Next meeting - 5th December

The next meeting of the SBHG will hosted by the University of Bournemouth on 5 December 2008.

Membership

The SBHG membership comprises:

Kate Lacey - k.lacey@sussex.ac.uk
Derek Paget - Derek@rid-out.co.uk
Sherryl Wilson - Sherryl2.wilson@uwe.ac.uk
Sean Street - sstreet@bournemouth.ac.uk
Hugh Chignell - hchignell@bournemouth.ac.uk
Julia McCain - jmccain@bournemouth.ac.uk
Andy O'Dwyer - andy.odwyer@bbc.co.uk
David Hendy - davidjhendy@yahoo.co.uk
Jonathan Bignell - j.bignell@reading.ac.uk
Patricia Holland - p.holland76@googlemail.com
Rob Turnock - rob.turnock@rhul.ac.uk
John Ellis - john.ellis@rhul.ac.uk
Cathy Johnson - cathy.johnson@rhul.ac.uk
Su Holmes - susan.holmes@uea.ac.uk
Heather Sutherland - h.a.sutherland@reading.ac.uk


Profiles

Dr. Kate Lacey
Senior Lecturer
Department of Media and Film - University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton
BN1 9RH
Tel +44 1273 872512
Staff page: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/mediastudies/profile1532.html

Kate Lacey's research centres on the history and theory of radio and theconnections between broadcasting and other formations of public life. Her current project, 'Listening Publics', aims to amplify the specifically auditory roots of the word 'audience,' a word that combines the experiential with the public aspect of mediated culture. She is the author of Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio and the Public Sphere, 1923-1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997),and Associate Editor of The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media. She is a founding member of The Radio Studies Network.


Sherryl Wilson
I am a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England and my research interests primarily lie in British and American television and television history. In particular I have interests in the genres of reality television and TV drama through which I engage with a range of cultural issues such as age, gender and ethnicity.

I have been mostly concerned with the ways in which identities of selfhood are constructed but have more recently developing interests in the ways in which the convergence of media and proliferation of multi-platform output for media texts challenges existing notions of the audience and which is displacing the traditional view of television as a domestic medium.

I am involved in an AHRC-funded research project that will examine the degree to which broadcast media output and media policy reflected the Thatcherite proposition that ‘there is no such thing as society’ during the 1980s. I have written and published material on TV talk shows such as Oprah Winfrey, Trisha as well TV drama such as Desperate Housewives and Six Feet Under.


Professor Sean Street FRSA
Director of the Centre for Broadcasting History Research
The Media School
Bournemouth University

Seán Street is Professor of Radio in The Media School, Bournemouth University. He is also Director of the Centre of Broadcasting History Research within the University. A major research interest is the relationship between Public Service Broadcasting and commercial imperatives in pre-war Great Britain. He has worked as a radio features producer, writer and presenter for 38 years, both in the commercial sector and within the BBC. His work is frequently to be heard on BBC Radios 3 and 4, as well as internationally on CBC in Canada, and on Public Service Networks across the US. For the past five years he has directed the annual “Charles Parker Day” conference, which explores the nature of radio features internationally. 

Hugh Chignell

Associate Professor of Broadcasting History, Bournemouth University, UK

My teaching and research focus on the neglected medium of radio.  Over the last 10 years I have studied the history of speech radio in particular while also teaching on the MA in Radio Production at Bournemouth of which I am programme leader.  I recently completed a new theoretical text, Key Concepts in Radio Studies and I am now preparing what I hope will become the definitive history of current affairs radio in the UK.  As a member of the Centre for Broadcasting History Research I am involved in the JISC funded project to digitise the LBC/IRN archive and I also supervise a number of PhDs in the field of media history.

I am also partly responsible for the ITA/IBA Archive which recently moved to Bournemouth University. For some time I have been on the editorial board of The Radio Journal for which I am also the Reviews Editor.

Jonathan Bignell
Professor of Television and Film
University of Reading
J.Bignell@reading.ac.uk
Film, Theatre & Television - University of Reading
Bulmershe Court, Reading RG6 1HY

Jonathan Bignell's main research interests are in the history and analysis of television drama, especially in the UK and USA. He has led three major externally-funded research projects on these topics, and published numerous books and articles in Television Studies.

