> 'The BBC under Birt and Dyke: "Uncertain Vision" - analysis and
method'
>
> Dr. Georgina Born research workshop
> Chair: Professor Angela McRobbie
>
> Goldsmiths College, May 12th, 5-7pm, Room MB256
>
> Dr. Georgina Born, Reader in Sociology, Anthropology and Music at
> Cambridge University, has very kindly agreed to come to Goldsmiths
College
> on May 12th to deliver a lecture followed by a workshop where she will

> discuss the methodological and theoretical approach she has used in
her
> groundbreaking research on cultural institutions. This event will be
> chaired by Professor Angela McRobbie.
>
> In this workshop Dr. Born will be talking specifically about the
> theoretical and methodological approach she used for her research on
the
> BBC. As well as having access to the top levels of the organisation,
she
> also undertook detailed ethnographic research within the drama and
> documentary departments and on the BBC's flagship current affairs
> programme Newsnight. She will be talking about the changing production

> cultures in these areas and will use tapes of programmes to illustrate
her
> arguments. This will be particularly useful for any students doing
> production studies, ethnography, or trying to make links between
> political-economic conditions, media organisations and media output;
also
> it should be of  interest to the journalism and practice Masters.
>
> If you are coming please contact David Lee at [log in to unmask] to
> confirm.
>
> Georgina Born is the author of Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the
> Reinvention of the BBC and Rationalizing Culture. IRCAM, Boulez, and
the
> institutionalization of the musical Avant-Garde amongst other texts.
>
> Further information about Uncertain Vision:
>
>       Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC
>       The BBC is the world's most famous and powerful cultural
> institution. Throughout its 80-year existence it has attracted
> controversy and political bullying, as well as epitomising globally
> broadcasting's democratic potential and the heights to which
> non-commercial broadcasting can aspire. It remains the model for
> public broadcasters around the world.
>
>       Dr Georgina Born of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences
at
> Cambridge University has published a book, Uncertain Vision,
> providing the definitive portrait of this remarkable institution in
> the 1990s and early 2000s, during dangerously uncertain times for
> public broadcasting. Based on the first such sustained research ever
> conducted inside the BBC, funded for three years by the ESRC, Dr
> Born gained access to all ranks of the organization.
>
>       Uncertain Vision gives an extraordinary analysis of the
corporation
> during the later 1990s, the last years of the regime of the former
> director-general John Birt, and the early 2000s, including Greg
> Dyke's reign as director-general, the tumultuous events around the
> Hutton Inquiry and the BBC's entry into digital broadcasting. It
> gives the background to the Hutton crisis in changes to the BBC's
> journalism; and argues that in the face of increasing and
> inappropriately intrusive oversight by government, the BBC has
> rescued government policy by pioneering a free-to-air digital
> platform and digital channels.
>
>       The book probes the policies of the Birt period, which it
analyses
> as a form of political subordination and charges with eroding the
> creativity of the BBC and with fuelling the declining quality of
> British television. It uncovers the damage to good programme-making
> caused by the centralisation of programme commissioning and the
> growing obsession with markets, market share, market research and
> management consultancy under Birt - many of them continuing trends.
>
>       Looking ahead to the future, Uncertain Vision makes a cogent
> argument for a new kind of self-regulation on the part of the BBC.
> It outlines also a new philosophical rationale to underpin the BBC's
> ever greater importance in a pluralist world.