History
The BBC, whose broadcasting in the UK is funded by a licence fee and does not sell advertising time, is most notable for being the first public service broadcaster in the UK. Its first director general, Lord Reith introduced many of the concepts that would later define PSB in the UK when he adopted the mission to "inform, educate and entertain".
With the launch of the first commercial broadcaster ITV in 1955, the government required that the local franchises fulfilled a similar obligation, mandating a certain level of local news coverage, arts and religious programming, in return for the right to broadcast.
The next commercial television broadcasters in the UK, the state-owned Channel 4 and S4C, were set up by the government in 1981 to provide different forms of PSB. Channel 4 was required to be a public service alternative to the BBC and to cater for minorities and arts. S4C was to be a mainly Welsh language programmer. Neither was required to be commercially successful as Channel 4 was subsidised by the ITV network and S4C received a grant from the central government. However, Channel 4 was later restructured under the Broadcasting Act 1990 to be a state owned corporation that is self-financing.
When the final analogue terrestrial broadcaster, Five, launched in 1997 it too was given a number of public service requirements. These included the obligation to provide minimum amounts of programming from various genres, minimum amounts of programming originally commissioned by the channel and of European origin, and maximum limits on the number of repeats.
Read more about this topic: Broadcasting In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)