on the existence of broadcasting services. Both the broadcasting institutions make intensive use of Post Office facilities and services. In short, the programmes which the public sees and hears are only the most visible part of an enormous industry with ramifications in many areas of national life.

Broadcasting therefore represents a huge financial, technical and social investment. In return it supplies a variety of social needs. Like Parliament, the Law, the Church, and the Press, the broadcasting system is now woven into the social fabric of the nation and, some would argue, exercises as much, if not more, influence upon people's lives as any of these, though the necessarily painstaking task of collecting evidence to determine the exact nature of this influence is still far from complete.

This impressionistic description of the broadcasting services as they exist leads on to another consideration: their character. The character of British broadcasting has largely been determined by the social context in which it first developed, and the dominating personality of the BBC's first Director General, John Reith. From the beginning, broadcasting was envisaged as a public service with the good of the individual and society as its paramount concern. Even when the advent of commercial television broke the monopoly enjoyed by the BBC — a public corporation established by Royal Charter — this notion of public service was defined by Act of Parliament as the first duty of the new authority, and various conditions were written into the Act to curb the use of broadcasting for commercial advantage. The concept that broadcasting must be the servant of the public still underpins all the broadcasting services in Britain, although the interpretation of this formula has undergone modification over the years. For this, not only commercial pressures but theories about society, and actual changes in the make-up of society, are responsible. In the words of Howard Newby of the BBC: ‘Broadcasting is not a matter of providing basic products for an unchanging public. Society changes, tastes alter, fashion dictates, and all in a way that no one quite understands, far less controls.’ The introduction of a network devoted to pop music, or the change from a policy of mixed programming to one providing four networks, each of a markedly different character, are examples of attempts by the BBC to accommodate shifts in public taste and social habits. But different concepts of public service can go deeper. Sir John Reith viewed society as a hierarchy, a pyramid, and believed that the task of the broadcasting services was gradually to familiarise those at the bottom with the high culture and values of an élite at the top. For this, the ‘brute force of monopoly’ was the necessary effective instrument. By the 1960s, when the BBC monopoly had been broken and society bore a more egalitarian stamp, Reith's view gave way to Sir Hugh Greene's that the broadcasting services should be a kind of market-place in which all kinds of dissentient voices could be heard. Now, although it is still scarcely more than a faint shift in the wind, the growing enthusiasm for access and participation in all areas of life is putting pressure on the broadcasting institutions to place the means of communication in the hands of those who feel they have something to say instead of reserving them for those who are professionally trained or officially invited to broadcast: in short, to break down the barrier between the élite who transmit and the mass who listen and view. It is probably a mistake to think of each of these theories of broadcasting as exclusive of the others. Each has some validity, all complement each other, and room must be found for all of them in a thorough-going service of broadcasting.

Before considering what a broadcasting service can reasonably be expected to do, it is necessary to evaluate the importance of communications within society as a whole, the nature and values of that society, and the characteristics of broadcasting precisely as a medium of communication.

Whether British society was ever dominated by a single creed and code of behaviour is highly debatable. Today, undoubtedly, it is a pluralist society — criss-crossed by a variety of cultures and subcultures, value systems, customs, habits, moral codes, religions and ideologies. Recent successive waves of immigration have meant that many British citizens do not share the common Christian inheritance. It is also a society in which ideas, enthusiasms and fashions change rapidly. In his book, The New Anatomy of Britain,^* Anthony Sampson says, for example: ‘At the beginning of the sixties such words as environment, consumers, ecology, participation, permissiveness, feedback … were hardly muttered in polite society. Now the environment has its own department, everyone is a consumer, and participation is the small change of politicians’ weekend speeches.’ And like most industrialised societies it is increasingly urban, mobile and politically, socially and technologically complex. In such a diversified society, even though it may contain a larger residue of traditional values than is sometimes supposed, it is not easy for broadcasting to support a particular hierarchy of values or to be a focus of definite cultural, religious and ethical values. At one and the same time it has a part in determining the kind of society that exists and is itself determined by the kind of society that exists.

Another feature of modern society is its dependence on systems of rapid communication. A battery of instruments of communication — books, letters, newspapers, radio, telegraph, telephone, television, telex, etc. — is to hand, while technological advances are continually adding to their number. Among these instruments radio and television are of outstanding value and importance, but the fact is sometimes overlooked that their importance is relative, and that other instruments can perform certain tasks that they cannot, or perform them better. To decide how much of the nation's wealth is to be spent on this or that system of communications as a social desideratum involves difficult social and political judgements. Is it, for example, if money is limited, more important to improve the telephone service or to provide a new television network? Or are both such vital necessities that society must be willing to forgo other social services so that both can be provided? Is the provision of communications systems more or less important to a modern society than the supply of roads, schools, hospitals and other social services, and are some forms of communication so important to society that they deserve Government subsidy even though they cannot pay their way? Such questions are not yet sufficiently familiar to admit definite answers. But the answers have a bearing on the future provision of broadcasting services.