His current work centres on the histories of transnational television (across the Atlantic and in Europe). Jonathan is a Series Editor of Manchester University Press's 'Television Series', which publishes volumes on the work of individual screenwriters and producers. He serves on the editorial committees of the Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television, Critical Studies in Television, Symbolism, and New Review of Film and Television Studies.

www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/about/staff/j-bignell.asp

Patricia Holland
Senior Lecturer in Bournemouth Media School
17 Vauxhall Grove, London SW8 1SY
Tel/Fax: 0207 735 5593
patriciaholland@beeb.net

For most of her career she has worked as a freelance writer, lecturer and researcher specialising in two main areas; media history , specifically television and photography, and the sociology of childhood, with a special interested in the imagery and representation. She has many publications in these fields. She has previously worked as an independent filmmaker, a community bookseller, a freelance journalist and a television editor and producer.

In 2004 she was awarded an AHRC grant to complete her research into the history of the ITV programme This Week and to put the work on to a database under the auspices of Bournemouth Media School. Her book The Angry Buzz: This Week and current affairs television was published in January 2006, when she organised a major conference and 50th anniversary event at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Now, in association with the Southern Broadcasting History Group, and together with Hugh Chignell and Sherryl Wilson, she has been awarded a new AHRC grant for a two year research project into broadcasting under the Thatcher governments of the 1980s. Called ‘No such thing as society?’ the research will specifically look at the ways in which the social, ideological and economic changes of the time were reflected across the broadcast spectrum between 1979 and 1991.


Rob Turnock
Senior Researcher in Television History
Department of Media Arts - Royal Holloway University of London
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
rob.turnock@rhul.ac.uk
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/media-arts/staff/turnock.htm

Rob’s research interests revolve around television history and theory and the medium’s relationship to culture and society. He has published on television in the 1950s and 1960s, on the institutional history of ITV, on death ritual and television audiences.

He is the author of Television and Consumer Culture: Britain and the Transformation of Modernity (I.B. Tauris, 2007), Interpreting Diana: Television Audiences and the Death of a Princess (BFI, 2000) and co-editor, with Catherine Johnson, of ITV Cultures: Independent Television over Fifty Years (Open University Press, 2005). He is currently coordinating the content selection policy of the EU funded Video Active project to make digitised programme content available from broadcasters and archives around Europe.

See here for information on PhD-oriented research events.


Dr Cathy Johnson
Senior Lecturer
Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/media-arts/staff/johnson.htm

My research interests lie primarily in the field of television history and theory. I am particularly interested in the relationship between institutions and the programmes they produce, as well as questions of genre, cultural value, aesthetics, visual style and historiography.

I am currently involved in the Video Active project which is creating an on-line database exploring the comparative history of European television, and am also researching the role of branding in the digital era of television in Britiain and the US. I am the author of a number of articles on British and US television and the monograph Telefantasy (BFI, 2005), and am co-editor (with Rob Turnock) of ITV Cultures (Open UP, 2005). I am also a founder member of the Southern Broadcasting History Group.


Dr Su Holmes
Reader in Television - University of East Anglia

Her research interests are in the fields of British TV history, Reality TV, quiz shows, and the subject of celebrity. She is the author of British TV and Film Culture in the 1950s (Intellect, 2005) and Entertaining TV: The BBC and Popular Programme Culture in the 1950s (MUP, forthcoming). She has just completed The Quiz and Game Show (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming) and is co-editor of Understanding Reality TV (Routledge, 2004), Framing Celebrity (Routledge, 2006) and A Reader in Stardom and Celebrity (Sage, 2007).

Current Research Projects

- VideoActive
- No Such Thing as Society
- Acting with Facts

Video Active is a major EU-funded project aiming to create access to digitised television programme content from archives around Europe. It involves collaboration between the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and Utrecht University, and eleven European archives including the BBC to provide access to content and supporting contextual materials via a specially designed web portal. The team from the Department of Media Arts, who are John Ellis, Cathy Johnson and Rob Turnock, are responsible for developing content selection strategy and policy for the project.
For further details of the project see: http://videoactive.wordpress.com/


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‘No such thing as society’?
Broadcasting and the public services 1979-1992
A study of the ways in which the changes made by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative governments were reflected in the broadcast media.

This is a two year research project, which will be funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Beginning September 2007, it is based within the Centre for Broadcasting History Research, and will be led by Patricia Holland and Hugh Chignell. It will also involve liaison with other Universities through the Southern Universities Broadcasting History Group.

‘No such thing as society’?

It is generally accepted that the Thatcher governments of the 1980s brought about a radical restructuring of the politics and economics of the UK, moving away from the post-war, social democratic settlement towards ‘rolling back the state’, de-nationalisation and giving greater power to the market.

This research will consider how the changes were reflected in, and mediated by, the broadcast output of the time, particularly in relation to social policy and the health service. Programmes ranged from documentaries and current affairs programmes to drama and docu-dramas, from soaps to sitcoms and satirical shows, from lifestyle programming to quiz and game shows. Many of the social changes involved institutions –such as hospitals and schools- which made very attractive as settings for dramas and observational documentaries.

