Television and Public Service Broadcasting

This is the first of several posts that I will be publishing discussing key readings that I have been given to read, as well as readings that I have found independently on my own. I will be discussing the main points that the readings are delivering and also comparing and contrasting the readings. This week’s blog post will be discussing the historiography of television as we learnt about the history of the BBC and ITV in the lecture. 

However I firstly began to read the set chapters beginning with the Media Studies book by Long, this reading gave me an idea of how to begin to search for historiographies of companies. It discusses how to go about researching and explains what limitations that we as scholars have, when investigating and producing media history. I learnt from this reading that researching historiographies, you begin to have a “broad understanding of the issues we are working with.” (Long,2012: 451)

I then read another reading I was given taken from Creeber, this reading discusses the historiography of the BBC and public service broadcasting which again gave me a greater knowledge on how to research into historiographies.  This reading looks further into the development of television and the stages that television has processed through such as how television was before the War. An aspect that I found interesting was when the reading discusses the Pilkington report that happened in 1962 as this is mentioned briefly in my next reading about the ITV; this report discusses the companies in detail.

I found a reading that explores into the historiography of the ITV by Tony Currie which made me have a further understanding on how to explore into researching the history of media organisations myself. The aspect I found interesting in this reading was that it was very similar to Creeber’s reading, as both reading discuss the history of each other as the BBC was the competition of the ITV who are talked about in Currie’s reading. This reading discusses how this competition was what advantage and disadvantage of the ITV, as it mentions how ITV was more light hearted and fun compared to the much more formal and educated television channel that was the BBC.

In terms of my own academic research I would apply a qualitative methodology to create a historical analysis for a chosen media organisation. After beginning to have an understanding of the BBC and ITV, I would like to explore into the history of one one of these media organisations to understand the development and progress. 

References:

Creeber, Glen (2003) The Origins of Public Service Broadcasting (British Television Before the War) in Michele Hilmes (ed.) (2003) The Television History Book. London: BFI. Pp.22-26

Currie, T,. (2000) A Concise History of British Television 1930-2000 (online), 2000. Avaiable from: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_concise_history_of_British_television.html?id=rgsbAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y [online], 2000. [Accessed 01 February 2013].

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) ‘Media Histories’ IN Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson. pp 448 – 481