Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC

The BBC is the world’s most famous and powerful cultural institution and remains the model for public broadcasters around the globe. Based on the most extensive independent research ever conducted inside the BBC, Uncertain Vision concentrates on the corporation during the later 1990s, the last years of the regime of the former director-general John Birt. Blending reportage and cultural history, it offers both a panorama of the BBC’s history and an intimate portrait of the people that make it up – producers, directors, editors, accountants, and managers – and addresses the tumultuous recent events at the BBC and looks to the future: to the new challenges of satellite and digital broadcasting; to the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry; and to what might lie ahead for the new chairman and director-general. Uncertain Vision is an engrossing, controversial, and definitive account of the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world at the most fascinating period its history. (20040922)