Abstract
The provision of media for smaller linguistic communities continues to be a political problem. Today, they provide insufficient corpuses on which to develop Large Language Models like ChatGPT. Back in the day of analogue media and broadcasting scarcity, the dream of a Welsh language channel seemed impossible. It happened only because of a direct action campaign which saw 50 people jailed, and the threat of a hunger strike by the prominent MP Gwynfor Evans. This exemplary book does not tell that history. Instead, it is a lucid and patient account of how the dream was turned into reality. This is the difficult kind of history that requires detailed archive work (the references amount to almost a third of the book), but it is a history that brings alive the real uncertainties faced by people attempting something that had not been done before. Price charts all the competing institutional interests that had to be brought together, together with the technical challenges and the novel approach to television that had to be adopted.
S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru) was set up in 1982, alongside Channel 4. But its remit was different: Channel 4 was devoted to innovation and minority audiences but S4C’s programming in the Welsh language had to have as broad an appeal as possible. Just as there were no existing models for Channel 4, there were no models for TV channels broadcasting to excluded linguistic groups either. The Catalan and Basque broadcaster in Spain both came after S4C and learned from its experiences. With S4C, almost everything had to be put together from scratch. The programming would come from the existing Welsh language provision of the BBC and the commercial ITV channel HTV, together with further commissioned output from these two existing sources and a yet-to-be-established Welsh independent production sector. This would eventually supply at least 20 peak hours a week, with English language output from Channel 4 making up the rest of the broadcasting hours. This ideal proved easy to formulate but hard to put into practice.
Jeremy Isaacs at Channel 4 was cheerfully helpful, crucially allowing S4C to reschedule Channel 4 programmes as it saw fit, rather than taking a passive feed from Charlotte Street. This enabled S4C to clear its peak time hours to best suit Welsh-speaking households. The rest was more tricky, as Price chronicles with a steady historian’s eye and admirable lack of hasty judgement. The BBC was helpful but wanted to go on as before. HTV played commercial hardball, and it seems that the men (yes, it was the 1980s) in charge at S4C and its special regulatory body were seriously wrongfooted as a result. The closest that Price comes to a judgement is to say that the planning of the output and the stock of programming available at launch were seriously impaired as a result of the HTV negotiations.
Practically, the Welsh independent production sector scarcely existed. There was no broadcast standard video infrastructure for independents to use. S4C had to invest directly in the outside broadcast company Barcud to enable them to use video, a step that Channel 4 in London never needed to take. Few people in power in broadcasting believed that the independent sector would develop beyond a band of enhanced freelancers on the edges of broadcasting. S4C took a more actively interventionist approach than Channel 4, so Welsh independents were able to prove the doomsayers wrong, particularly in the area of animation where SuperTed (1982-3) was an outstanding success in the early months. This helped to establish global visibility for S4C and its own export arm. Then there were doubts about whether enough Welsh-speaking actors existed for the planned dramas. The actors’ union Equity took a strong line on the employment of ‘amateurs’, despite the fact that many of the leading performers in Welsh had day jobs as well. Here S4C successfully called their bluff with a high-profile commission of a series from Trebor Edwards, a famous amateur tenor.
Reaching the intended audience was a further problem. The existing infrastructure of broadcasting caused problems for the S4C initiative. How could programme details be included in the monopoly TV Times listings magazine? And what would the cost be for S4C, given that, mysteriously, they would have to pay for it? Would Welsh speaking viewers forego the peak hour attractions of BBC and ITV in order to see dramas and news in their first or second language? It turned out that they would, at least for the dramas, but the news provision proved far more problematic. Price’s account turns on the question of separation and integration of Welsh interests into the rest of the UK, providing a detailed study (with audience survey information) of how this was resolved.
Audience surveying itself was a problem since the unified survey organisation BARB (co-owned by broadcasters and the advertising business) had just been called into existence to provide a common measure of success. BARB’s initial surveying radically underestimated S4C’s reach and penetration as it failed to take linguistic competences into account but S4C eventually made BARB adapt. Then there was scheduling: where to put the English language output from Channel 4 to please the monoglot English viewership as well as the bilingual one? Such were some of the problems of broadcasting in the age of scarcity.
S4C is still with us, albeit in an evolved form. As Price explains, this is only because the channel’s founders made it an indispensable part of the culture and the economy of Wales. This was possible only because of their determined march through the institutions of analogue broadcasting to create a space for S4C. In Elain Price, they have found a historian who has made their achievements visible for all of us to appreciate.