Factual Programming

Abstract

This chapter deals with factual programming in the 1950s. The Talks Department was a rather powerful one and as it expanded it tended to overlap with both News and Documentary. In a sense documentary – central as it became to British television’s reputation for excellence, and despite its complex relation with drama – is a more straightforward generic descriptor than current affairs. In the latter, broadcast television’s direct engagement with the contemporary political process was overtly acknowledged both by those like Grace Wyndham Goldie in the BBC and Sidney Bernstein at Granada, who welcomed current affairs broadcasting as an extension to democratic debate. Documentary, by contrast, was typically conceived and executed over a much longer time span. Meanwhile, it was in the permeable boundary between news and current affairs that women found opportunities. For this reason, current affairs offered a more promising terrain for women than that bastion of masculinity, the newsroom itself.