ABSTRACT
Post-war affluence was measured in consumer durables. Cars, refrigerators and washing machines made it easier to do what had always been done. Television changed people’s social life and habits. Commercial television was believed to alter their aspirations and values as well. In the late 1950s and early 1960s television was central to a debate about
supposed changes in the British class structure. The growth of a mass television audience and the setting up of a commercial service were seen as agents of a revolution that was eroding class distinction and increasing social mobility. Television has more often been seen as a destructive than as a creative force. In the 1950s many regarded it as a threat to traditional ways of life, and hence to the basis of traditional political loyalties. In 1962 the Pilkington Report summed up this debate. The Director
General, Sir Hugh Greene, later called the report ‘the most important piece of work on the purposes of broadcasting which has appeared in this or any other country’.1 Pilkington attempted to establish the criteria for producing – and judging – good broadcasting. In fact the report was very much a product of its time, and was constrained by current sociological fashions.
