ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the BBC’s Children in Need telethon is informed and legitimated by different currency models as part of its aesthetic strategy. It demonstrates how these televisual currencies may be directly aligned with other kinds of medical currency models emerging within the economy of the UK’s National Health Service. Through close textual analysis of the programme and a related analysis of medical currency models proposed and piloted in relation to the NHS, it is argued that the ‘aestheticization’ of currency models provided by the programme reflects an ideological shift in the representation of medical care on public service television, in line with the ideology of neoliberalism and the incremental colonization of ‘financialization’ into all aspects of contemporary society.
