Ñòðàíèöà: 5/7
The Weekly and Periodical Press.
Good English writing is often to be found in the weekly political and literary journals, all based in London, all with nationwide circulations in the tens of thousands. “The Economist”, founded in 1841, probably has no equal everywhere. It has a coloured cover and a few photographs inside, so that it looks like “Time”’, “Newsweek” or “Der Spiegel”, but its reports have more depth and breadth than any these. It covers world affairs, and even its American section is more informative about America than its American equivalents. Although by no means “popular”, it is vigorous in its comments, and deserves the respect in which it is generally held. “Spectator” is a weekly journal of opinion. It regularly contains well-written articles, often politically slanted. It devotes nearly half its space to literature and the arts.
“The Times” has three weekly supplements, all appeared and sold separately. The “Literary Supplement” is devoted almost entirely to book reviews, and covers all kinds of new literature. It makes good use of academic contributors, and has at last, unlike “The Economist”, abandoned its old tradition of anonymous reviews. “New Scientist”4, published by the company which owns the “Daily Mirror”, has good and serious articles about scientific research, often written by academics yet useful for the general reader.
One old British institution, the satirical weekly “Punch”’, survives, more abrasive than in an earlier generation yet finding it hard to keep the place it once had in a more secure social system. Its attraction, particularly for one intellectual youth, has been surpassed by a new rival, “Private Eye”, founded in 1962 by people who, not long before, had run a pupils’ magazine in Shrewsbury School. Its scandalous material is admirably written on atrocious paper and its circulation rivals that of “The Economist”.
Glossy weekly or monthly illustrated magazines cater either for women or for any of a thousand special interests. Almost all are based in London, with national circulations, and the women’s magazines sell millions of copies. These, along with commercial television, are the great educators of demand for the new and better goods offered by the modern consumer society. In any big newsagent’s shop the long rows of brightly covered magazines seem to go on for ever; beyond the large variety of appeals to women and teenage girls come those concerned with yachting, tennis, model railways, gardening and cars. For every activity there is a magazine, supported mainly by its advertisers, and from time to time the police bring a pile of pornographic magazines to local magistrates, who have the difficult task of deciding whether they are sufficiently offensive to be banned.
These specialist magazines are not cheap. They live off an infinite variety of taste, curiosity and interest. Their production, week by week and month by month, represents a fabulous amount of effort and of felled trees. Television has not killed the desire to read.
Radio and Television.
Since the 1970s 98% of British households have had television sets able to receive four channels, two put out by the BBC, two by commercial companies. Commercial satellite and cable TV began to grow significantly in 1989-1990, and by 1991 the two main companies operating in Britain had joined together as British Sky Broadcasting. By 1991 about one household in ten had the equipment to receive this material.
Every household with TV must by law pay for a licence, which costs about the same for a year as a popular newspaper every day.
Unlike the press, mass broadcasting has been subject to some state control from its early days. One agreed purpose has been to ensure that news, comment and discussion should be balanced and impartial, free of influence by government or advertisers. From 1926 first radio, then TV as well, were entrusted to the BBC, which still has a board of governors appointed by the government. The BBC’s monopoly was ended in 1954, when an independent board was appointed by the Home Secretary to give licences to broadcast (“franchises”) to commercial TV companies financed by advertising, and called in general independent television (ITV). These franchises have been given only for a few years at a time, then renewed subject to various conditions.
Ðåôåðàò îïóáëèêîâàí: 8/05/2007