Public Service Broadcasting as a Modern Project: A Case Study of Early Public-Affairs Television in...

<jats:p> This study of public-affairs programs suggests that Canadian television hardly functioned as a modern disciplinary apparatus in its initial years. In the early 1950s, Canadian broadcasters sought to stake out and strategize a "middle ground" between U.K. (information) and U.S. (entertainment) TV, featuring public-affairs programs that Canadians would actually choose to watch in a more or less competitive North American broadcast market. However, newsmagazines and traditional long-form documentaries consistently violated the early pedagogical protocols of Canadian television and thus call into question conventional notions of public-service broadcasting.These shows and the controversies they generated should make us rethink Eurocentric theories about public-service broadcasting as a quintessential disciplinary machine. </jats:p>