Page 101 - Living Room WarsDesprately Seeking the Audience Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

Britain: the BBC and the loss of the disciplined audience 89
means for the democratization of culture and society, in the sincere belief that democracy
was directly related to principled and conscientious cultural leadership and guidance, to
giving people access to established cultural forms from which they were previously
excluded. As Reith stated in his memoirs:

We have tried to found a tradition of public service, and to dedicate the
service of broadcasting to the service of humanity in its fullest sense. We
believe that a new national asset has been created…the asset referred to is
of the moral and not the material order—that which, down the years,
brings the compound interest of happier homes, broader culture and truer
citizenship.
(Quoted in Frith 1983:108)

These ideas were translated into explicit norms for the preferred way in which the
audience should listen to radio. Habitual non-stop listening or using the radio as
background noise were discouraged. Instead, the audience was summoned to listen
seriously and constructively, as the 1930 BBC Yearbook states: ‘the listener must
recognise that a definite obligation rests on him to choose intelligently from the
programmes offered to him’ (quoted in Scannell and Cardiff 1982:185). The BBC
attempted to encourage this dutiful style of radio listening through very specific
programming devices. Generally, standardisation, continuity and regularity, already
common in those days in American broadcasting, were rejected. For example, contrary to
present-day programming strategies, the principle of fixed scheduling (i.e. placing
programmes at the same time on the same day from week to week) was avoided.
Furthermore, four to five minutes of silence were inserted in-between programmes so as
to allow listeners to switch off. In short, BBC programming policy at that time was based
upon highly idealist and Utopian expectations about the audience: an image of the ideal
listener was constructed to which actual listeners were presumed to comply. They were
not supposed to engage in ‘easy listening’, to use the wireless as a service which is ‘on
tap’ all day long. Indeed, radio listening was defined as a very serious, well-controlled
activity.
Thus, in this early period BBC discourse about the audience was both normative and
speculative: knowledge about how to address the audience was determined theoretically,
not empirically. The discourse was prescriptive not descriptive: it was preoccupied with
what the audience required, not what it wanted. It was not the BBC’s concern to be
popular. Instead, it wanted the audience to be a disciplined audience.
But soon some doubts were raised within the BBC as to the real effectivity of its
programming endeavours. Thus, programme consultant Filson Young raised the question
whether the audience was really made up of the ‘serious listeners’ envisioned by Reith:

What is the attitude of the ordinary listener towards broadcasting? Is he
going to regard it as a means of filling the vacuum of idle hours, carping
at everything which does not make immediate and facile appeal for him
and being amazed when the programmes are not continually filled with
the kinds of items that do so appeal?
(Quoted in Briggs 1965:74)