Dennis Lawrence

Richard Hoggart and Janet Morgan

Chapter 5 in The Future of Broadcasting, 1982, pp 66-80 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract For the civil servant concerned with the administration of the government’s interest in broadcasting, the question of authority starts from the need to manage the allocation and use of radio frequencies. By Act of Parliament and by international treaty, this is a matter for the government; and the need for that management is indisputable. To use Lord Reith’s evocative and time-touched phrase, someone must be ‘the policeman of the aether’; and it cannot be anyone else. Authority here is uncomplicated: government, through an executive Department of State, licenses the use of frequencies. Broadly, its concern will be to make the most intensive possible use of the frequencies available under international agreement to the United Kingdom. As the licenser, it will seek to ensure that its licensees observe conditions prescribed to prevent, or to reduce to generally acceptable levels, interference by one transmission with any other. It is concerned essentially with the means, and not the ends; with the signal and not the message it contains. But when the signal is broadcast for general reception, when the licence authorises the licensee to address mass audiences in this country and in others, when in short the messages become television and radio programmes, then the consequences of the act of licensing become different in kind. They become social.

Keywords: Civil Servant; Radio Programme; Broadcasting Service; Production Staff; Public Disposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1982
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-05440-4_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349054404

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-05440-4_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().