We will monitor the project of deregulation, privatisation and the move towards free-market economics, both as it was explicitly presented on radio and television by Prime Minister Thatcher herself and her associates, and as it was presented across the genres in both media. We will expect to find a very broad range of opinions, reactions and programme styles. A specific case study will focus on the area of health, looking at drama, comedy, chat shows etc as well as news and current affairs.

One outcome will be an inventory of programming in the period 1979-1990 across all broadcast genres and all national terrestrial television and radio channels.

Bournemouth Media School has many existing, research resources, on which this project will draw, including an archive collection of video and audio tapes, scripts, production documents, audience research data and a complete set of Radio Times. Researchers at the Media School’s Centre for Broadcasting History Research have created a group of databases. They include:
· Television Times (TVTip) up to 1985;
· Radio 4’s Analysis current affairs series;
· ITV’s This Week recently completed with an ARHC Resource Enhancement Grant (award no RE/AN11812/APN19470).
· a newly created database of the long-running BBC flagship current affairs series, Panorama.

This study will contribute to a historical understanding of the circulation of ideas and attitudes, as well as the mediation of factual information. It will throw light on the ways on which the public debate was conducted within the national broadcast media of the 1980s.

Patricia Holland
June 2007

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Acting With Facts

This research project, which runs from 2007 to 2010, is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project team is Dr Derek Paget (Principal Investigator), Professor Jonathan Bignell and Lib Taylor (Co-investigators). Dr Heather Sutherland is Postdoctoral Researcher for the project. The programme of research is one of the activities of the Centre for Television Drama Studies.

The project aim is to study the demands made specifically on actors by the factual dramas that have burgeoned on British television and in British theatre since 1990. After interviewing a selection of actors in order to investigate their specific contributions to and views on theatre and television docudrama, the project seeks to assess the research and performative demands of a fact-base in the realisation of specific examples of theatre and television production.

In particular the project researches any comparisons and correspondences that actors find between their work for docudrama and for fictional drama in theatre and television. It also examines the ways television docudrama and documentary theatre have responded to the big changes of recent years: for television, the 1990 Broadcasting Act, increased international co-production, the digital revolution; in theatre the resurgence of 'Verbatim' and 'Tribunal' modes; and for both media, accelerating social and political change. Theories of docudrama form, genre, format and audience address will, it is hoped, be significantly developed as a result of this research project.

For further details of this project, see www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/research/ftt-actingwithfacts.asp

Aims and Approach

1. The group takes a distinctive and innovative approach to broadcasting which

a. relates television to radio, and
b. sees both as grounded firmly within their historical and social contexts.

2. Our interest in the past is not antiquarian or nostalgic. We argue that a carefully researched understanding of the history of broadcasting is important in its own right, and also that, without such an understanding it is impossible to make sense of the pressures and demands that characterise the present. At a time of rapid and unprecedented changes in the media landscape, this approach is urgent and necessary.

3. The group is concerned with issues which involve preserving and accessing archives. We recognise that there is a huge body of cultural production which makes up the history of broadcasting –and that all of this output is relevant to a study of broadcasting as a social phenomenon.

The strength of this research approach is that it is not confined to a pre-defined cannon, but always sets out broaden its scope within the wider history of UK broadcasting.

4. We do not privilege output over production practices, institutional structures or reception studies, but argue that these interweaving narratives must be studied against the background of cultural, institutional, economic, technical and political factors. Broadcasting has changed and developed in relation to, and in tension with, wider forces. This means that we will always take such wider developments into account, together with the ideological shifts associated with them. The everyday practices of working within the broadcast organisations -in capacities ranging from the technical to the inspirational- as well as the activities of listening, viewing, studying and interpreting, are all subject to historical change and are of importance to any study of broadcasting history.

5. From this grounding grows a theoretical perspective which can embrace textual analysis, generic studies, audience studies and aesthetic theory, since these are all placed firmly within a historical, social, political, institutional and ethnographic context.

6. It is possible to argue that such an approach –which necessarily takes in the whole scope of the broadcast output, and in which our studies begin with solid archive research rather than abstract speculation - involves a first step which puts aside aesthetic judgements in favour of social perspectives. An opposing argument is that value judgements are an intrinsic part of studying broadcasting and should be an acknowledged part of any theoretical work. This is an issue which forms an ongoing debate within the group.

September 2006

The First Post

The Southern Broadcasting History Group is a small group of academics, lecturers and doctoral students based in the south of England. We are all researchers with a specialisation in television and radio. This is our site.