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BBC Four As “A Place to Think”

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BBC Four as “A Place to Think” Issues of Quality, Cultural Value and Television Archive in the Digital, Multiplatform Age Jovanka Vana Goblot Goldsmiths College, University of London PhD Media and Communications, 2013 I hereby declare that all the work presented in this thesis is my own. .............................................................................................. 2 Abstract Public service broadcasting, central to British cultural life, is facing ongoing uncertainties brought about by digitisation, media convergence and broader political, social and economic shifts. By focusing on BBC Four, BBC’s digital channel for arts, culture and ideas, this thesis examines how these transformations affect the institution’s quality provision and cultural value. The central argument of the thesis is that the BBC’s approach to cultural value has discursively and structurally changed in response to wider economic and ideological shifts. The research takes a qualitative case study approach, which encompasses historical, discursive and textual analyses as well as interviews with the key BBC Four staff. It is divided into two sections. The first part of the research is based on the secondary literature and offers broad scholarly accounts about how the concept of culture has so far been approached, and addresses the lack of sustained academic debates about television’s cultural value. It further situates the analysis of BBC Four within historical institutional and policy debates over the purpose and role of public service broadcasting, its quality and cultural standards. As the object of study is a contemporary phenomenon, the second section is empirical, largely based on interviews, and pays attention to the channel’s organisation and texts. The quality of BBC Four’s provision, the thesis argues, is articulated through an “internal cultural geography”, a phrase coined to situate the channel relationally within multiple and complex institutional contexts, including the BBC’s shift to multichannel, digital platforms; the formation of the BBC television portfolio; the branding and marketing of its channel identity; and the channel’s prominent curatorial role within the BBC’s digitisation of the television archive. The thesis concludes that the cultural value of BBC Four is conveyed relationally, with the channel being defined as a place where cultural programmes can be found. 3 Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 9 1.1 The Thesis Structure ..................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 2. Review of Literature: Cultural Value, Analysis of Culture and Issues of Quality, Historiography and Television Production ........................................................... 24 2.1 From Culture and Civilisation to Culture and Society: High Culture from Arnold to Williams and Adorno ........................................................................................ 28 2.2 The Frankfurt School and the Evaluation of High Culture .................................... 31 2.3 Culturalism: From Expanding Access to Culture towards Expanding the Definition of Culture ............................................................................................................ 34 2.4 From Popular Arts to Uncritical Populism: Cultural Studies, the Crisis of Authority and the Emergence of Anti-Intellectualism ................................................... 36 2.4.1 Hall and Whannel: Popular Arts and the Analysis of Culture ...................... 36 2.4.2 Cultural Populism, Anti-Intellectualism and Inversion of Values: Towards New Binary Positions? ..................................................................................................... 39 2.5 BBC Four and Quality Television: Issues of Text, Aesthetics and Historiography ....................................................................................................................... 45 2.5.1 Quality Television, Aesthetics and the Issue of Text ..................................... 47 2.5.2 From Quality to Historiography: Archive, Classics, Golden Age, and Television Canonicity ...................................................................................................... 53 2.6 Institutional Self-Reflexivity and Critical Practices: Issues of Cultural Value in Television Production ........................................................................................................... 58 2.7 Conclusion: Devaluing Questions of Cultural Value? BBC Four as a “Place to Think” ....................................................................................................................................... 61 Chapter 3. Methods and Methodologies: Writing about BBC Four and the Cultural Value of Television ..................................................................................................................... 64 3.1 Introduction – Towards A Qualitative Multi-Methodological Approach .......... 64 3.2 The Case of BBC Four – Analysis, Generalisability, and the Authority of the Case Study Approach ........................................................................................................... 66 3.2.1 Case Study vs. Ethnography ................................................................................. 71 3.3 Historical Analysis .......................................................................................................... 73 3.4 Textual Analysis: Watching Archives on BBC Four - Double Hermeneutics, Reflexivity and the Uses of Archive .................................................................................. 77 4 3.5 Qualitative Interviews .................................................................................................... 81 3.5.1 Discourse-Sensitive Interviews: From “Intellectual” Television to “Intelligent” BBC Four ..................................................................................................... 86 3.6 Conclusion: Bringing Methodological Approaches Together ............................... 88 Chapter 4. The Reithian Legacy and Key Television Policy Debates about Cultural Value: From the Third Programme to BBC Four ............................................................... 90 4.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 90 4.2 Beginnings: Reithian Ethos, Cultural Standards and Cultural Uplift in broadcasting ............................................................................................................................ 92 4.2.1 “Music for All”: Taste, Hierarchy and National Culture ............................... 94 4.2.2 Addressing and Engaging: Reithian Legacy and the Breakup of the Monopoly ........................................................................................................................... 97 4.3 The Pilkington Report – Cultural Standards versus Trivialism ............................ 99 4.3.1 BBC Two: From “Intellectual Ghetto” Towards “a Complex Amalgam of Tastes” ............................................................................................................................. 102 4.3.2 BBC Two, the Golden Age of Television, and Producer Power .............. 104 4.4 Opening Up: The Annan Report, Channel 4 and the Pluralisation of Culture ................................................................................................................................................ 106 4.4.1 Discourses on Plural Culture: Minority, Access, Difference ..................... 110 4.4.2 Channel 4 and the Rise of Independent Production ................................... 112 4.5 The Peacock Report and its Aftermath: The Neoliberal Turn and the Marketisation of Culture .................................................................................................. 113 4.5.1 Issues of Public Service and Quality Television ............................................ 116 4.5.2 “Wall to Wall Dallas” versus “Higher Ground” – Inversion of Values and the Cultural Turn .......................................................................................................... 119 4.6 The Arrival of BBC Four – Continuities and Changes to the Market Failure Logic in the Digital Age ..................................................................................................... 121 4.6.1 BBC Four and the Public Value Test ............................................................... 126 4.6.2 Putting Quality First? BBC Four - From Originating to Curating Quality Content ............................................................................................................................ 130 4.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 134 Chapter 5. Case Study 1: BBC Four and the “Internal Cultural Geography” ........... 137 5.1 Genealogy of BBC Four: From Cultural Ladder of Radio to Cultural Niche of Digital Television ...............................................................................................................
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