Standards for Quality Programming

Qualitative elements:

• Believable acting/ character performance
• Seamless editing
• Quality camera work/ angles/ shots
• Good lighting and sound quality
• Believable and relevant ‘mis-en-scene’ elements/ setting/ costume etc.
• Followable storyline/ plot and something that is also unpredictable
• Professional marketing

Broadcasting = Producers target a wider, mass audience.

Narrowcasting = Producers target a niche audience.

The BBC

• Publicly owned (funded through TV licenses by the public and overseen by government)

• The BBC was founded in 1922, it started with radio – television broadcasting came later.
• Lord John Reith was the first ‘director general’ of the BBC
• He set out an ethos (a belief/ mission statement) for the BBC. This ethos had 3 main principals; to inform, to educate and to entertain.
• To oversee due diligence and regulation, the UK government reviews a charter: The BBC Charter, to ensure the BBC stay inline.

The BBC took up a PATERNALIST approach rather than a POPULIST approach. In other words, rather than providing ‘normal’ content to their audiences, they provide alternate ideas and what is ‘good’. Cecil Lewis said that the BBC began to open up “new worlds to people”, meaning that audiences are given access to new content.

Populism = Giving people what they want.

Paternalism = Giving the people, what some people think they need.

• British culture is centered around the BBC. It is the ‘social cement’ that gives us a shared experience and exposes us to new culture/ ideas (Habermas’ ideas on the Transformation of the Public Sphere –> The uneducated have access to education with entertainment)

Grace Wyndham Goldie says that the most significant thing regarding broadcasting is the ability to change time and space. Many have fears revolving around new technologies.