BBC Drama and the Politics of Production 1955-66

This paper offers a critical perspective regarding the British Broadcasting Corporation, briefly touching on the early years, the dominance of radio, and the struggle to obtain recognition and resources for television production. The management structures, policies and decision making of the BBC will be considered, with reference to consequences for practitioners and for the form and content of programmes broadcast.Cet article examine la politique de production des émissions de la BBC pendant une période de croissance après la Deuxième guerre. Il explore notamment la représentation des femmes et des classes populaires, à la fois dans les émissions, et dans les publics imaginés par les équipes créatives

Television - The Housewife's Choice? the 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive, Reluctance and Revision

This article considers the responses of women, many of whom describe themselves as housewives, in the 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive, in order to interrogate some of the broader assumptions around television's relationship with the housewife as key to its success. Against the backcloth of social histories revising ideas about gender, modernity and suburbia in the post-war period, this article considers some of the ways in which initial reluctance towards television was recorded and negotiated. It presents three themes around tensions between home and leisure, the domestication of entertainment and going out, and the appreciation of particular genre, which suggest that the adoption of television as mass entertainment by women might not have been as smooth a process as we have come to understand