Current affairs on UK commercial television. Conference at the British Academy of Film and Telvision Arts. 17 January, 2006. Transcript of the papers and presentations.

Abstract

“Current affairs on UK commercial television” was a conference which marked the 50th anniversary of This Week, the first current affairs series made by Independent Television (ITV), and also looked at the state of current affairs in the very different climate of television in the 2000s. Speakers discussed the early years of This Week, debates around the launch of ITV in the 1950s, the transformation of This Week into TVEye in the 1980s, and the problems facing This Week’s rival ITV series, World in Action. Many producers and journalists who had worked on the series were present and contributed to the debate. The second half of the conference looked at the contemporary scene, with an analysis of the concept of ‘citizens’ in the 2002 Communications Act, a presentation from the regulator, Ofcom, and a review of the current situation. The conference lauched Bournemouth Media School’s This Week Project an online database which records the details of This Week programmes, and Patricia Holland’s book about the series The Angry Buzz.