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