24 Jan 07

'Television has been the greatest democratiser of understanding in the twentieth century world. Bigger than books, bigger than films, bigger than newspapers and radio, it's offered a chair at the table of knowledge and opinion to anyone that chose to take it', claimed Janice Hadlow, Controller of BBC 4, in her inaugural lecture as News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media.

In the first lecture of her four-part series on 'The importance of being serious: why serious television matters in the digital world' she engaged her audience by offering an insight into her personal experience with TV. In the 1970s, she was first inspired by programmes like 7up or Alastair Cooke's America, which brought a whole new world to her smalltown upbringing in Kent.

She was adamant that serious TV needed to be judged in its own right. She said: 'Serious television isn't a pale reflection of something that's really done better elsewhere, in books or magazines. It isn't a version of anything. It's a creative cultural force in its own right, which has transformed the way all of us deal with the world.'

She reflected on the difference between new media and serious television, saying that new media, such as Google and Wikipedia, treated knowledge as if was a huge, virtual encyclopedia. 'They are unmatched as enablers, and as processors of vast amounts of information'.

Serious TV, in contrast, wanted to achieve something rather different than the transmission of facts. 'Serious TV is as much about the feel of things as it is about the facts. It is essentially a big picture medium, big narrative, big ideas, illuminated by the personal, the human story that gives life and colour to things.' She stressed the importance of charismatic presenters and the need to move with the times to produce serious television in contemporary formats.

She also emphasized that her idea of serious TV was not one of worthy programming living a shadowy existence in a dark corner of the schedules. 'If you care about seriousness in all its television forms, the best way to protect it is not to provide it with ring-fenced havens, where it can exist in lonely splendour, preserved in a kind of aspic for those who choose to seek it out.'

She concluded: 'Serious television has the ambition to convey an idea, to put a thought where was nothing before, to say quite simply "this is interesting - you should know about it." This is what television has been doing for fifty years. Lets not stop believing it's something worth doing in the next fifty. '

Janice Hadlow's lecture series continues on 30 January at 5.30pm at St Anne's College. The final two lectures are on 6 and 13 February 2007 at 5.30pm at Green College.