Broadcasting Empire

The BBC and the British World, 1922-1970
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-956896-3
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 575 g

Broadcasting was born just as the British empire reached its greatest territorial extent, and matured while that empire began to unravel. Radio and television offered contemporaries the beguiling prospect that new technologies of mass communication might compensate for British imperial decline. In Broadcasting Empire, Simon J. Potter shows how, from the 1920s, the BBC used broadcasting to unite audiences at home with the British settler diaspora in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. High culture, royal ceremonial, sport, and even comedy were harnessed to this end, particularly on the BBC Empire Service, the predecessor of today's World Service. Belatedly, during the 1950s, the BBC also began to consider the role of broadcasting in Africa and Asia, as a means to encourage 'development' and to combat resistance to continued colonial rule. However, during the 1960s, as decolonization entered its final, accelerated phase, the BBC staged its own imperial retreat.

This is the first full-length, scholarly study to examine both the home and overseas aspects of the BBC's imperial mission. Drawing on new archival evidence, it demonstrates how the BBC's domestic and imperial roles, while seemingly distinct, in fact exerted a powerful influence over one another. Broadcasting Empire makes an important contribution to our understanding of the transnational history of broadcasting, emphasising geopolitical rivalries and tensions between British and American attempts to exert influence on the world's radio and television systems.

Zielgruppe

Academics and students of the British empire, of the mass media, and of British culture and identity

Autoren/Hrsg.

Potter, Simon J.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- 1: Diversity, 1922-31

- 2: Discord, 1932-35

- 3: Integration, 1935-39

- 4: War, 1939-45

- 5: Continuities, 1945-59

- 6: Challenges, 1945-59

- 7: Disintegration? 1960-70

- Conclusions

Über Autor(innen)

Potter, Simon J.
Simon J. Potter is the author of News and the British World: the Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876-1922 (2003), and has published widely on the history of the press and broadcasting in the British empire. He was formerly a Government of Ireland Research Fellow, a Rydon Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London, and a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia.