Television Documentary in the UK: Opportunities and Constraints - Report Example

Television Documentary in the UK: Opportunities and Constraints 2006 Documentaries, particularly those based on current affairs, have occupied a major share of the British television time for long. Since the 1960s, documentaries have formed 20-25 percent of BBC’s and Channel 4’s programs and 10 percent of advertisement-sponsored ITV (Winston, 1999). However, the place of documentaries in television time scheduling since the 1960s till recently was driven by public broadcasting policies rather than popularity, although some documentaries did figure in the top slots in the viewer surveys (Kilborn, 1996). Since the 1990s, and particularly in the new millennium, television documentaries have gained in popularity. Much of this is related to global politics grabbing the headlines and facts becoming stranger and as intriguing as fiction. Besides, politics and current affairs are no longer the domain of politicians, strategists and academicians but involve the destiny of the common man, particularly in the post-9/11 world. Apart from the current affairs documentaries, another genre of documentaries that have gained in the popularity charts is the docusoaps – a type of Reality TV on the lines of the cinema verite. These multi-part documentaries, typically following celebrities in their everyday lives or ordinary people in extraordinary situations, have become immensely popular since the 1990s. BBC’s Vet’s School and Driving School have grabbed 41 percent and 53 percent audience in 1996 and 1997 (Witson, 1999). In this paper, I will discuss the opportunities and constraints for documentaries of these two types – the socially aware current affairs or historical genre and the docusoap genre – on British television with respect to one example of each. British television is taken much more seriously than in other countries. Based on public service, the television industry is closely linked with other establishments like the government, the monarchy, education and the print media. Television journalism finds an important forum in the making of documentaries which are inherently educative, analytical and often controversial. Current affairs, historical analyses and informative issues that cannot be handled with regular news programs are dealt with through documentaries, which has been the major reason for the boom in documentaries aired on serious channels like BBC and Channel 4, the public service broadcast companies. BBC, the leading television broadcast company in the UK shows documentaries in BBC1 and BBC2 (the latter does not air regular news programs), which has commissioned heavyweight film makers like David Attenborough to make informative documentaries like Civilization, Ascent of Man, Life on Earth, Blue Planet and the Private Life of Plants. BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Scotland air documentaries based on these parts of the UK, many of which are often on politically sensitive issues (wikipedia.org). Other BBC services, like Channel 4, are also raking in to commission serious documentaries following its rating success in airing foreign documentaries like US-made Fahrenheit 9/11 made by Michael Moore which it bought it. Even though Channel 4, which can commission and buy documentaries but not make its own, has an annual budget of 30 million pounds, only 6 percent of its total budget, it plans to make a difference in documenting events and trends that could build up public opinion (Rowan, 2005). The federal grouping of 15 regional television companies, Independent Television (ITV), also has important public service requirements that it has to adhere to. British television is regulated on the basis of public service requirements that, although not explicitly specified, are involved with program range and quality, viewing audience, reception, reflection of national and minority identity. It is expected to be impartial to controversial issues and to provide a civic forum. The maintenance of public service image of television has drawn large investments for documentaries on social issues, history, science, technology and environment, particularly those aired in BBC2 and Channel 4. This has thrown in opportunities for independent documentary film- makers to produce documentaries of importance in a wide range of formats involving intensive research. The focus on public service, that has always been adhered to by the public-owned BBC, has been challenged since the early mid-60s with the advent of ITV, which catered to the mass market – so long neglected by BBC – and following a friendly and informal format, which led BBC’s viewer drop by as much as 28 percent (Blumler, n.d). BBC has also responded to changes in the viewer pattern and has been aggressively producing or buying documentaries made by independent producers, reflecting many ideas and formats. Changes in consumer tastes have further modified the quality, content and format of television documentaries. The television industry in the UK is gradually making a transformation, with cable and satellite television, BskyB (40 percent of which is owned by global media giant, Rupert Murdoch) making inroads into British homes despite the requirement of set top boxes. BskyB has already gained 3 ½ million subscribers and attracts 10 percent viewers in the country. Thus, documentary makers in the UK now have a much larger platform than it had earlier. However, at the same time, the format of documentaries has changed, often trivializing or sensationalizing issues. Documentary-makers have had to respond to the market while at the same time having the opportunity of making documentaries on a wide range of issues. Particularly, since ITV is a conglomeration of a number of regional companies, documentary-making has become more wide-based, incorporating regional and global issues. Also, financial crunch in the 1980s forced the British television industry to be more market-oriented and less regulated by government authorities. This, of course, has also meant that the market for serious, educative documentaries have been diminishing while that for sensational “stories” is growing. In the 1990s, BBC adopted an aggressive expansion policy of expanding into international markets, thus expanding the program content base from the regional to the global. This has opened up more opportunities for documentaries on travel, cultures, global politics and so on. Television journalists have taken to the production of analytical documentary making with a great vigor particularly in the modern period of globalization and political uncertainties. Greater openness and freedom on content have provided journalists to test uncharted waters. One example of such bold initiative is the three-part 2 ½ hour documentary, The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis, aired on BBC1 on October 20, 2004. The documentary was shown as a non-competitive entry in the Canne Film Festival the same year, earning much applause and debate. The documentary questioned the post 9/11 fear of terrorism as a deliberately hyped up issue. It asserted that the war on terrorism has been fuelled by the politics in the United States and Britain, creating an unwarranted fear among the people. The bottom line of the documentary was that George W Bush, Tony Blair and the neo-conservatists in both countries deliberately fuelled this fear for their own political agenda. Portraying the neo-conservatists in the United States since 1945, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld, the research found uncanny similarities with the present trend of projection of the fearful image of Osama bin Laden and his al-Queda, the name of which was coined only when the United States decided to move anti-Mafia regulations against the group in the 1990s, as the documentary said. The phantom of fear, which the documentary claimed the political bigwigs were projecting, had become a big issue for even the media in the United Kingdom, particularly since the Terror attack in New York in 2001. Though the documentary was aired in the United Kingdom prior to the London tube attack in 2005, it did make a big impact at the time. The television channels had been vying with each other for sensational documentaries like these. In the process, the researchers for the documentary went back in history to understand the link between the current incidents and the past record of the US military establishments in fueling illusions. The interviewer asked Dr. Anne Cahn her views on the US’ story on USSR’s weapons of mass destruction way back in 1976. According to the transcript of the documentary, " Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-80: They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, 'we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.' "INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence. "CAHN: Even though there was no evidence. "INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist… "CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it." The voice-over then notes, " What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet régime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world." Melvin Goodman, head of CIA’s Soviet Affairs during 1976-87, too, said, " Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war." Such bold statements, equating the War on Terror with the Cold War, could not perhaps be possible to be voiced on the BBC a decade back, when the television in the UK was more controlled and functioning like a duopoly. The opening up of television, the multi-channel framework and the entry of cable television has altered the ballgame entirely. At the same time, there is a tendency of trivializing content on television to grab eyeballs. The docusoap as they are called, which is nothing but a bastardization of the Direct Cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, following people with 16mm hand-held camera and battery-driven portable tape-recorders and the cinema verite or the “fly-on-the-wall” genre of shooting in available light and natural sound (Witson, 1999). The topics of such documentaries are typically the trivial, like Helen Fitzwilliam's and Paul Buller's 1996 seven-parter, Hollywood pets on ITV. Such documentaries are mostly aired on ITV channels and the cable television, attracting over 50 percent viewers. Yet, these documentaries have attracted much controversy and criticism from within the industry. There are accused of staging events and faking images, often camouflaged as the reality. The 1997 docusoap aired on BBC1, Driving School, was first accused of having invented scenes. The character, Maureen, who failed the driving test a number of tests, apparently set her alarm clock at 4a.m but the shot was taken later. Hence, the documentary was accused of ‘faking’ the shot and camouflaging it as true. The media, which hounded the documentary, did not distinguish between reconstruction of the event and distortion of truth. It is accused of “abusing public trust” (Witson, 1999). Regulations were even imposed and fines imposed on such “faking” in documentaries in the British television. As a result of some documentary-makers adopting such dubious attitude, there is a general tendency of branding all of them as such, thus making it very difficult for people in general. As Winston (2000) commented, “That everyday filming required repeated actions, requested if necessary, so that moving-image editing norms could be obeyed was largely overlooked. Instead the documentary and documentary-style TV news features were being held to a simplistic vision of observational purity. When this was not mentioned, documentarists were left floundering in the midst of a moral panic created and fuelled by those who apparently believed that a camera left to its own devices, as it were, would indeed tell no lies”. Thus, globalization and the market-driven economy have altered the television industry in the United Kingdom. Not only are their more opportunity for the documentary in terms of form and content, allowing them a wide variety of choice of subjects, the shift in focus from ‘public service’ to viewer popularity has made the makers more independent and not bogged down by regulations. At the same time, the market orientation has induced television companies commission more docu-soaps, which are essentially documentaries, based on real-life characters, sensationalizing particular trends. These documentaries are a completely different genre from those on historical, current affairs or science, and hence should have different norms. However, the regulations of documenting the reality as it they restrict the makers from using their creative ingenuity. Works Cited Blumler, Jay, G. British Television, The Museum of Broadcast Communications, retrieved on March 14, 2006 from http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/britishtelev/britishtelev.htm Kilborn, Richard, "New contexts for documentary production in Britain", Media, culture and Society 18, no. 1, January 1996 Rowan, David, Interview Peter Dale, Channel 4 Television, Evening Standard, March 23, 2005, retrieved on March 14, 2006 from http://www.davidrowan.com/2005/03/interview-peter-dale-channel-4.html Winston, Brian, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries, University of California Press, 2000 Witson, Brian, The primrose path: faking UK television documentary, “docuglitz” and docusoap, November 1999, retrieved on March 14, 2006 from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1199/bwfr8b.htm Wikipedia, BBC Television, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Television Read More