ABSTRACT
John Reith, who started his career as the BBC’s Managing Director in 1922, had a clear view of the task of broadcasting, which he could develop under the rather felicitous circumstances of deliberate disregard of the real world of actual audiences. He saw the BBC as a ship of which he was the chief pilot-a nautical metaphor which suggested a mission of leading and directing the audience in the modern world (Kumar 1977). Echoing the legacy of cultural theorist Matthew Arnold (1963[1867]), he developed a highly commanding philosophy about the BBC’s responsibility towards the audience: ‘As we conceive it, our responsibility is to carry into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour, or achievement’ (quoted in Briggs 1985:55).
