The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume V: Competition

Volume 5 of a study of the history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom, examining the impact of competition. It should be of interest to: institutions where media history is taught; students of British media history at postgraduate level; and general readers who are drawn to the current debates about the BBC.

`Competition'' continues the monumental history of broadcasting in the UK over a period of 20 years, from 1955 to the mid 1970s. Unlike the previous volumes it chronicles and analyses the history of the BBC in an age of competition, so inevitably contains much fascinating material on the `independent'' radio and television companies as well as the BBC. The first chapter deals with the early relationship of the BBC to these new companies, sharing their impact on the types of programmes being broadcast. The second chapter concerns Suez, the first time when there was a conflict between what the Government wanted broadcast and what the BBC felt it ought to broadcast. Chapter 3 compares BBC programmes with their rivals'' in the 1960s, and chapter 4 evaluates the effect of the new Director-General, Hugh Greene, the man who - Mary Whitehouse said - was `responsible for the moral collapse which characterized the sixties and seventies''. The remaining chapters debate the changing relationship between politicians and broadcasters, Radio Piracy, the changes to the Third Programme, the introduction of new technologies, and the state of the BBC at the time of the Jubilee and the first meetings of the Annan Committee.