Public Service Broadcasting
The Crawford Report (1925) defined the original public service responsibility as being that of ‘education’ ‘information’ and entertainment and in that order of importance. British broadcasting primary concern was providing a ‘service’ (for the public) of the ‘highest’ possible kind. Paddy Scannell says (in his chapter on Public Service Broadcasting in Media Studies Reader (2002)) that more recently the 1986 Peacock Committee report on broadcasting, it ‘noted that it had experienced some difficulty in obtaining a definition of the principle (of public service) from the broadcasters themselves…’ This shows how over time the definition of public service broadcasting has become less easy to distinguish and that is because we can see that even broadcasters weren’t too sure what it meant. ... John Reith was the first Director-General of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) from 1927 - 1938. He wrote a memorandum, which was more of an unbiased statement that intended to show how he thought broadcasting should be conducted as a public service. His principal concern with a pubic service broadcasting system was that it demanded very high standards and they needed maintaining. ... He felt that broadcasting has a responsibility do much more than that, he felt very strongly that it should be used to educate and the broadcasters made contacts educational institutions back then to develop radio and the use of it to promote the spread of knowledge. Broadcasting was to have an educational purpose - it was also very important to John Reith that a high ethical and moral attitude was upheld and kept. ... These were the original ways and manners of broadcasting and it was absolutely vital to Reith that broadcasting should be tasteful and not keep to the high standards he wanted.