Broadcasting Beyond the News: Performing Politics

In democratic political systems, broadcasting has from its origins been attributed with key roles in mediating between government and citizens. Its nature as a way of recording and transmitting speech and then (with TV) images, including through ‘live’ programming, have given it a special and powerful place in the history of media–political relations (for a recent historical account see Hilmes (2011)). Although the extent and character of broadcasting’s public service responsibilities vary from country to country, and are subject to change over time, all governments impose some level of duty towards the polity, a duty which broadcasters interpret through considerations of their own, convergent or divergent, agendas of public communication (Freedman (2008) reviews the different policy frameworks in their economic settings). These agendas are more or less commercial according to national context, and more or less influenced, if not by bottom-up demands direct from viewers and listeners, then at least by a professionalized orientation to viewing figures and other proxy indicators of what makes political content in various generic formats relevant and interesting to them.