The British Broadcasting Corporation, previously known as the British Broadcasting Company, and hereinafter referred to as the BBC, is a British public service broadcaster whose journey started nearly a century ago. Britain had only a small share of the waveband, in which the rest belonged to the rest of Europe. The Post Office however did not want to permanently license any of the frequencies because they did not want it to be monopolized by a handful of manufacturers. What was the solution? The Post Office invited the leading firms, consisting of six large companies and a few smaller ones, to form a single broadcasting association, the BBC (Crisell, 2002). An engineer named John Reith assumed the role of general manager but funnily enough did not have much knowledge of broadcasting at the time. But through his grit and personality, he established a moral vision, that because the BBC was a national resource, it should be developed into a comprehensive public service (ibid). The fact that the BBC has survived for almost 96 years can only mean that it has loyal audiences and stays true to its purpose. Similar to any other company, the beginning stages of operation require a lot of effort to draw in customers, or in this case, listeners. How exactly has the BBC done this? Has it always been faithful to its idea of being a public service broadcaster or did it acquire the praised quality?
Before delving into the BBC’s service to the nation, there needs to be an understanding of the term public service. What does it really mean to serve the nation well? According to Crisell, Reith characterized public service in five distinguished ways (2002). First, availability. Public service broadcasting must be aimed to anyone and everyone who wished to tune in. Second, Reith exclaimed the importance of quality. Broadcasting must be made of high standards. In order to fulfill the first two characteristics, the system must be operated as a monopoly, in efforts to avoid competition, so as to prioritize quality of the programmes over quantity of audience. The system must also be funded by a license fee, to ensure audience size would not affect the production of programmes for minorities. Lastly, with the license fee, the BBC will be independent of commercial pressures and the involvement of the government, a crucial aspect of a public service system. In simpler terms, as historian Asa Briggs puts it, the concept of public service is a “non-profit-making monopoly with a programme service animated by high standards and available throughout the nation” (1961, p. 235).
In his manifesto for a public service broadcasting system, Reith urged to preserve a high moral tone, to avoid the vulgar and the hurtful and to take advantage of the medium as a means to spreading knowledge to the public (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991). Considering broadcasting reaches all and sundry, this seems like a crucial and obvious principle to stand by. The BBC took the opportunity of being an educative force to improve the knowledge of the public. This kind of ideal of public service has been influenced by the achievements of Victorian middle class (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991). The reform was aimed towards those who needed it the most, which were the lower class, and was rooted by a sense of moral purpose and of social duty on behalf of the community (ibid). Along the power to bring people together, the BBC, whether it was intended to or not, inevitably held social and political roles too. However, the Post Office had forbidden the BBC to address any public controversies but Reith believed such an act would stunt the growth of a democratic society for he saw the concept of public service as an ideal way of forming “an informed and reasoned public opinion as a crucial element of the political process” (ibid, p. 8). Though, Reith hated involving politics and politicians in the programmes. He focused on making the BBC a cultural church, prioritizing matters of philosophy, religion, music, poetry and drama (Stewart, 1986). The government particularly would feel threatened if and when those who were behind the microphone were too politically extreme.
Before the use of broadcasting exists the use of the print press as a form of spreading news. The former, however, has proven to be a lot more up-to-date and the government of course saw it as a great tool of spreading propaganda should the nation go to war. The BBC on the other hand saw it as an opportunity to tell the truth, as far as the truth could be ascertained (Crissell, 2002). Surely, compromises need to be made, as Reith himself says that the BBC supports the government in general, no questions asked (Steward, 1986). Thus, the ethic of political neutrality was birthed at the BBC, which means avoiding “propaganda based on dissemination of falsehood but a strategic selection and presentation of information” (Mills, p. 18, 2016). This notion of propaganda was used during the Second World War and became a core principle in the BBC’s institutional culture (ibid).
Moving on, one of the principal roles of the BBC was as a mass entertainer, doing so through music, comedy and drama (Stewart, 1986). The show Band Waggon was proof that radio had the ability of creating a distinctive type of comedy (ibid). The pre-war years saw broadcast entertainment in the conventional sense. It was there for pure entertainment, as something to enjoy with family and friends after a long, tiring day. Having entered war, the purpose of entertainment seemed to take a heavier role. A new light was shined on broadcast entertainment and was used for ideological purposes: to cheer people up during a dark time. Unfortunately, the Band Waggon came to an end at the beginning of the Second World War but influenced the creation of another show called It’s That Man Again, a reference to the frequent headline appearing on the newspaper updating Adolf Hitler’s activities (Crissell, 2002). In retrospect, it is obvious that entertainment was crucial to boost the morale and productivity of the public because the comedic elements of the show is now almost incomprehensible (ibid). This could mean that people were so down in the dumps during wartime that a joke appeared funnier than it actually was in their desperate attempts to laugh. Although radio comedy proved to have helped the public carry on with their daily lives, it still didn’t beat the banal yet comforting presence of music in people’s homes (ibid). The BBC did the right thing by continuing broadcast entertainment through wartime as it helped alleviate the fear among the public through familiarity. It gave the public a sense of assurance.
However, it wasn’t always smooth sailing for the BBC. At the mere age of seventeen, the BBC bared the responsibility of being a leader in what Asa Briggs called the war of words, which connotes the relationship of broadcasting with the political and military history of the Second World War (1970). When the war broke out, the BBC made detailed and elaborate plans on continuing with their programmes but these did not appeal to the people who were cut off from other forms of entertainment because the implementation of an hourly news bulletin was bad for morale as it instilled in people to expect news in such short intervals (ibid). Diarist Harold Nicolson wrote on the irony of this, saying that that the government was so focused on coping with panic but had been struck by boredom and bewilderment instead, and added that “we have all the apparatus of war conditions without war conditions” (Nicolson, p. 36, 1967). After receiving orders to change to war conditions, the BBC had only one programme to broadcast, which only could have caused frustration to the public for the lack of freedom of choice (Briggs, 1970).
It is clear now that the BBC has in fact been faithful to its notion of being a public service broadcaster. It seems, though, that the BBC had served the public well and especially during the war because it was pretty much the only accessible source of information and entertainment. While George Bernard Shaw saw the closing down of cinemas as stupid, even when they reopened, people felt safest at home and relied on domestic media, the other being newspapers (Crissell, 2002). Much to the BBC’s advantage, the properties of broadcasting had allowed individuals to feel part of his or her community by bringing in sounds of the public sphere, not just words (ibid). It acted as a conversation starter between strangers and consequently brought the nation together. Perhaps, the far more political than economic nature of the BBC has also rooted the good service to the nation. “Broadcasting, just like supplying water, the education system, the defence, it exists first by political decision and a revenue is built around it” (Stewart, p. 2, 1986). This nature of the BBC stems a drive in the corporation to solely provide a service of high quality without worrying about profit. The BBC has survived because it caters to a wide range of audience with its programmes, by appealing to the variety of groups out there (ibid). At the same time, it avoids catering to sectional needs as its basic principle was that broadcasting “should operate on a national scale, for national service and by a single national authority” (Scannell & Cardiff, p. 15, 1991).