Management and Creativity in Television

Abstract

It is often asserted that the special restraints which encompass broadcasting are the result of spectrum scarcity, of the fact that the medium is of its nature in short supply; society, runs the familiar argument, must be protected against the potential wilfulness of those who might use this means of expression for, as it were, personal ideological gain rather than the general public good. I have never completely understood this argument partly because broadcasting outlets have in this generation become far more plentiful than printed ones but mainly because the idea of separating expression from creativity, and thus of building a kind of Janus-faced ideology into the medium itself has always seemed to me to be a hopelessly idealistic endeavour. It has meant that the people at the heart of the medium, closest to the techniques, are obliged to relinquish the privileges and the responsibilities which exist alongside all other forms of creative and expressive activity.

Originally delivered as a paper to the Manchester University Symposium on Broadcasting Policy, March 1977.