Playing Shops, Shopping Plays: The Effect of the Internal Market on Television Drama

Abstract

Quite enough is dumped on the left-wing academics of the 1960s and 1970s without blaming them for the state of the BBC. But it is one of the great ironies of the project to challenge cultural paternalism and celebrate audience diversity that by undermining one bit of the ruling class, it appeared to endorse the ambitions of another. Thus did post-Marxist academia give a progressive seal of approval to letting the multicultural market rip; and if, as the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises said,¹ the ultimate socialist institution is the post office, then postmodernism and post-structuralism have persuaded post-socialists to abandon playing post offices and take up playing shops.