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History on Television HISTORY ON TELEVISION ANN GRAY and ERIN BELL HISTORY ON TELEVISION In recent years non-fiction history programmes have flourished on television. This interdisciplinary study of history programming identifies and examines different genres employed by producers and tracks their commissioning, production, marketing and distribution histories. With comparative references to other European nations and North America, the authors focus on British history programming over the last two decades and analyse the relationship between the academy and media professionals. They outline and discuss often-competing discourses about how to ‘do’ history and the underlying assumptions about who watches history programmes. History on Television considers recent changes in the media landscape, which have affected to a great degree how history in general, and whose history in particular, appears onscreen. Through a number of case studies, using material from interviews by the authors with academic and media professionals, the role of the ‘professional’ historian and that of media professionals – commissioning editors and producer/directors – as mediators of historical material and interpretations is analysed, and the ways in which the ‘logics of television’ shape historical output are outlined and discussed. Building on their analysis, Ann Gray and Erin Bell ask if history on television fulfils its potential to be a form of public history through offering, as it does, a range of inter- pretations of the past originating from, or otherwise including, those not based in the academy. Through consideration of the representation, or absence, of the diversity of British identity – gender, ethnicity and race, social status and regional identities – the authors substantially extend the scope of existing scholarship into history on television. History on Television will be essential reading for all those interested in the complex processes involved in the representation of history on television. Ann Gray is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Lincoln and was Principal Investigator on the AHRC Televising History 1995–2010 project at the university. Erin Bell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Lincoln and was AHRC Research Fellow on the Televising History 1995–2010 project. HISTORY ON TELEVISION Ann Gray and Erin Bell First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Ann Gray and Erin Bell The right of Ann Gray and Erin Bell to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gray, Ann, 1946- History on television / Ann Gray and Erin Bell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Historical television programs--Great Britain. 2. Television and history--Great Britain. 3. Television--Production and direction. 4. National characteristics, English. 5. History on television. I. Bell, Erin, 1975- II. Title. PN1992.8.H56G73 2012 791.450941--dc23 2012026004 ISBN: 978-0-415-58038-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-58039-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-07480-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books CONTENTS Preface vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 The business of television: public service to brand identity 26 2 Landmark and flagship television: heritage and national identity 63 3 Commemorative and ‘historical event’ television: memory and identity 100 4 Reenactment: engagement, experience and empathy 130 5 Who do ‘they’ think ‘we’ are?: considering the audience 158 Conclusion: Problematizing ‘public history’–what is rarely there? 186 Notes 220 Bibliography 227 Index 239 PREFACE Beginning in 2004, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) www.ahrc.ac.uk standard Research Grant Scheme from 2006, the ‘Televising History 1995–2010’ research project enabled in-depth and sustained research drawing on a range of disciplinary areas and approaches – cultural studies, history, sociology and television studies – to be undertaken into the development of factual history programming on television, from the mid-1990s to the present. This allowed us to identify key developments in the representation of the past on television and to relate programming to broader changes in the national and international broadcasting landscape in the 1990s as well as to a seemingly insatiable public response to history, leading us to consider how television programming is, and might be, public history. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have contributed to our work which led to the writing of this book. We are particularly grateful to our interviewees, all of whom gave us part of their valu- able time and whose contributions are integral to this book. We would also like to thank members of our Advisory Board, in particular, Nick Barratt, John Corner, Krista Cowman, Taylor Downing, Colin Divall, Jerome Freeman, Juliet Gardiner, Alex Graham, Simon Gunn, Kate Hill, Bettany Hughes, Kathryn Hughes, Steve Humphries, Maria Misra, Isabel Sleight, Craig Spence, Sue Temple, Colin Thomas, Ben Walsh, Helen Weinstein, Christine Whittaker, John Willis and Brian Winston. We have received tremendous support from colleagues at the University of Lincoln and would like to thank especially Sarah Barrow, Krista Cowman, Kate Hill, Isabel Sleight, Jirina Smejkalova and Brian Winston, and our former colleague, Sylvia Harvey, who shared our enthusiasm for our project. Carolyn Williams, Research Manager, demonstrated her boundless patience and professionalism and calmed us down when necessary, and Barbara Sadler’s research informed our understanding of regional programming. We are grateful to the Faculty of Media Humanities and Technology and especially David Sleight for granting us research leave, which enabled us to complete this book. During the course of our research we have presented our work at a number of conferences, including those held by the International Association for Media History (IAMHIST), the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH), the Centre for Media History, Aberystwyth, the Women’s History Network (WHN) and workshops held by the Istituto Parri Bologna ‘Towards a European TV History’, and received stimulating and useful feedback during the ensuing discussions for which we are extremely grateful. In organizing a number of conferences at the University of Lincoln which focused on history on television, we were fortunate enough to attract many wonderful scholars, too numerous to mention individually, who generously presented their work and engaged in discussion and debate which has informed this book. Our thanks also go to Vicky Peters, Laura Mothersole and Michael Strang at Routledge for seeing it through, and to our anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments. Finally our thanks, as ever, go to Florian Gleisner and Nick Gray. INTRODUCTION The majority of people in the UK, mainland Europe and the US gain at least some of their knowledge about the past through television. Although history programming has been an important element of factual production since the earliest days of television, the mid-1990s saw a notable increase in history programming across terrestrial and satellite channels in the UK, a trend which was reflected in the US and other parts of Europe, and also in other sites of public discourse including the National Curriculum, and discussions over the relevance of history to political debate and to national and international policy, such as the work of the History and Policy Group (2002–present).1 At a more general level Andreas Huyssen noted this history boom, and especially the role of the media in enabling the reproduction and representation of the past, com- menting that ‘[t]he past has become part of the present in ways simply unimaginable in earlier centuries’ (Huyssen 2003: 1). Huyssen draws our attention to the voracious nature of forms of representation in trawling the past for evocative and powerful content which, in the age of multiple channels and platforms is an extremely valuable commodity. It seems to us, therefore, that a pressing question, and one that this book seeks to answer, is ‘How do we get the kind of history television that we do?’. Our interdisciplinary approach, from television and cultural studies and historical studies respectively, acknowledges and seeks to explore the complex relationships between the different layers and practices of mediation of the past which are activated within and across different sites of knowledge production. These are the television industry itself, the academy, popular forms of communication and other related cultural sites all of which interpret and produce representations of the past. Our combination of disciplinary knowledge
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