'The Golden Age of British Television'Discuss and account for this view of television in the 1960s and 1970s. Why is British terrestrial television said to be decline thereafter?

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‘The Golden Age of British Television’                         Kristyna Syslova

‘The Golden Age of British Television’

Discuss and account for this view of television in the 1960s and 1970s. Why is British terrestrial television said to be decline thereafter?

In this essay I am going to state some of the reasons why is it widely believed that 1960s and 1970s were ‘The Golden Age of British Television’. I very much believe that this period was a real triumph for British Television and in the following paragraphs I will be giving few facts and statistics why I do believe it.

I will give a brief history of British television and its programming, but I will be more focusing on an influence which British television had on British people.

How a certain programmes forced almost a whole nation to think about what they saw and how great progress British society made according to this influence.

I will be highlighting the basic, but very much important role which television played in many people lives.

Also I am going to try to explain my point of view on the decline of popularity of British terrestrial television.

Finally, in my conclusion, I will try to set the overall opinion about the most famous and also the declining periods of British television.

The television had been very precious to many people since a very beginning of its existence. Television was an expensive item and not everyone could afford to have one at home. Those who actually have the television at home really took care of it, not just because of the cost of it, but because of its overall value.

Even nowadays some households, especially those owned by elderly people, ‘treat’ the television the certain way. The television was usually kept in a centre of a room, very often decorated with some flowers or little statues, basically, people did not treat the television as a piece of furniture.

As I already mentioned above there was that economic factor, which also influenced the way how people treat the television. The very important fact is that there were not such a wide spread central heating as we have nowadays, so people have usually the television in the room where they have some source of warmth. This meant that families were watching the television together, also because of the programming. The television was developing with the growth of its audience, it has not been broadcasting for the whole day. The television started to broadcast more widely when more people were supporting it by buying the television licence and television set itself.

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As could be seen from the statistics showing the numbers of Radio and TV licences (BBC) there was an amazing growth of television audience and the rise of rating was incredible high. During an early 1950’s there was a rapid expansion of TV set ownership. More than 2 million licences were registered in 1953 and the number was still growing to 15,397 thousands people in 1969. (BBC)

Since the first public regular domestic television service started on 2 November 1936, there was very significant success, for example the huge audience of 10,000 people (source BP) was watching the coronation of ...

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