Independent personal work texts for reading

I. Mass media

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The British Press

2. Newspapers in Great Britain

3. Sound Broadcasting in the UK

4. Television Broadcasting in the United Kingdom

5. Wire Broadcasting in Great Britain

1) THE BRITISH PRESS. Fleet Street has been the home of the British press for 300 years. Here are published almost all of Britain’s national newspapers. Here also are the headquarters of many magazines, foreign and provincial press bureaus, international news agencies.

The national papers are the ones sold all over the country, with a large readership or “circulation’, giving general news, they are produced in London.

There are two main types of national paper – the “popular” papers and the “quality” papers. The “popular” papers are smaller in size, with lots of pictures, big headlines and short articles. They are easy to read and often contain little real information. They usually have stories about ordinary people and events, which are included, because they are amusing or odd. Examples of this type of newspapers are “The Daily Mail”, “The Sun” and “The Daily Mirror”.

The more serious reader, who wants to read about politics and foreign affairs, reads “quality” papers. These papers, such as “The Daily Telegraph”, “The Times” and “The Guardian” are bigger in size – (they’re called “broadsheets”), with longer articles and wider coverage of events. They have different pages for home news, foreign affairs, feature articles, fashion, business, sport and so on.

People in Great Britain buy more papers on Sunday than on weekdays. The Sunday papers have higher circulation than the dailies. As with the dailies, there are both “popular” and “quality” Sunday newspapers. The “quality” ones have different sections and a colour magazine (usually full of advertisements).

In addition to these there are the evening papers such as “London’s Evening Standard” and “Evening News”. Provincial or local papers serve towns and areas outside London: some of them are quite famous, like “The Birmingham Post”, for example.

Most of the papers have a political viewpoint. They give opinions and news, which favour a political party or group.

2) NEWSPAPERS IN GREAT BRITAIN. The population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is now over 50,000,000. About 30,000,000 newspapers are sold every day. The British people, therefore, are great readers of newspapers. There are few homes to which one newspaper is not delivered every morning. Many households have two, or even three, newspapers every day. One newspaper may be delivered at the house, a member of the family may buy one at the station bookstall to read in the train as he goes to town, and someone else in the family may buy an evening newspaper later in the day.

Daily papers are those that are published daily from Monday to Saturday. There are the morning papers and the evening papers. The morning papers are on sale in the morning. The evening papers begin to appear during the morning, and new editions appear every two or three hours until the final edition comes out in the evening.

As in other countries, newspapers in Great Britain vary greatly in their ways of presenting the news. There are serious newspapers for those who want to know about important happenings everywhere, both domestic news and foreign news. There are newspapers whose pages are largely filled with news of sport – football, boxing and racing – and with stories of film stars or accounts of crime and of law-court trials. Most newspapers today provide interesting and useful articles for their women readers. They tell them about the latest fashions in clothes, how to furnish their homes, and how to cook new and exciting dishes.

The popular newspapers naturally have much larger circulation than the serious newspapers. The number of daily newspapers published in London is only nine or ten, but their total circulation is about 16,000,000. Many of these are national papers, selling throughout the country. Some of them have printing offices in large cities in the north.

In addition to the London dailies, there are other papers, published in the provinces. Many of these are independent, and the best of them sell throughout the whole country, in competition with the London papers. The “Manchester Guardian’s” the “Yorkshire Post” (published in Leeds), and the “Scotsman” (Edinburgh), for example, have national circulation. The quality of their writing and reporting gives them a national influence.

The “Manchester Guardian’s” motto, “Facts are sacred, comment is free”, is famous. This paper, because of its very honest comment on the news, is very influential.

The provincial newspapers give very full attention to local as well as to national affairs. In recent years national papers have bought some of them. To many people this seems to be unfortunate and even dangerous.

The London newspaper that is best known outside Great Britain is probably “The Times”. It began in 1785, and has a high reputation for reliable news and serious comment on the news. It is an independent paper, not giving its support to a particular political party. Its leading articles (or “leaders”, as they are usually called) give the opinions of its editorial staff, not those of the owners of the paper.

