num_pages: 1133
description: This is the last volume of an authoritative and comprehensive five-volume history which charts the development of broadcasting in the United Kingdom, by one of Britain's leading historians.Competition covers a period of twenty years, from 1955 to 1974, a crisis year in British social and political history, when there were two general elections. An early chapter is devoted to another crisis year, 1956, the year of Suez and Hungary.During these years, which saw a huge increase in the volume of news and political broadcasting, developments carefully charted in this volume, the BBC was in a competitive situation. Yet relations between the BBC and ITA changed significantly while the BBC faced the programming challenge posed by the new commercial television companies. The volume compares in detail the BBC's programmes with those of its rivals in the still controversial context of the 1960s.A chapter on the Pilkington Committee, which has not hitherto been examined in perspective, is followed by a full account of the contribution to broadcasting of Hugh Greene, the man whom Mary Whitehouse described as being `responsible for the moral collapse which characterized the sixties and seventies'. Greene's relationship with Charles Hill, who became Chairman of the BBC in a surprise move of 1967, is examined in-depth. So, too, is one of the biggest controversies within the BBC, that surrounding Broadcasting in the Seventies.After chapters dealing with education, including the founding of the Open University, and technology, Asa Briggs evaluates the state of the BBC at the time of its Golden Jubilee in 1972, and ends with the first meetings of the Annan Committee, charged with determining its future.Every person concerned with the future of broadcasting at the turn of the century will find invaluable information and arguments in this volume.
language: English
title: History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume V: Competition
titlecomplete: History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume V: Competition
characters: Hugh Greene
ratings_count: 4
series: History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom
publisher: Oxford University Press