The Dream Machine? — Television as Public Culture

Abstract

In this chapter, I want to pursue some questions about television’s character as public culture, questions which turn on matters both of cultural form and of content as well as on broader questions of the television economy and the institutions and structures which affect policy and practice. I want to do this by taking as my principal reference point a 50-year-old television programme, directed by the distinguished documentarist, Denis Mitchell, which took the social identity of television as its subject. It was called The Dream Machine, made by ATV and broadcast on the British ITV channel on Wednesday, 11 November 1964. I want to look at the questions it raised about the nature of television and the kind of tentative answers it offered. Not only the programme’s treatment of its topic but also its own design and delivery as a piece of television are clearly of interest, since it is an example of the very phenomenon it sets out to investigate. My approach will require quite extensive citation from the programme, but I hope this will prove readable and illuminating.