This is an important study of the crucial issue of alternatives in commercial and public support of broadcasting in the U.S. and Europe. The Peacock Committee on Financing the BBC, a committee sponsored by the British government, commissioned Jay Blumler and Tom Nossiter to investigate the impact of alternate ways of financing the BBC on the range and quality of broadcasting. They then commissioned papers on broadcasting financing in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan to answer the question: "Should the BBC allow some...

Like its companion volume, Telecommunications in Europe, this book deals with the evolution of powerful monopoly institutions in the communications field--the public broadcasters--and the dramatic changes that took place in the late 1980s throughout Europe, and transformed the media landscape. It provides a comprehensive view of European broadcasting systems, using the perspective of economics and policy analysis. The introductory part offers a framework for understanding media and the forces of change affecting them. The main section is a unique series of chapters covering the...

Telecommunications represents one of the largest high technology equipment and service industries in the world. Today there is growing support within the telecommunications industry for competition domestically and in world trade which is directly at odds with its distinctive political tradition of monopoly provision and minimally competitive international trade practices. This raises major questions, both for emerging public policy and for theorists concerned with the making of public policy. This particularly true for Europe, the focus of this study, where the reform of the...

Fires, floods, accidents, celebrity lifestyles, heroic acts of humble people, cute acts by family pets and the weather. Television's non-news about non-events takes up an increasingly large part of contemporary broadcast journalism, but is regularly dismissed by television pundits as having no place on our screens. To its critics, this 'other news' distracts our attention with trivialities and entertainment values, and undermines journalism's relationship with the workings of democracy. Yet, in spite of these protests, this 'lite news' remains as entrenched and as popular as...

Media, Ritual and Identity examines the role of the media in society; its complex influence on democratic processes and its participation in the construction and affirmation of different social identities.
It draws extensively upon cultural anthropology and combines a commanding overview of contemporary media debates with a series of fascinating case studies ranging from political ritual on television to broadcasting in the third world.

In the 1950s, British cinema won large audiences with popular war films and comedies, creating stars such as Dirk Bogarde and Kay Kendall, and introducing the stereotypes of war hero, boffin and comic bureaucrat which still help to define images of British national identity. In this text, Christine Geraghty examines some of the most popular films of this period, exploring the ways in which they approached contemporary social issues such as national identity, the end of empire, new gender roles and the care of children. Through a series of case studies on films as diverse as It Always Rains on...

De-Westernizing Media Studies brings together leading media critics from around the world to address central questions in the study of the media. How do the media connect to power in society? Who and what influence the media? How is globalization changing both society and the media?

The influence of the media is a contentious issue. Every time a particularly high-profile crime of violence is committed, there are those who blame the effects of the media. The familiar culprits of cinema, television, video and rock music, have now been joined, particularly in the wake of the massacre at Columbine High, by the Internet and the World Wide Web. Yet, any real evidence that the media do actually have such negative effects remains as elusive as ever and, consequently, the debate about effects frequently ends up as being little more than strident and rhetorical appeals to common...

Extending the visionary early work of the late Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village, one of his last collaborative efforts, applies that vision to today's worldwide, integrated electronic network.
When McLuhan's groundbreaking Understanding Media was published in 1964, the media as we know it today did not exist. But McLuhan's argument, that the technological extensions of human consciousness were racing ahead of our ability to understand their consequences, has never been more compelling. And if the medium is the message, as McLuhan maintained, then the message...