Broadcasting and market-driven politics in the UK and Germany: the Peacock Committee in comparative perspective

• Published in: International journal of cultural policy : CP Vol. 19; no. 5; pp. 595 - 609
• Main Author: Potschka, Christian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01.11.2013; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Alan Peacock; Broadcasting; Capitalism; Committee on Financing the BBC; Committees; communications policy; Comparative analysis; Comparative studies; Democracy; Eberhard Witte; International comparisons; KtK; Liberalism; Peacock, Alan; Policy making; Political economy; Reorganization; United Kingdom > UK; Germany
• ISSN: 1028-6632; 1477-2833
• DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2012.704629

When, from the 1980s onwards, market-driven politics won widespread recognition in liberal capitalist Western democracies, processes of broadcasting marketization in the UK and Germany were decisively determined by two inquiries: the Committee on the Financing of the BBC, chaired by Alan Peacock, and the Commission for the Development of the Technical Communications System (KtK), chaired by Eberhard Witte. This article compares how both inquiries, driven by their chairmen, affected domestic communications policy-making. The research is situated within a critical political economy framework and it is argued that critiques from scholars within cultural policy depicting Alan Peacock and the inquiry he chaired as driven by a narrowly economistic understanding of broadcasting are partly unjustified. As the comparison with the radical restructuring pursued by Eberhard Witte brings to the fore, Peacock, in fact followed a moderate reform agenda of gradual change, aiming to preserve some core cultural elements within public service broadcasting.