The Correspondence columns of “The Times” are always interesting and often amusing. Most of the letters are on serious subjects, but from time to time there will be a long correspondence on a subject that not at all serious, perhaps on a new fashion of dress, or the bad manners of the younger generation compared with the manners of thirty years ago.

“The Times”, of course, does not publish the strip cartoons that are so common in the cheaper and popular papers. It does, however, publish a crossword puzzle every day, with clues that are both clever and amusing. Many “Times” readers try to solve the puzzle every morning as they travel to town by train from their homes in the suburbs.

Two popular papers, with large circulation, are the “Daily Mirror” and the “Daily Sketch”. These have many pages of photographs and numerous strip cartoons. Their make-up (the way in which the news and pictures are arranged on the pages, the size of the headlines, and so on) is more exciting than that of the serious papers. The news that appears in their pages is not always the most important news; it is the news that will, in the editors’ opinion, be most interesting to the man in the street. And if the man in the street is more interested in actors and actresses, film stars, boxers and bathing beauties, then these papers provide photographs and short news items to satisfy this interest.

The London evening newspapers, the “Star”, the “Evening News” and the “Evening Standard”, are sold not only at the ordinary newsagents’ shops and station bookstalls, but also at busy street corners. The men and women who sell them do not always stay by their piles of papers, however. They sometimes go away and leave their papers on a small stand. Passers by help themselves to the paper they want, and leave two pence, the price of the paper, in a box or tray. There are dishonest people in London, but no one thinks it worthwhile to rob a newspaper-seller of a few shillings.

The evening papers are sold well because they print, throughout the day, the latest sports results. The sports pages also give advice to those who bet on results. Those people who have made bets on horse races are anxious to know whether the horse on which they have bet has come in first.

In winter people are interested in the scores of the big football matches and in summer in the latest scores of the country cricket matches. During the football season the papers provide information to help those who try to win large sums of money in the football pools.

The Sunday papers are not Sunday editions of the daily papers even if, as it is sometimes the case, the owners are the same. Two of them the “Observer” and the “Sunday Times”, have a high standing like that of “The Times” and the “Manchester Guardian’s”. The “Sunday Times” has no connection with the daily paper called “The Times”. The “Observer”, started in 1791, is the oldest Sunday paper published in Britain.

The “Observer” and the “Sunday Times” provide, in addition to the news, interesting articles on music, drama, the cinema, newly published books, and gardening. Many of the best critics write for these two papers.

Other Sunday newspapers are more popular. Most of them give full accounts of the many sporting events that take place on Saturday afternoons, and provide numerous articles for their women readers.

A modern newspaper could not be sold at a profit without advertisements. A single copy costs more to produce than the price paid by the reader. A newspaper with a large circulation may cost about L 100,000 a week to produce. About a quarter of this sum is received from the business firms who advertise in its pages.

3) SOUND BROADCASTING IN THE UK. The BBC operates four domestic sound broadcasting services from 59 transmitting stations, and two main groups of external broadcasting services from 37 high power, high frequency transmitters in the United Kingdom and from two (used for relay purposes) at Tebrau, near Singapore. Until recently, the domestic sound services were broadcast solely on long and medium wave-lengths, allocated to the United Kingdom under Copenhagen Agreement of 1948, which aimed at minimizing interference between the broadcasting stations of the participating countries. However, the growth in the number of European broadcasting stations after that date (there are now twice as many as in 1948) so diminished the effectiveness of the Agreement that, in 1955, the BBC began to establish a network of very high frequency (VHF) transmitters. By 1958, fifteen permanent VHF transmitting stations had been built and put into operation and the VHF service is now available to some 93% of the population. The VHF stations broadcast the Home Service appropriate to the region in which they are situated, as well as the Light Programme, the Third Programme and Network Three, and for all these services greatly improved reception is assured. Seven more such stations have been approved by the Postmaster General.

There are 157 studios for the domestic sound programmes, of which 61 are in London and 96 at various centres in the regional areas. The external services use 32 London studios. There are also semi-automatic studios, which can be operated, in 14 different centres in the United Kingdom by a programme official without the attendance of an engineer.

