Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC

by Born Georgina (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $4.92

  The BBC is the world's most famous and powerful cultural institution. Throughout its eighty-year existence it has attracted criticism, controversy and political bullying, as well as epitomising the heights to which broadcasting can aspire. It remains the model for public broadcasters around the globe. Uncertain Vision is a unique and fascinating portrait of this remarkable institution and its employees. Based on the most extensive independent research ever conducted inside the BBC, during which Georgina Born was allowed unprecedented access to all ranks of the organisation, Uncertain Vision concentrates on the corporation during the later 1990s, the last years of the regime of the former director-general John Birt. Blending reportage and cultural history, it offers both a panorama of the BBC's history and an intimate portrait of the people that make it up - producers, directors, editors, accountants, and managers. Here we see at close hand, for example, the huge efforts required to bring major drama series to screen and the frantic preparation of researchers, producers and presenters to assemble an edition of Newsnight. Uncertain Vision also addresses the tumultuous recent events at the BBC and looks to the future: to the new challenges of satellite and digital broadcasting; to the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry; and to what might lie ahead for the new chairman and director general. Uncertain Vision is an engrossing, controversial, and definitive account of the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world at the most fascinating period its history.