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J. Robert Keller A Scientific Impresario Archie Clow, Science Communication and BBC Radio, 1945–1970 Jared Robert Keller Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Science Communication Unit 2017 Declaration I, Jared Robert Keller, declare that the contents of this thesis are my own work. All other sources of information have been fully acknowledged. Copyright Declaration The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence. Researchers are free to copy, distribute or transmit the thesis on the condition that they attribute it, that they do not use it for commercial purposes and that they do not alter, transform or build upon it. For any reuse or redistribution, researchers must make clear to others the licence terms of this work ‘A Scientific Impresario’ | Jared Robert Keller 2 Abstract From the end of the Second World War to the close of the 1960s, the BBC’s approach to spoken-word science programming changed considerably. Whereas the BBC of the late 1940s saw itself as a platform from which scientists could deliver authoritative talks on science directly to the British public, the BBC of the late 1960s saw its role as the examination and interrogation of science through journalistic programmes presented by professional broadcasters or science journalists. Utilizing a wide range of archival and primary sources, this thesis details the tensions and deliberations which brought about this transition within BBC radio. In particular it focuses on the career of Archie Clow, a science producer at the BBC from 1945 to 1970 who was instrumental in both defining and implementing the BBC’s approach to science broadcasting during this period. His career serves as a lens through which the BBC’s changing conception of the value and purpose of science programming can be examined. In the early post-war period Clow fancied himself a ‘scientific impresario’ charged with the identification and recruitment of eminent scientists, yet by the end of the 1960s many of his colleagues considered themselves journalists rather than impresarios. Archival records show that this had much to do with a transition within the wider BBC toward a more journalistic, news-style approach to spoken-word programming. The thesis argues that by the end of this period the BBC saw itself as a communicator of science in its own right. It further argues that as the BBC moved to mediate science and scientists on behalf of the British public, scientists increasingly lost control over the framing and delivery of science programming, eventually finding themselves largely reliant upon and beholden to professional broadcasters. ‘A Scientific Impresario’ | Jared Robert Keller 3 Figure 1: Archie Clow in 1969.1 1 “In Pictures: The Reith Lectures,” BBC News, December 2, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures- 13647943. ‘A Scientific Impresario’ | Jared Robert Keller 4 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................... 9 1.1. Examining science broadcasting practice ............................................................................... 10 1.2. Scholarly and archival sources ................................................................................................. 13 1.3. A (short) history of the BBC .................................................................................................... 19 1.4. News versus comment .............................................................................................................. 25 1.5. Science, the media, and the British public 1945-1970 .......................................................... 27 1.6. Chapter by chapter overview ................................................................................................... 31 Chapter 2: The Making of a Science Broadcaster .......................................................... 37 2.1. An Aberdonian chemist ............................................................................................................ 37 2.2. On the threshold of a new age ................................................................................................. 41 2.3. Social Technology ...................................................................................................................... 44 2.4. Bringing about the new age ...................................................................................................... 51 2.5. The Aberdeen Scientific Film Club ......................................................................................... 55 2.6. The sooner the better ................................................................................................................ 58 Part I: A Post-War Platform for Science ............................................................................ 61 Chapter 3: A Functionalist Approach to Science Broadcasting ..................................... 62 3.1. The Services Educational Unit ................................................................................................ 63 3.2. ‘Science & Everyday Life’ ......................................................................................................... 69 3.3. Social Technology in ‘Science & Everyday Life’ ................................................................... 74 3.4. Experiments in presentational style ........................................................................................ 78 Chapter 4: Prestige versus Good Radio .......................................................................... 84 4.1. Science Survey under Ian Cox ................................................................................................. 84 4.2. Clow’s memorandum on the future of ‘Science Survey’ ...................................................... 92 4.3. ‘a series of programmes not confined to two or three talks by experts’ .......................... 101 4.4. The response from management ........................................................................................... 104 4.5. Institutional priorities .............................................................................................................. 114 Chapter 5: Science for Elite Audiences ......................................................................... 116 5.1. Defining science on the Third ............................................................................................... 117 5.2. A decade of science on the Third .......................................................................................... 119 5.3. The production of Third Programme talks on science ...................................................... 124 5.4. ‘science for scientists’ .............................................................................................................. 129 5.5. More of the same ..................................................................................................................... 135 5.6. The arrival of ‘science for scientists’ ..................................................................................... 140 5.7. Criteria for success on the Third ........................................................................................... 143 Chapter 6: Ten Years On ............................................................................................... 148 6.1. A ‘scientific impresario’........................................................................................................... 150 6.2. Elite scientists still made for terrible broadcasters .............................................................. 153 6.3. ‘between two stools’ ................................................................................................................ 156 6.4. ‘the fabric of science broadcasting as a whole’ .................................................................... 163 6.5. ‘coordinating science broadcasts over the whole field’ ...................................................... 168 6.6. Losing the Light Programme audience ................................................................................. 175 ‘A Scientific Impresario’ | Jared Robert Keller 5 Part II: Onward Into the Sixties ....................................................................................... 178 Chapter 7: Mediating Science and Scientists ................................................................ 179 7.1. Bringing scientists ‘down to earth’ ........................................................................................ 179 7.2. ‘making it clear, getting it straight’ ......................................................................................... 185 7.3. ‘It’s the information they want’ ............................................................................................. 193 7.4. ‘something very useful indeed’ ............................................................................................... 198 7.5. ‘Science Review’: from straight talks to interviews ............................................................. 202 Chapter 8: Science in News and Topical Programming ............................................... 207 8.1. News versus current affairs .................................................................................................... 208 8.2. ‘diluted with journalism to a degree’ ....................................................................................
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