From about 1930 until very recent times the cinema enjoyed an immense popularity in Britain, and the palatial cinemas built in the 1930s were the most impressive of the buildings to be seen in the streets of many towns. Later, the rapid spread of television brought a great change. The number of cinema-goers has dropped […]

In Great Britain, as well as in the rest of the Western world, newspapers, magazines, radio and television have long been capitalist enterprises. Two streams are distinguished here in the mass media, each with its own objectives, methods and forms of presentation: ‘big media’ and ‘opinion press’. The ‘big media’ are supposed to keep the […]

While in America commercial TV rose out of an’ established jungle of commercial radio, salesman’s attitudes, publicity machines and a vast film business, in Britain it has burst into a more tribal and placid territory with the suddenness of an invasion. This mobile column has barged through the middle of many old British institutions: it […]

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  […]

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  per  cent  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  […]

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  licence  from  the  Post­master  General.  They  […]

The  Political  Committee  of  the  Communist  Party  yesterday  issued  the  following  statement: What  is  at  issue  in  the  proposals  of  the  Pilkington  Committee    is  the  future  development  and  control  of  the  most  powerful  propaganda  weapon  of  to-day.  The  sharp  criticism  levelled  at  commercial  tele­vision  for  the  violence  and  low  artistic  and  moral  standards  of  many  […]

On  the  fifth  floor  of  Radio  Centre,  the  headquarters  of  the  English  Broadcasting  Company,  a  young  man  called  Alan  Applerose  was  sauntering  along  the  main  corridor.  He  was  a  swarthy  and  handsome  young  man,  whose  melancholy  dark  face  faintly  lit  with  impudence  made  him  immediately  attractive  to  women.  (He  was,  however,  unaware  of  this  attraction  […]

Quite  soon  now,  and  just  off  Chiswick  Mall,  there  lived  a  hus­band  and  wife  called  Adam  and  Vanessa.  Adam  had  taken  a  First  in  Greats    and  was  rather  high  up  in  the  Treasury,  but  his  real  passion  was  making  little  models  of  Regency  furniture    which  he  slivered  and  snipped  and  stuck  on  a  tray  on  […]

There  has  been  too  much  talk  about  a  Crisis  in  the  British  film  industry.  This  is  not  to.  deny  the  justice  of  abolition  of  entertain­ments  duty  (for  the  cinema  has  been  in  recent  years  the  only  popular  entertainment  to  be  so  taxed);  nor  to  overlook  the  sobering  facts  that  annual  attendances  have  slumped  in  ten  […]