The history and practice of the presentation of art music performance on BBC television 1936-1982

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Image, information and changing work practices: the case of the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative

The media industry is undergoing a comprehensive change due to media convergence and the diffusion of the internet. However, there is a lack of research in the field of Information Systems on how these technological phenomena impact work practices in broadcasting and media organizations. Using the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative (DMI) as a case study, I provide a detailed description and analysis of the implementation of DMI in news and long-form productions. The empirical evidence was gathered from BBC Northern Ireland (BBC NI), where a large-scale digital video production infrastructure based on DMI was implemented. My point of departure is the study and impact of digitalization in work practices associated to the production of video as an image-based artefact, which complements previous studies that focus on information tokens such as electronic text. I seek to assess how work practices at BBC NI were affected by the use of digital video throughout the DMI workflow. In this context, my case study analyzes: 1) DMI’s technical infrastructure and its impact on work practices for the purpose of searching and organizing video content, and how this affected news and long-form productions distinctively; and 2) the domain of video craft editing brought about by the digitization of the video production process. My contribution demonstrates the importance of a semiotic approach to the study of the digitalized image-based artefact, particularly when analyzing the construction of a video narrative. Video narratives are based on work practices that originate not only from particular occupational cultures, but also from the technological characteristics of digital video information. I address the importance of the semiotic character of digital video, in both syntactic and semantic dimensions, and acknowledge its role as a constitutive element for understanding the impact of digitalization and work in the information age

Dusty, Cilla, Sandie, Lulu as seen on TV : a study of interrelations between pop music, television and fashion

This thesis examines the way in which four British female performers, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, forged a relationship between pop music, television and fashion at a key moment in time, the period 1963-75. The intention is to discover what was new about the image for British women popular musicians that they constructed and the means by which they did so. The period studied was important for the convergence in Britain ofpop music with television and fashion. The thesis considers the women's role in this convergence in tenns both ofshaping and exploiting it The investigation was pursued through a range of primary source data, principally the viewing of the rare surviving recording of a programme from each of the four women's BBC television series. The use of the four programmes as case studies provides the main focus. Archival research using the two television listings publications of the period, the Radio Times and the TVTimes, provided the majority of the information locating the four programmes within the 1963-75 British television context; as well as demonstrating the way in which each was promoted for television and the range of television genres with which the four women were involved. Interviews with television cameramen associated with the programmes provided personal recollections uskd to complement and supplement the research. Popular music, television and fashion literature enabled the study of the interrelations between the three areas as evidenced in the four programmes. The findings demonstrate the active agency ofeach of the four women in the creation of her individual persona around which her eponymous BBC television series was constructed as a 'star vehicle', utilizing the convergence ofpop music, television and fashion. The findings reveal a fonnerly 'hidden history' of four British female pop music performers who brought their music perfonnance, with its key fashion component, to the pre-existing systems of British television light entertainment. In so doing each formulated for herself a new kind of career which transcended pop single achievement, at a particularly significant moment in time for British pop music, television and fashion. Dusty Springfield, CilIa Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, each in her own way changed, strengthened and enhanced the status of the British female pop perfonner according to the results of this research. The four women did so through fusing their awareness of British pop music and British fashion with an awareness of the audience for their British television performance. This thesis has thus investigated, evaluated and presented the evidence for this hitherto undocumented achievement

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Study of the Work of Dennis Potter

This thesis represents the first full-length academic study of the work of the late television playwright, Dennis Potter. Drawing upon a wealth of primary research, including unpublished Potter scripts, interviews with leading film and television practitioners, as well as a special interview with the writer himself, it examines the entire body of Potter's work, with a view to showing a consistency and progression of authorial themes. On this basis, it argues Potter successfully used the medium of television with the same degree of freedom and complexity as others have used the novel or stage play. The study is divided into six chapters, plus an Introduction and Conclusion. In addition, a special Epilogue has been written which reviews the extraordinary public events surrounding Potter's death in June 1994. In this way, the entire 'yellow brick road' of the writer's career is both followed and analysed: Chapter One examines Potter's television apprenticeship in the nineteen sixties as a writer for BBC TV's The Wednesday Play slot. Chapter Two focuses on Potter's nineteen seventies work for Play for Today and includes discussion of the banning of Brimstone and Treacle in 1976. Chapter Three is an extended examination of theme and style as it relates to certain key Potter works: in particular, the writer's first novel, Hide and Seek (published 1973). Chapters Four, Five and Six devote themselves principally to analysis of Potter's most famous television serials: Pennies from Heaven. The Singing Detective and Blackeyes respectively. Finally, the Conclusion and Epilogue draw the arguments of the preceding chapters together, advancing the view that all the clues to understanding Potter's final acts as a writer in 1994, lie in the body of past work which it has been the task of this thesis both to excavate and interpret

Designing a Griotte for the Global Village: Increasing the Evidentiary Value of Oral Histories for Use in Digital Libraries

A griotte in West African culture is a female professional storyteller, responsible for preserving a tribe's history and genealogy by relaying its folklore in oral and musical recitations. Similarly, Griotte is an interdisciplinary project that seeks to foster collaboration between tradition bearers, subject experts, and computer specialists in an effort to build high quality digital oral history collections. To accomplish this objective, this project preserves the primary strength of oral history, namely its ability to disclose "our" intangible culture, and addresses its primary criticism, namely its dubious reliability due to reliance on human memory and integrity. For a theoretical foundation and a systematic model, William Moss's work on the evidentiary value of historical sources is employed. Using his work as a conceptual framework, along with Semantic Web technologies (e.g. Topic Maps and ontologies), a demonstrator system is developed to provide digital oral history tools to a "sample" of the target audience(s). This demonstrator system is evaluated via two methods: 1) a case study conducted to employ the system in the actual building of a digital oral history collection (this step also created sample data for the following assessment), and 2) a survey which involved a task-based evaluation of the demonstrator system. The results of the survey indicate that integrating oral histories with documentary evidence increases the evidentiary value of oral histories. Furthermore, the results imply that individuals are more likely to use oral histories in their work if their evidentiary value is increased. The contributions of this research – primarily in the area of organizing metadata on the World Wide Web – and considerations for future research are also provided

