ABSTRACT
So far we have been drawing our illustrations from a wide selection of Nationwide materials, based on notes made during an extended period of viewing. In this section, we take a closer look at ‘Nationwide in Action’, concentrating exclusively on the edition of 19th May 1976. The chapter is in two parts. First, we offer a more detailed breakdown and outline of some parts of the Nationwide ‘script’; secondly, we offer a commentary on certain aspects of the Nationwide discourse. We try here to make available the information on which our categorisation of the items in this and other programmes is based, and to explain the way in which we approached the programme. We fully recognise that our analysis fails to examine in detail the ‘programme as a whole’ at both the visual and verbal levels. A fully adequate analysis would need to provide an account of the structure of the programme at both these levels, and, preferably, a full programme transcript with visual references. This is beyond the scope of our present endeavour-we offer here a schematic outline of the programme which is no more than the beginning of a full analysis.
