Beyond The BBC
Author: Tim Madge
Publisher: The Macmillan Press Ltd
ISBN: 0-333-39427-5
The book examines the ways in which broadcasters take account of their audiences, through letters, phone calls, public meetings, advisory committees, audience research and other means, to ensure that public service broadcasting in the UK continues its triple purpose of educating, informing and entertaining. The research – which gave the author unprecedented access to the BBC and Channel 4 – was backed by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust. Written at a time when public service broadcasting in the UK still had meaning, it now stands as a history lesson on the moment before the collapse of BBC public service broadcasting values, which it predicted. It ends, prophetically: ‘…in the year 2001…we may hope that it [the BBC] will be strong, resourceful, complete and viable; but in our nightmares grows the fear that it will be no more than an enfeebled voice, crying in the wilderness among a Babel of commercial pap, in large part served out by the monstrous regiments of the few multinationals.’
