Broadcast views
Joining a long list of publications marking the centenary of the BBC this year, Simon J Potter’s lucid book provides a useful account of the key staging posts in the life of this national institution. He argues that there is “nothing inevitable” about the BBC, and that “much of its history has been shaped by haphazard experimentation”.
Potter leads readers on a pleasant historical canter, starting from the BBC’s small beginnings as a company to its transformation into a corporation from 1927 under the mercurial John Reith. He discusses the organisation’s imperial role, its much-lauded contribution to winning hearts and minds during the Second World War and its postwar expansion. He also explores the success of BBC television and increasing competition from commercial broadcasters at home and abroad. His text is leavened with interesting glimpses into popular programmes and the creative people behind the shows.
Drawing on decades of academic scholarship, the book offers balanced, though brief, assessments of the changing relationships between the broadcaster, Whitehall, its competitors and the public in Britain, and of the organisation’s impact overseas. Potter is all praise for the BBC’s efforts during the recent Covid-19 lockdowns, claiming that “no other media provider offered such a range of services”. But he is not overly sanguine about its future, noting that, over the past two decades, the corporation “has been in a state of perpetual crisis”.
Potter’s book is an ambitious attempt to deal with the BBC as a whole over a century.
Perhaps inevitably, with such a vast topic, the treatment of some issues is rather perfunctory, and those expecting fresh revelations based on new archival research will be disappointed. Nonetheless, this book offers value for money as a general introduction to the BBC, and a good read overall.
Chandrika Kaul, professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews. She is currently working on a book on the BBC and empire