The BBC Television Audience Research Reports and BBC Scotland Drama, 1964-82: Recorded Opinions and Invisible Expectations

Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the BBC’s internal Audience Research Unit compiled up to 700 television Audience Research reports per year, attempting to cover the complete spectrum of BBC TV programming. What I’m going to do today is consider the value of this material, in relation to my own work on the development of […]

Londoners – Pity About the Abbey (1965)

“London itself takes the leading role in each of this new series of plays – a role which varies between hero and villain, enchantress and harpy, for she is a different city to every Londoner.

Anastasia (1953)

Our TV’s Forgotten Dramas season at BFI Southbank continues on Tuesday 10 February with a screening of Sunday Night Theatre: Anastasia introduced by Lez Cooke, who discusses the programme’s history and archival survival here.

Sutherland’s Law (BBC Scotland 1973-76): Presenting Scottish landscape to a UK audience

This post presents a forgotten BBC Scotland drama series of the 1970s and explains its historical significance and distinctive form. I’ll discuss its treatment of landscape before finally considering how the programme represented tensions between rural and city Scotland.

Edwardian values, 1970s Television: John Galsworthy on BBC1

This post examines Edwardian drama for television through looking at three versions of plays by John Galsworthy made by the BBC in the 1970s.

Audience hostility: ‘Play for Today: Circle Line’ (BBC, 1971)

 I’m spending much of the first two months of the Forgotten Television Drama project in the BBC Written Archives in Caversham, taking the opportunity to systematically go through all of the files of Audience Research Reports that the BBC compiled between 1950 and 1982 (well over 500 per annum for most of those years!).