Is dedicated

TO ALMIGHTY GOD

BY THE FIRST GOVERNORS

In the year of our lord 1931

JOHN REITH BEING DIRECTOR-GENERAL

AND THEY PRAY THAT THE GOOD SEED SOWN

MAY BRING FORTH GOOD HARVESTS

THAT ALL THINGS FOUL OR HOSTILE TO PEACE

MAY BE BANISHED HENCE

AND THAT THE PEOPLE INCLINING THEIR EAR

TO WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE LOVELY AND HONEST

WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE OF GOOD REPORT

MAY TREAD THE PATH OF VIRTUE

AND WISDOM

In terms of size of its audience, television has long since taken over from radio as the most significant form of broadcasting in Britain. Its independence from government interference is largely a matter of tacit agreement. There is no advertising on the BBC. But Independent Television (ITV), which started in 1954, gets money from advertisements it screens.

Although the advent of ITV did not affect television coverage of news and current affairs, it did cause a change in the style and content of other programmes shown on television. The amount of money that a television company can charge an advertiser depends on the expected number of viewers at the time when the advertisement is to be shown. Therefore, there was pressure on ITV from the start to make its output popular. In its early years ITV captured nearly three-quarters of the BBC’s audience. The BBC responded by making its own programmes equally accessible to a mass audience. Ever since then, there has been little significant difference in what is shown on the BBC and the commercial television. Both BBC1 and ITV show a variety of programmes. They are in constant competition with each other to attract the largest audience (this is known as the ratings war). They do not each try to show a more popular type of programme than the other. They try instead to do the same type of programme ‘better’.

Of particular importance in the ratings war is the performance of the channels’ various soap operas. British-made soaps and popular comedies certainly do not paint an idealized picture of life. Nor are they very sensational or dramatic. They depict (relatively) ordinary lives in relatively ordinary circumstances. So why are they popular? The answer seems to be that the views can see themselves and other people they know in the characters and, even more so, in the things that happen to these characters.

• Soap operas, also called soaps, are amongst the most popular television programmes. They are stories about the lives of ordinary people that are broadcast, usually in half-hour episodes, three times or more each week. They are called soap operas because in the US they were first paid for by companies, who made soap. Most soap operas describe the daily lives of a small group of people who live in the same street or town and go to the same pub, shops, etc. The most successful soaps reflect to worries and hopes of real people, though the central characters frequently have exaggerated personal problems in order to make the programmes more exciting. In Britain soap operas are broadcast in the early evening.

It became obvious in the early 1960s that the popularity of soap operas and light entertainment shows meant that there was less room for programmes which lived up to the original educational aims of television. Since 1982 Britain has two channels (BBC2 and Channel 4) which act as the main promoters of learning and ‘culture’. BBC2 is famous for its highly acclaimed dramatizations of great works of literature and for certain documentary series that have become world-famous ‘classics’ (the art history series Civilisation and the natural history series Life on Earth are examples).