Page 176 - Culture Society and the Media

166 CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA
all political persuasions began to object that many programmes were
biased or obnoxious…. The appointment of Lord Hill as Chairman of the
BBC, and the subsequent appointment in his place at the ITA of Lord
Aylestone, was widely interpreted as a sign that Government was firing a
shot across the bows of the broadcasters to warn them that many members
of the viewing public thought they were off course…. When Lord Hill and
the Governors decided…to assert the editorial independence of
broadcasters by refusing to ban ‘Yesterday’s Men’…politicians may have
wondered whether they had appointed an admiral who habitually turned a
blind eye when the Admiralty made a signal. The broadcasters realized
they were heading for trouble, so they battened down the hatches. (Annan,
1977, p. 15)

The economic control mechanism The possibilities for, and limitations of, the
autonomy of individual communicators within any media organization cannot be
considered without reference to the economic base of the organization. The
effects of the introduction of a competitive commercial element to British
broadcasting have already been related to the programme policy orientations of
the organizations. In another sense, and although it has been argued that British
media professionals—particularly in the BBC—are primarily limited by a form
of social control (by rather vague reference to standards, taste, acceptability),
communicators in Britain are also subject to controls rooted in straightforward
notions of business efficiency. For example, the emergence of a strong new
stratum of middle management in the BBC in the late 1960s is conventionally
attributed to the impact of the McKinsey Report. An unofficial submission to the
Annan Commission pointed to the repercussions of this for programmemakers:

The BBC initiated the McKinsey Report which recommended a stricter
internal system of control over financial expenditure. The BBC
understandably complied. We do not dispute the necessity for rigorous
financial stringency but we submit that we have now not only
unrealistically elaborate financial procedures but that these have led to an
even more Byzantine system of planning and control over programmes
themselves….
Programme-makers feel strongly that real control, artistic as well as
financial, has moved further and further away from themselves. We submit
that this has had a correspondingly ill effect on programmes for which
producers often feel accountable rather than responsible. (Quoted in
Vaughan, 1976, p. 12)

It is in the United States, however, that the strictest limitations are imposed by a
decidedly economic mechanism of control—by direct and measurable reference
to what will sell. This stringent economic imperative leaves American
comrnunicators in an extremely weak position vis-à-vis the powerful networks.