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This study examines the reception of news messages by audiences, with special reference to coverage of the 1984/5 miner's strike. A new methodology is employed, which used groups of people selected to highlight possible differences in the reception of messages. Some groups had a special knowledge of the events of the strike, while a more general sample included people from different occupations and regional areas. The groups were invited to write and texts of their own television news programmes using actual photographs from news reports on the strike. This approach showed what the groups understood the content of the news to be on specific issues. It was then possible to compare this with what they believed to be `true', and to examine the sources of their beliefs, as well as why they either accepted or rejected media accounts. Earlier research with the Glasgow University Media Group had focussed on the content of television news. This showed how the presentation of certain views and explanations together with the embracing and underlining of them by journalists was part of a general process by which the news was structured. The conclusion was that some key themes were highlighted in the news text. The current study indicated which news themes had been retained in the memories of audience members. One notable result was the clarity with which such themes were recalled and the close correspondence between news programmes written by the groups and some actual news bulletins. Some groups were able to reproduce not only the thematic content of news bulletins on issues such as violence, but also the structure and language of actual news headlines. Television news (and to a lesser extent the press) was found to be a major source of information for many people in the groups and had a clear influence on some elements of belief. However, it was also found that direct experience could have a crucial influence on how new information from the media was understood. Such direct contacts, together with political culture, class experience and processes of logic were the most important factors in the relation between the reception of a news message and what was finally believed by the audience.

With the advent of digital era, the broadcasting landscape is radically changing. Technological development, deregulation and globalisation, as well as changes in social structure and lifestyles combine to shift the established broadcasting paradigm. In the broadband communications environment, bandwidth scarcity, the basis of public service broadcasting, is relieved and thus hundreds of channels are available. Audiences once united in their loyalty to public service channels. are now fragmented. In these circumstances, public service broadcasting, which has been regarded as indispensable, is losing its rationale. Public service broadcasters, irrespective of region and country. are forced to battle for viewers and funding, to redraw their mission and range of activities. and to reshape themselves for the digital world. This study explores how the public service broadcasters (the BBC and KBS) of Britain and Korea have been restructuring themselves to adapt to the changing broadcasting environment. It also traces how the concept of public service broadcasting has evolved in Britain and examines the development of Korean broadcasting, proposing that the distorted operation of Korean public service broadcasting directly resulted from that country's history. Finally, it analyses the reasons why broadcasting in Korea has never been operated on principles of public service despite its proclaimed 'public service system' and explores how to secure the public-ness and public interest of Korean public service broadcasting in the future. For this study in-company research at the BBC and KBS was conducted between 1998 and 2003, along with a literature review. During this period over forty senior staff members were also interviewed, representative of both broadcasters.

The purpose of this study was to explore different acts of interpretation in the interaction between text (television drama) and audience. This study proposed a new theoretical and methodological problematics for audience studies, which is called 'empirical reception aesthetics', challenging for taken-for-granted terms such as audience activity, interpretative communities and the openness of text. It brought out three areas of interest in empirical reception aesthetics; the audience's horizons of expectations, the interpretative positions and textual invitations. In order to investigate these areas, this study emphasised methodological convergence, employing both survey research and the focused family interview. Concerning the audience's horizons of expectation about television drama, the Korean audience saw it as 'emotional escapism', 'distanceship', 'naturalistic realism', and 'imaginative realism', which set limits on divergence in interpretations and reading pleasure. This implies that a range of foreknowledge is an integral part, as a mediated factor, in the interaction between text and audience. It found that there were four interpretative positions; 'the escapist', 'the habitual', 'the ironic' and 'the non-engaged'. Though the individual viewer tends to take a dominant position, this is closely influenced by the other positions on the ground that interpretative positions are correlated with each other. This implies that the audience's interpretative position is not fixed in relation to class or gender. By using the term 'interpretative positions', we are able to avoid a simplistic distinction of oppositional reading and dominant reading and the mechanical application of the audience's interpretation to social backgrounds. Moreover, audience activity can be better understood when focused on a negotiated position.

This thesis explores the way in which the institutional changes that have occurred within the post-network era of American television have impacted on the situation comedy in terms of form, content, and representation. This thesis argues that as one of television's most durable genres, the sitcom must be understood as a dynamic form that develops over time in response to changing social, cultural and institutional circumstances. By providing detailed case studies of the sitcom output of competing broadcast, pay-cable, and niche networks, this research provides an examination of the form that takes into account both the historical context in which it is situated as well as the processes and practices that are unique to television. In addition to drawing on existing academic theory, the primary sources utilised within this thesis include journalistic articles, interviews, and critical reviews, as well as supplementary materials such as DVD commentaries and programme websites. This is presented in conjunction with a comprehensive analysis of the textual features of a number of individual programmes. By providing an examination of the various production and scheduling strategies that have been implemented within the post-network era, this research considers how differentiation has become key within the multichannel marketplace. With a number of channel providers competing for specific niche segments of the audience, it further demonstrates how sitcoms have become more distinctive, original, and contentious in the process.

This thesis examines the way in which media professionals negotiate the occupational challenges related to television and radio production. It has used the subject of religion and its treatment within the BBC as a microcosm to unpack some of the dilemmas of contemporary broadcasting. In recent years religious programmes have evolved in both form and content leading to what some observers claim is a “renaissance” in religious broadcasting. However, any claims of a renaissance have to be balanced against the complex institutional and commercial constraints that challenge its long-term viability. This research finds that despite the BBC’s public commitment to covering a religious brief, producers in this style of programming are subject to many of the same competitive forces as those in other areas of production. Furthermore those producers who work in-house within the BBC’s Department of Religion and Ethics believe that in practice they are being increasingly undermined through the internal culture of the Corporation and the strategic decisions it has adopted. This is not an intentional snub by the BBC but a product of the pressure the Corporation finds itself under in an increasingly competitive broadcasting ecology, hence the removal of the protection once afforded to both the department and the output. Those who informed this study have responded to these challenges in a number of different ways. Of these, the two most important are the adoption of a discourse of ‘professionalism’ designed to underscore their creativity, knowledge and value to the BBC and overcome the ghettoisation of religious broadcasting and second, in the opening up of religion to a range of new formats and conventions which are designed to make the programming more audience, and thus commissioner, friendly. However, despite both these responses the long-term future of religious broadcasting and its suppliers is still far from clear. Therefore, using historical analysis, interviews with media professionals and a period of observational research this thesis offers critical insights into the private world of religious broadcasting at the BBC.