Continuing our short mini-series (See episode 1) on how Scotland’s television has been viewed in the past here’s Stuart Hood on “The Backwardness of Scottish Television”, an essay in a 1970 collection on the state of the nation called ‘Memoirs of a Modern Scotland’:
“By what criteria can we judge the quality of a country’s television? One is the range and variety of the programmes offered to the viewer. Another is the degree of freedom it enjoys to show and speak the truth. A third is its success in revealing a society to itself: on a primitive level by showng its citizens how they speak, behave, live, and on another higher level by revealing to them the mechanics of their society, how it functions politically, economically and culturally. All three criteria are linked. For it is not possible to to deal in truth unless there is a sufficently wide spectrum of programmes to include those which honestly explore the nature of society.”
Have we got there yet?
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