‘The televising of science is a process of television’: establishing Horizon, 1962–1967

Abstract

BBC Television's Horizon series, fifty years old on 2 May 2014, despite its significance to the history of the public culture of science, has been little studied. This microhistorical account follows the gestation and early years of the programme, demonstrating how it established a social and cultural account of science. This was a result of televisual factors, notably the determination to follow the format of the successful arts television programme Monitor. It illuminates how the processes of television production, with a handful of key participants - Aubrey Singer, Gerald Leach, Philip Daly, Gordon Rattray Taylor, Ramsay Short, Michael Peacock and Robert Reid - established the format of the programme. This occurred over seventeen months of prior preparation followed by three troubled years of seeking to establish a stable form. This was finally achieved in 1967 when the programme adopted a film documentary approach after extended attempts at making it as a studio-based magazine programme. The story has implications for understanding the social accounts of science that were circulating in the key decade of the 1960s.

Science and film-making

“…But this status quo was short-lived. Conceiving of science broadcasting as primarily a means of educating non-scientists, scientists tended to favour programme formats of the filmed-lecture type (Boon, 2015). They showed little interest in 'the principles of programme structure, and the demands of dramatic form' (Singer, 1966a: 9).…”

The Changing Nature of Modernization Discourses in Documentary Films

“…These films directly addressed the regime's indoctrination and enculturation goals not only through the described depiction, but also through their technical and narrative features as documentaries. As a scientific-technological and therefore supposedly objective form of cinema, they provided information through the virtual witnessing of the feasibility, inevitability, generosity, and normalcy of the situations and processes depicted (Boon 2008(Boon , 2014a(Boon , 2014bKirby 2008Kirby , 2010Medina-Doménech and Menéndez-Navarro 2005;Tabernero et al 2017). Authority and the hierarchical management of knowledge were portrayed as unproblematic and in an entertaining way in the context of Spain's activities in a distant, exotic and heroic reality.…”

“…The development of science content was soon considered an essential goal as well as a challenge in the design of education strategies through television, as it was happening in neighboring democratic contexts (Boon 2008, 2014a, 2014b; LaFollette 2012; Gouyon 2014; Boon and Gouyon 2014). Importantly, and drawing from the notion that documentary filmmaking was the main way to generate the necessary virtual witnessing experience of authority, science programming based on documentaries was deemed the main source of expert-managed truths to be levied on the population at large (Alcalá-Lorente and Tabernero 2016; Tabernero 2016).…”

From engaged citizen to lone hero: Nobel Prize laureates on British television, 1962–2004

“…Running for more than fifty years, Horizon is the BBC's flagship science programme, whose episodes are watched regularly by audiences of more than 2 million. No other television series has been more influential in post-war Britain in its continuous contribution to placing science in British culture (Boon, 2015). It is also an index of broadcasters' and television audiences' relationship with science.…”

“…It is also an index of broadcasters’ and television audiences’ relationship with science. As such, we need to pay attention to what is a ‘substantial body of work, and to understand its content and form’ (Boon, 2015: 87). The Prizewinners , the outlier, was produced in 1962, before Horizon existed.…”