itself as the guardian of high culture and morality, the BBC maintained a devotion to virtuous and high-minded programs that left many audiences feeling alienated. These reactions come from the nature of British society and show how it can easily be problematic for a national institution to attempt to penetrate itself into the daily lives of diverse communities many of which were tightly knit and resistant to mass centralized pressure (MacCabe, 51). It was interestingly this very idea of a centralized monopoly that John Reiths vision of public service broadcasting was founded from his egocentric view that few know what they want, fewer still what they need (Green, 15). Determined to bring the millions listening in what was good for them rather than what they wanted, Reith founded a corporation with the intent to inform, educate, and entertain. His beliefs of determining for the public that which is best for them echo the writings of James Madison who wrote a series of essays during the American revolution advocating the need for a strong central government. In discussing the issues of direct democracy in Federalist Paper Number 10, Madison favors a republic whereby individual representatives will be elected to speak for the majority. According to Madison, these trustees are necessary to discern the public interest[in order to] refine and enlarge the public views (Madison). Madison may have been well intentioned, but his theories are nonetheless blatantly elitist. Compare this to the public service broadcasting concept of the BBC, which under all of its good intentions is equally elitist. How can one organization, whose programmers have largely been recruited from the educated class, be expected to discern the interests of an entire nation, especially one as diverse as Britain? It simply cannot, and no matter what Reiths aspirations may have been, the BBC could hardly be said be speaking for Britain, still less to it (MacCabe, ...