4) TELEVISION BROADCASTING IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. In 1936, the BBC launched the world’s first public television service. By 1958, this service was being transmitted from 20 stations and was available to over 98% of the population.

The BBC television service broadcasts a maximum of 50 hours of programmes a week, with permitted extensions (averaging 10 hours) for outside and other broadcasts of a special character. In the course of a year, the service broadcasts more than 7,000 items on a national network, made up of studio productions, outside broadcasts, films, and relays from the continent of Europe.

BBC studio productions come from the London Television Theatre at Shepherd’s Bush; eight main London studios; and fully equipped studios at Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Bristol and Belfast. In addition, eight small interview studios (used mainly for short insertions into the news) have been established in London, Scotland, Wales, and in the north, midland and west of England regions. The Television Film Department of the BBC is housed at the Eagling film studios; and Television News and newsreel programmes originate from a specially equipped studio at Alexandra Palace, London. The Studios at the Television Centre in London (which has been specifically designed for television purposes) started coming into use in 1961.

Outside broadcasting (which during the year 1957-58 transmitted nearly 1,000 programmes, providing about 18% of the total BBC television output) covers most parts of the United Kingdom with its mobile units, presenting programmes both of national and of specifically regional interest, and also brings scenes of events in Europe to viewers in the United Kingdom.

The first regular independent television (ITV) service was inaugurated in September 1955, by a programme transmission from the ITA (Independent Television Authority) London station at Beaulieu Heights, Croydon. By 1958, programmes were being transmitted for 50 hours a week, with permitted extensions averaging a further 10 hours a week, from 7 stations in all parts of Great Britain, and approximately three-quarters of the total number of homes with television sets were able to receive ITV.

ITV programmes are produced at modern studio centres in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, Southampton and Newcastle. The establishment of these studios is the direct result of the ITA’s policy of encouraging the casting or for transmission to one or more of the other regions through the link system operated by the Authority, which, at the beginning of 1958, consisted of 959 miles of vision links, about 69% of which were two-way circuits.

Generally speaking, both the BBC and the ITV services provide programmes of music, drama, light entertainment, variety, and films. Broadcasts for schools are produced five days a week both by the BBC and by Associated-Rediffusion Ltd. under contract with the ITA. Religious broadcasting is also a feature of both services, as are programmes on the arts, children’s and family programmes, interviews with outstanding personalities, investigations into matters of public interest, news reports covering international, national, and local events, and outside broadcasts, mainly of sport.

Advertising is altogether excluded from the television programmes of the BBC, as from their sound programmes. The ITA broadcasts advertisements (on which the programme companies depend for their revenue) subject to the relevant provisions in the Television Act, namely, that there should be no sponsoring of programmes by advertisers, that all advertisements should be clearly distinguishable as such and recognizably separated from the rest of the programme, and that the amount of time given to advertising should not be so great as to detract from the value of the programmes as a medium of entertainment, instruction and information. The ITA has also agreed rules with the Postmaster General about certain classes of broadcasts (including, in particular, religious services) in which advertisements may not be inserted and, on the advice of the Advertising Advisory Committee, has drawn up certain “principles for television advertising” with a view to the exclusion of misleading advertisements from programmes broadcast by the Authority. The cost of inserting advertisements in the ITA service is borne by the advertisers, who pay the programme companies for advertising time.

5) WIRE BROADCASTING IN GREAT BRITAIN. Wire broadcasting – a system whereby radio programmes are received at a central point, whence they are distributed by wire to listeners and viewers – began in the United Kingdom in 1925 as a private venture and remains in the hands of private enterprise. Wire broadcasting companies operate under license from the Postmaster General. They are not allowed to originate programmes of their own, and their function is to distribute programmes from general broadcasting stations. A specified minimum of their programme material must be taken from BBC sources. Subscribers to wire broadcasting services must have ordinary broadcast receiving licenses. At the beginning of 1958, there were 411 wire-broadcasting services, of which 105 gave television service and the remainder sound-only service. The number of subscribers at that time date was just over one million, including 108,019 who were receiving television services.