3 A recent account by Kate Murphy, with experience as a producer on the BBC radio programme Woman’s Hour, has shown how ‘ women “oiled” the machine of the BBC as well as their capacity to create, to innovate and to lead’. There have always been women in administrative roles at the BBC – as organisers, or with responsibility for certain programme categories, both in radio and television, but, normally, fewer than men. 4 Kate Murphy, Behind the Wireless, a History of Early Women at the BBC (London, Palgrave Macmillan, (.)Ħ Unequal pay has been the unspoken norm in society as well as in the BBC even for women employed in the upper echelons.3 Joy Leman, ‘Pulling our weight in the call-up of women’: class and gender in British radio in the S (.).Secondly drama production is examined in some detail, on the grounds that this period marks a significant change of direction for this popular genre, both in terms of the role of practitioners, writers, producers, directors, and the shift towards a discourse of political and social change in the wider framework. The first example touches on employment conditions for women at the BBC, together with a consideration of programmes aimed at women viewers, themed largely by an ideology of domesticity, with few changes in the mode of address. The results, prompted partly by survival strategies in the face of competition, included efforts to address a broader section of the population, with fundamental shifts in the representation of class and, to some extent, of women.Ĥ In this context, two key aspects of this expanding period in television programming will be examined. A significant factor in this was that of - new men on the block - managerial figures making policy decisions which changed the direction of the BBC. 1ģ The BBC has both reflected and reinforced cultural, social, and political mores in British society over the decades, and an initial look at the structure and history of policy making at the BBC shows an organisation shaped by the dominant ideological and political perspectives of its time. The broadcasting institution is an unelective power centre, which becomes, because of its connections with its society, an arbiter of the culture, a subtle patron of politics, a steersman of the entertainments industry in all its forms. 1 Anthony Smith, The Shadow in the Cave (London, Quartet, 1976), p.
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