Video: 'The future role of public service broadcasting' Sir David Attenborough, 30 April 2008

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8m: We took ourselves and our responsibilities very seriously. We thought our schedules ought to be very varied and cover as wide a range of interests as possible... We thought too that we could play a key role in modern democracy by enabling a stockbroker in Surrey to understand what a fisherman in the north of Scotland might be feeling – and vice versa. We would be able to broaden horizons, introducing people to subjects that they might have never encountered and bringing them new pleasures and delights. 32m: Today, there are increasing numbers of technical advances that allow viewers to repeat programmes at their leisure and view them when the mood takes them... But broadcasting is something else. It is that miraculous advance, still not a century old, that allows a whole society, a whole nation, to see itself and to talk to itself. It enables people, no matter who they are and where they are, to share insights and illuminations, to become aware of problems and collectively consider solutions... [The broadcast medium] should be a place where all kinds of people, with all kinds of interests and insights, can share them with society as a whole... It can only be done by a coherent network, one that measures its success not only by the size of the audience it manages to gain for an individual programme but – very importantly – by the width of the spectrum of interests it manages to represent.

• Web Address: http://www.bbc.co.uk/thefuture/video_atten.shtml
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• Tags: media industry, public sector broadcasting, elitism, citizenship, broadcast
• Saved to Future Media by Nico Macdonald on May 09, 2008.