Broadcasting culture: innovation, accommodation and routinization in the early BBC

Because media research has developed in the age of television, relatively little attention has been paid to questions about the impact of a new medium on the culture. ¹ Television was a striking innovation but in cultural terms its introduction was less revolutionary than that of the two media which preceded it, film and radio. The organizational framework for television was already set by the experience of operating sound broadcasting. Notoriously, the television pioneers in Britain were regarded as mavericks by their colleagues in the radio establishment. Only thirty years before, however, the radio pioneers had been working entirely in the unknown without any established colleagues to guide or direct them. Similarly, television content was able to incorporate forms developed by other media. Radio broadcasting was already providing a variegated service in the home. The cinema had developed narrative conventions within an audio-visual medium. It was through these two earlier media that the concept of such a service and the scope of such conventions were defined.