In the hundredth year of the British Broadcasting Corporation, historian Simon J. Potter looks back over the hundred year history, asking if the BBC is really the 'voice of Britain', and what comes next for British public broadcasting.
2022 marks the centenary year of the British Broadcasting Corporation. As Britain's most famous and influential broadcaster, the BBC faces a range of significant challenges to the way it operates, and perhaps to its existence, from the government but also from a rapidly changing media environment. Historian Simon J. Potter explores the hundred year history of this corporation, drawing out the roots of these challenges and understanding how similar threats - hostile politicians and prime ministers, the advent of television - were met and overcome in the past.
Potter poses the question 'Is the BBC the voice of Britain?', exploring its role in changing wider culture and society, promoting particular versions of British national identity, both at home and overseas. The BBC has long claimed to speak for the British people, to the British people, and with a British accent, and Potter explores how far these claims have been justified with this exciting new study which covers the establishment of the BBC Empire Service and the World Service, and focuses on people, programmes, and politics to understand the Corporation's engagement with changing ideas about culture and society in Britain, including issues of class, gender, and race.
Author(s): Simon J. Potter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 320
City: Oxford
Cover
THIS IS THE BBC: Entertaining the nation, speaking for britain? 1922–2022
Copyright
Dediation
Preface
Contents
Introduction: The BBC’s century
1: The Company, 1922–1926
Origins
Getting started
A public utility
Reithian broadcasting
Making programmes
Conclusions
2: The Corporation, 1927–1939
A royal charter
Nations and regions
Uplift and downturn
Everyday entertainment
Television
Peace, empire, and propaganda
Conclusions
3: Propaganda and war, 1939–1945
Going to war
For the Forces
Broadcasting propaganda
The Overseas Service
Controlling the BBC
Mobilizing for victory
Conclusions
4: Losing control, 1945–1959
Haley’s pyramid
External Services
Television
The end of the monopoly
Conclusions
5: Transformation and stagnation, 1960–1979
Into the Sixties
Popular and provocative television
BBC2
Outrage and inequality
Piracy and the transformation of BBC Radio
World Service
Aunty Beeb
BBC TV in the Seventies
Conclusions
6: On the market, 1980–1999
Public broadcasting in Thatcher’s Britain
Taming the BBC
Birt’s choice
Intensifying competition, extending choice
Selling Britain
Going digital
Conclusions
7: At risk, 2000–2022
Dyke’s BBC
Blair, Campbell, Gilligan, and Dyke
Selling the BBC
Securing the future?
Broadcasting global Britain
Crises of governance
Losing ground online
Defunding the BBC
Conclusions
Prospect: The BBC after broadcasting
Endnotes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Further reading
Index
