A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD
those early days, no broadcasting market
was allowed to develop, as it had in the US,
and overt political interference was generally
kept at bay. First incorporated under royal
charter in 1927, the BBC was from its earliest
days characterised by aspirations towards
impartiality and independence, even if in
practice these aspirations were not always
perfectly fulfilled. 29
Reith wanted the BBC to be available to
everyone across the UK, and he achieved his
aim. Monopoly status gave the corporation
an almost oracular power as the voice of a
nation, a power that to this day it partially
retains. As the UK’s only broadcaster for
more than 30 years, it was synonymous with
broadcasting itself and its example influenced
everything that followed. Reith may have
felt little enthusiasm for television – and he
left the BBC not long after the launch of the
full television service in 1936 – but his notion
that broadcasting should ‘inform, educate
and entertain’ remains the cornerstone of the
public service ideal even if this ‘holy trinity”
has been interpreted in wildly different ways.
When commercial television was launched in
the 1950s, the BBC lost its monopoly, but the
principle that broadcasting should be public
service in character continued into the new
era. The ITV network of regional licences set
up in 1955 was highly regulated, and required
to provide public service programming that
was balanced, impartial and high quality in
return for the advertising monopoly that
made owning a franchise a ‘licence to print
money’. The regulator held sanctions over
scheduling and programmes and could
even revoke a licence if necessary. Minority
interest programmes were expected to be
spread across the schedule, including in peak
time, and there were limits on US imports.
The regional character of the ITV network
was drawn up very deliberately as a way of
decentralising the television industry, even
if the map was drawn more for the benefit
of marketers than with any specific feel for
regional identity or local politics.
In the face of this new competition, the BBC
had to sharpen up its act: the launch of ITN
as a rival news provider to the BBC is credited
with many innovations and improvements
in broadcast news, for example. It was the
BBC too that would be the beneficiary when
the development of television was reviewed
by the Pilkington report of 1962. As we have
already discussed, Pilkington’s scathing
criticisms of the output of commercial
television led to the BBC being granted the
third channel – BBC Two – two years later,
and to stronger regulation of the ITV network.
Against the backdrop of social liberalisation
and under Hugh Carleton Greene’s leadership,
the BBC came into its own as a public service
television broadcaster in the 1960s.
By the 1970s, the BBC-ITV duopoly was
showing its age – its one-size-fits-all
approach frustrating for programme makers
and failing to reflect the fraying of cultural
homogeneity. The time was ripe for a fourth
channel, which was the recommendation
of the Annan report in 1977. Annan felt that
television should serve the various groups
and interests in British society and not just
aspire to cater for everyone at once. Channel
4 was launched in 1982 along these lines;
its addition to the broadcasting landscape
29
For very different assessments, see, for example, Stuart Hood, On Television, London: Pluto 1997 and Paddy Scannell,
‘Public service broadcasting and modern public life’, Media, Culture & Society 11 (1989), pp. 135-166.
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