A stimulating treatment of an area of public life which is a subject of continuing debate and controversy. This volume covers the years in which ITV faced more challenges than at any time in its history and its regulator, the IBA, was subject to political pressures so extreme that they brought about its abolition and rebirth as the Independent Television Commission. The book gives detailed accounts, based on documents not previously available and interviews with over sixty senior figures in the industry, of the changes and controversies of the period. Highlights include: the conflict with government over the programme Death on the Rock , the battle with the BBC for possession of the rights to Dallas , the financial crisis at ITN, the impact of the Peacock Committee Report and the 1990 White Paper on Broadcasting, as well as detailed accounts of the broadcasters' and the regulator's battle with the government over the Broadcasting Bill and the subsequent 'auction' of ITV licences.

The ITV network was designed as a federation of companies, different in size and character, jointly and severally constructing programme schedules in which strands of entertainment were interwoven with news bulletins, drama with sport, feature films with documentaries, church services with broadcasting for schools. The purpose of this volume is to convey some impression of diversity by illustrating and illuminating the rich assortment of companies and programmes making up ITV's overall service to the public in the operation of a plural system on a single television channel during a peak period in British broadcasting.

The radical expansion of television broadcasting in the post-war years and beyond both reflected and promoted a cultural revolution sweeping across British society. Reaching out to a mass audience for the first time, the new television industry made visible the transition from drab austerity and seeming cultural consensus to the brash, heady glitz and individualism of the new consumer age."Television and Consumer Culture" explores television's institutional, technological and programming developments during this period, revealing how genres as different as action adventure series, serious dramas, situation comedies and quiz and game shows simultaneously promoted both consumer culture and class conflict. Drawing on historical analysis and sociological theory, and looking at issues such as celebrity, scheduling, intimacy and sociability, Turnock argues that television during this era established and promoted itself as a culturally powerful force, a fact that has implications for the way that media power is understood to operate today.

The collected essays in this book arose out of the groundbreaking conference of the International Association of Media and History, which brought together key academics and program makers from around the world involved in history and television, including Nicholas Pronay, Pierre Sorlin, and Taylor Dowing. These essays offer a dialogue between academics and media practitioners that covers archival access, analyses of how different TV systems have represented themselves, case studies, and the future of television. Philip M. Taylor is a professor of international communications and the director of the Institute of Communications at the University of Leeds. Graham Roberts is a lecturer in communications arts at the University of Leeds.

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This is a major reference work about the overlapping fields of television, cable and video. With both technical and popular appeal, this book covers the following areas: advertising, agencies, associations, companies, unions, broadcasting, cable-casting, engineering, events, general production and programming.

In the late 1960s in California, a down-and-out young man receives control of an underground newspaper from his wealthy uncle and uses that outlet to become a media and entertainment mogul until a ruthless underworld syndicate vows to bring him down.