John Ellis

The Performance on Television of Sincerely Felt Emotion

The self-presentation of ordinary people on TV took some time to develop. An early game show from British ITV demonstrates the many pitfalls encountered in developing even the most basic of self-presentational codes. So the presentation of sincerely felt emotions did not develop as a style until the late 1980s with the changes in daytime talk and the growth of reality TV. The cult of sincerity, however, has had profound cultural effects, reaching into the political sphere.

What do we mean by Media Practice Education

Abstract Changes in the television industry have simplified technological aspects and complicated business practice. Technological change has not however eliminated the need to teach the skills of programme-making which are, if anything, being pushed onto the formal education and training sector by the decline of traditional entry-level roles. This essay argues that it is not sufficient for the education sector to teach such skills alone. A glass ceiling is developing in the industry between the activity of programme-making and the business of management, and the progression route from programme-making to senior management is atrophying. Programme-making is becoming the business of exploited youth. Televisions new power structure, calling the shots for programme-makers, is peopled by legal affairs executives, schedulers, business studies and marketing graduates. If programme-makers are to hold their own in broadcasting, then they will have to be taught the skills appropriate to these roles as well.

Why Digitise Historical Television

Digitisation of historic TV material is driven by the widespread perception that archival material should be made available to diverse users. Yet digitisation alters the material, taking away any lingering sense of presence. Digitisation and online access, however, offer startling new possibilities. The article offers three: use of material in language teaching and learning; use in dementia therapy; and applications as data in medical research. All depend on ordinary TV for their effectivity.

Adapt Simulation: 16mm Film Editing for Television

Two television editors who once worked with 16mm film discuss and explore their former working methods and demonstrate how to make a picture cut using film. The method of ‘hands-on history’ used for this simulation is discussed, as are the problems of presenting such data.

How to be in public: the case of an early television show

The process of image management, whether of celebrities or non-celebrities, involves attention to several different registers of communication at once. The act of appearing on television has always presented difficulties for ordinary people in managing these different ‘framings’ of their spontaneous behaviour. This is vividly demonstrated by the first ever Double Your Money programme on the newly opened British commercial channel ITN in 1955. The different performance styles that people employed, along with the key role of the presenter Hughie Green, are here examined in detail. The problems of historical TV research using programmes that were ‘temporarily meaningful’ are also discussed along with other examinations of this archival programme.

Film in Higher Education

The key difference between British and US university arts faculties is that student essays have to be typed in America, whereas a typed essay from a British student is received with general wonderment. This demonstrates two features about British universities. First, they (erroneously) assume their students to be living on a hand-to-mouth basis, with no money for obtaining typewriters, individually or collectively. Second, they have no conception of their activity as one of training intellectuals for modern society. Their product is the ‘British literary intellectual’, a species of little use other than colour supplement journalism, whose stock in trade is the ability to produce an urbane quotation from the classics to fit any occasion whatsoever. Most arts graduates find careers in areas for which their training in this salon mode is singularly inappropriate: news journalism, civil service administration, social work, various kinds of management. Typing is an essential skill for most of these careers, as is the ability to understand complex technological processes (or at least their potential); the intricacies of particular sectors of the economy; the role of the state; the organisation of tasks into a systematic articulation of functions; the actual experience of working within such processes; the organisation of unions and shop-floor solidarity and so on.