Asa Briggs

Problems and possibilities in the writing of broadcasting history

Worcester College, Oxford, author of 4 volumes of The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom—The Birth of Broadcasting (I96I); The Golden Age of Wireless (I965); The War of Words (I970); and Sound and Vision (1979). Scattered throughout the four volumes of Tlze History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom are various general observations on the scope, methodology and objectives of broadcasting history. Some of the observations represent initial assumptions on which the whole (and as yet unfinished) history has been based: some are the byproducts of the experience of research and writing: some reflect the impact of the work of other scholars concerned with communications, not necessarily historians, since i96i, when the first volume was published. The twenty years which have elapsed since the beginnings of this project have been strategically significant but often difficult years in the history of broadcasting. They cover, for example, what Peter Black has called ’the forced retreat’ of sound broadcasting (Black, i972); fierce competition for audience ratings between the BBC and the commercial companies; the rise and fall of more ’permissive’ broadcasting, including satirical broadcasting, associated with the Director-Generalship of Sir Hugh Greene; the beginnings of local radio; the controversies surrounding perhaps the most controversial report the BBC has ever produced, Broadcasting in the Seventies;

What is the History of Popular Culture

It is easier to participate in, to enjoy, to deplore, or to explore popular culture than it is to define it. This is not simply because there are difficulties in relating popular culture to culture (and subcultures) or to folk culture — some of these difficulties are of the historian’s making, particularly the Marxist historian’s — but because of the inherent difficulties in defining ‘culture’ itself. It was not because of his particular political or cultural stance that T. S. Eliot chose to collect ‘notes towards a definition of culture’ rather than to offer a definition of his own.

The historian and the future

Abstract Historians had to come to terms with the fact that there is no ‘absolute’ past, long before forecasters were pondering the benefits of the ‘absolute’ future. They have also had to come to terms with their style of presentation, their personal biases, and the fact that they are grounded in the present and are therefore influenced by present preoccupations. Historians and futures researchers have much in common. This article explores the extent of their common ground and how it might be extended.