Broadcasting is one medium of communication among many: it is distinct from, say, the telephone or the daily newspaper. Each particular medium has its own peculiar characteristics, and if, in the case of broadcasting, these are ignored, it is possible that the public will expect from its broadcasting services something which it is not in their power to provide. What then are the strengths and weaknesses of radio and television as such? As to their strengths, both can be used to communicate with a small localised or a mass audience; both can communicate to their audience a common experience, and disseminate ideas, information and entertainment with immediacy and considerable dramatic force; both can range widely — even across national frontiers — carrying messages from far afield to the intimacy of the home. Both can be used for multiple purposes to provide theatre, news services, documentaries, sport, discussion, music, etc. Both can be used in conjunction with other media — telephone, films, booklets, records — to increase their effectiveness. Radio has demonstrated an exceptional capacity to stimulate the imagination, and television to bring home realities which for many people are beyond imagining. As to the weaknesses, there is the fact that airspace is rationed and only a limited number of channels or networks can be made available. Cable transmission will eventually multiply the possible sources of broadcasting but probably not with comprehensive coverage of the country within the next decade, and even then such sources will not be infinite. Any one service or channel has only so much available airtime with competing claims upon it. Broadcasting is uniform: within a given transmission area or group of transmission areas linked for the purpose, on a particular channel the same programme, and only that programme, is receivable everywhere. Both radio and television, the latter especially, virtually demand full attention except when music is used purely as a background noise. Both are exclusive: no matter how many services are receivable, viewers and listeners can only use one at a time. Neither possesses a captive audience nor can guarantee to attract and hold all the people it attempts to reach, nor can be certain that the messages sent out are clearly understood, or that the use made of them is the use intended by the senders. Neither can be stopped in its tracks to be digested at leisure, questioned or criticised (except rather clumsily through the phone-in or studio audience); neither (leaving out of account videotape and sound cassettes) can be re-run until its matter has been mastered. The need to process and edit material imposes an intermediary between event and audience, and in so doing may impose value judgements as well. Both communicate only what can be seen and heard, and only so much of these, and, by highlighting certain details of some area of life, may in fact give a false picture of the whole. Both require technical facilities, equipment, resources and professional skills which limit their use to those who have acquired at least some minimal training, and finally, both radio and television are constrained by the human limitations in wisdom, knowledge, ingenuity, professional competence, artistry, imagination, industry, honesty and ideas of those who control and use them. In a phrase, television and radio are uniquely the media of mass communication, but not all that is worth communicating can be communicated to the mass, or be best communicated through the mass media.

The audience for radio and television comprises virtually the whole of the British public, the whole age-range, the complete social and educational spectrum — all sorts and conditions of men. Each individual within this audience possesses his own set of tastes, interests, aspirations and opinions, each his variety of moods. Yet media of mass communication — television more than radio — because they are capable of addressing huge and differentiated audiences, tend to restrict the variety of subject matter they deal with, and the transience of their messages, together with shortage of space and time, operate against depth of treatment. These tendencies stem naturally from the characteristics of the medium. They are the defects of their virtues; and both defects and virtues are inherent. They do not derive from forms of organisation or methods of finance, though the forms and methods might be such as to reinforce or guard against one or the other. Secondly, viewers and listeners have only a limited time to watch and listen, and cannot attend to more than one programme at a time, though criticisms of the broadcasting services often ignore this simple fact. If the services are judged as a whole, there are probably far more programmes that the average viewer would choose to watch than he has the opportunity to watch. Thirdly, there is no saying how any particular programme will touch the taste or mood of a particular person at a particular moment. In a recent book, McQuail, Blumler and Brown state categorically: ‘There is no … correspondence between the place on the presumed scale of cultural worth to which programme material may be assigned … and the depth of meanings that may be drawn from them by many of their most keen attenders.’^* Different individuals may use the same programme material as a means of serious instruction, an imaginative way of working out personal problems, a relief from boredom, or a stimulus to working more rapidly and cheerfully,^† Fourthly, a particular subject may be of more or less importance to an individual according to circumstances; even the most serious-minded person may, at certain times, be more concerned about an idea for a new recipe than proofs of the existence of God.

One conclusion that may be drawn from the multiplicity and variability of viewer needs, interests and responses, tells against the principle of audience maximisatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Goals of Broadcasting
• 2 The Structures of Broadcasting
• 3 Accountability
• 4 Broadcasting and Education
• Conclusion
• Summary of Recommendations
• Index