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Groom, Elinor (2016) Serving the south: television infrastructures and the development of regionality during the emergence of ITV. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

This thesis analyses the early infrastructural development of Southern Television, the now-defunct franchise company that was created in 1958 to serve the South of England on behalf of Independent Television (ITV). In particular, it identifies how Southern Television's status as a regional broadcaster affected the implementation and development of its policies, regulations, resources and practices from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. Histories of regional broadcasting have heretofore focused on programmes that evoke regional culture, and more often than not these histories have ignored the South in favour of northern cultures. This thesis approaches the history of regional broadcasting from a different perspective, one that considers where the region was visible in the internal workings of a regional broadcaster, as opposed to identifying the region in that broadcaster's output.

This research utilises a wide variety of archival documentation from Southern Television, as part of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award project with the BFI National Archive. As such, it offers an unprecedented historical account of regional, commercial television production, which is drawn almost entirely from the political, operational and cultural contexts that are only evidenced behind the camera. Correspondence, budgets, administrative and managerial documentation portray the day-to-day life of a television company that would otherwise be lost. The history of ITV remains a neglected subject in television studies, and this case study contributes a new understanding of the development of commercial broadcasting that takes into account the singular regional structure that characterised the emergence of ITV in Britain.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Pearson, Roberta Johnson, Catherine Morris, Nathalie
Subjects:	P Language and literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Arts > School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
Item ID:	33378
Depositing User:	Groom, Elinor
Date Deposited:	20 Jul 2016 06:40
Last Modified:	15 Oct 2017 09:01
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/33378

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