'There now follows...'

Simon Cross recently gave a paper on gender and British party election broadcasts at the 'Watching Politics' symposium at the University of Warwick.

His paper explores how the story of the British party election broadcast (PEB) from 1924 is inextricably linked with a paternalistic vision of broadcasting central to the new developing politics of mass participation. When the PEB on TV literally comes into focus in the early years of the BBC’s post-war monopoly TV service, broadcasting was still dominated by Reithian public service ethos. Like public service broadcasting itself, the PEB on TV survives though both have become entwined with forces of commercialisation. This paper considers the durability of the PEB on TV, illustrating continuity and change in segmented televisual appeals to women viewers/voters vis-à-vis changes in the British public service broadcasting ecology such as regional broadcasting on ITV and recent fragmenting of terrestrial TV audiences.

Simon Cross, 'There Now Follows...': Continuity and Change in British TV party election broadcasts to women, Watching Politics symposium, University of Warwick, 31 May 2013.