'It's Not Just Radio': Models of Community Broadcasting in Britain and the United States

Necessary and important focus has been given to the future of digital, satellite and Internet radio as a means of increasing flows of information and culture irrespective of geographic boundaries. At the same time, radio is primarily a local experience. This research examines the phenomenon of community radio through case studies in Britain and the United States. The contested site of audio broadcasting lies beyond the national framework via new technologies and, at the same time, is rooted locally. The political impetus for this project emerges out of the current media reform movements in both countries for the expansion of low power community radio and their connection to broader concerns around media democracy and pluralism. The research seeks to explore the phenomenon of community radio and how its characteristics are challenged in practice; the extent to which there exists both continuity and difference in the development of community radio sectors in both Britain and the United States; how radio is both de-linked from geography and rooted in localities; and whether or not the medium of radio itself embodies potential as a more participatory and democratic means of communication. This research is situated in both radio studies and alternative media studies. In order to investigate these questions, the research considers content production and internal organisational stmcture among its case studies, representing different models of community radio; examines the impact of technology on radio as a local space; and considers questions of media and democracy raised by community radio projects

Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age

From Ken Burns’s documentaries to historical dramas such as Roots, from A&E’s Biography series to CNN, television has become the primary source for historical information for tens of millions of Americans today. Why has television become such a respected authority? What falsehoods enter our collective memory as truths? How is one to know what is real and what is imagined—or ignored—by producers, directors, or writers? Gary Edgerton and Peter Rollins have collected a group of essays that answer these and many other questions. The contributors examine the full spectrum of historical genres, but also institutions such as the History Channel and production histories of such series as The Jack Benny Show, which ran for fifteen years. The authors explore the tensions between popular history and professional history, and the tendency of some academics to declare the past “off limits” to nonscholars. Several of them point to the tendency for television histories to embed current concerns and priorities within the past, as in such popular shows as Quantum Leap and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The result is an insightful portrayal of the power television possesses to influence our culture. Winner of the 2001 Ray and Pat Browne Award for Outstanding Textbook given by the Popular Culture Association Offers much food for thought in this highly visual age. —Alliance (OH) Review As an example of well-reasoned, original research, Television Histories makes an important contribution to the study of the medium. —Anthony Slide, Classic Images This book is even more timely and provocative because much of the material discussed is being rebroadcast now that digital television is opening even more new channels. —Choice An engrossing collection that slides the thorny subject of television, history, and memory under a microscope. . . . Digs deep into a contemporary phenomenon, and its many conclusions are right on target. —Film & History Helps those of us who care about history think more clearly about how television can shape historical thinking among our friends, neighbors, and students. —Florida Historical Quarterly Television Histories, a pioneer work, weaves an inspired and informed interdisciplinary analysis of television and history. The chapters are enlightening, readable, and entertaining; the editors and the authors have produced a work that enriches and strengthens the study of film and history. —Michael Schoenecke The stuff serious thinkers in a media age should read, mark and remember. —Rockland (ME) Courier-Gazette An insightful and important addition to the literature that sheds light on an often controversial subject for professional historians. —Southern Historian Most of the essays are likely to be of considerable value to any attentive student of television. —Television Quarterly Working from the thesis that people learn about history through television more than any other medium, Edgerton and Rollins look at what TV subliminally teaches us by what is shows and does not show. —Varietyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1020/thumbnail.jp

FLOSSTV Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) within participatory 'TV hacking' Media and Arts Practices

This research operates in the context of a European political discourse, where the main concern is counter­cultural approaches to non­ mandatory collaboration and contractual agreements. FLOSSTV (Free, Libre, Open Source Software TV) covers a broad range of practices, from television via documentary up to media arts productions. This thesis documents the endeavour to formulate a policy for FLOSS culture. FLOSSTV studies the impact of new intellectual property legislation on media production, as well as conceptions and applications of collective authorship and alternative licensing schemes. FLOSSTV sets out to explore methods that can facilitate media and arts practitioners wishing to engage in collaborative media productions. The thesis sets out to investigate the theories and histories of collaborative media and arts productions in order to set the ground for an exploration of the tools, technologies and aesthetics of such collaborations. The FLOSSTV thesis proposes a set of contracts and policies that allow for such collaborations to develop. It is through practice that this research explores FLOSS culture, including its methods, licensing schemes and technologies. In order to focus the research within the field of FLOSSTV I initiated the practice ­based Deptford.TV pilot project as the central research experiment for the FLOSSTV thesis. DVD ONE contains a series of films produced collaboratively for Deptford.TV that express the characteristics and contractual arrangements of FLOSS culture. Deptford.TV is an online audiovisual database primarily collecting media assets around the Deptford area, in South­East London, UK. Deptford.TV functions as an open, collaborative platform that allows artists, film­makers, researchers and participants of the local workshops in and around Deptford, and also beyond Deptford, to store, share, re­edit and redistribute their footage and projects. The open and collaborative nature of the Deptford.TV project demonstrates a form of shared media practice in two ways: audiences become producers by submitting their own footage, and the database enables the contributors to interact with each other. Through my practice­lead research project Deptford.TV I argue that, by supporting collaborative methods and practices, FLOSS (Free, Libre, Open Source Software) can empower media and arts practitioners to collaborate in production and distribution processes of media and arts practices