Table of Contents
Double Issue #3 and #4 as well as supplement added at the end.
Communication Research Trends:
The Crisis in Public Service Broadcasting
vol. 8 no. 3 & 4 1987
Research Trends in Religious Communication:
Citizens and Consumers: Religious Broadcasting Between Public Service and Deregulation
vol. 8 no. 3 & 4 1987
Abstract
Main issue abstract:
In early 1987 the Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne, was forced to resign; his successor was Michael Checkland, who had been in charge of the Corporation's financial strategy. Milne had begun his career as a programme maker, Checkland as an accountant. Thus, symbolically, a cultural institution dedicated to serving the public by providing information, education and entertainment, acknowledged the supremacy of economics.
Across the globe public broadcasting is being forced to come to terms with demands that it be more entrepreneurial in spirit and give better 'value for money'. It is accused of giving its audience too much of what the broadcasters want and not enough of what the public demands. Promo tors of deregulation argue that publicly funded broadcasting services will contract as new technology delivers an abundance of channels, encourages programme diversity and expands consumer choice.
Public broadcasting may be retreating in some societies, but in Latin America, in India, and in other Third World countries, the ideal of a truly public broadcasting institution still has power to attract. The public service ideal still seems the only worthwhile alternative to the twin disasters of unconstrained commercialism and debilitating state control.
This issue of TRENDS brings together a variety of studies which analyze and debate the public service broadcasting as it faces an uncertain future.
Supplement abstract:
In 1949 French television regularly broadcast 1 hour 30 minutes of religious programming out of16 hours output each week; by 1986 only 3 hours on Sunday mornings, out of680 hours weekly of television produced by six channels, were religious in content and inspiration. The percentage of the weekly programme output had fallen from a respectable 10% to a mere 0.5%.
The trend indicated by these figures is a common one. Across the world religious programmes have been pushed to the margins of the broadcasting system. In the USA there is little mainline religious programming on the national networks and the electronic church, for all its self-advertisement, has only a small minority, perhaps 7 million viewers of the US television audience. In Australia and New Zealand the churches are fighting to preserve the place of religion in the public broadcasting system. In most of the Third World churches are finding it ever more costly to ensure that even a limited amount of religious material is broadcast on a regular basis. Even in Britain, where the devout Lord Reith, first Director-General of the BBC, ensured that religion was an indispensible element in broadcasting, religious programming is less certain of its place in the schedules.
Already the siren voices are heard calling for more authentic religious programming on overtly Christian channels; already commercial broadcasters are warning that religion will be one of the first casualties of a more competitive deregulated broadcast market.
What then is the future for religious programming in the new era of broadcasting? How much is the fate of religious broadcasting bound up with or dependent upon that of public broadcasting in general? Must religious broadcasting in general go the way of the electronic church? These are just a few of the themes considered in this issue ofTRENDS.
Recommended Citation
(1987)
"The Crisis in Public Service Broadcasting,"
Communication Research Trends: Vol. 8:
No.
3, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/crt/vol8/iss3/1