Domesticating Television: Changing Attitudes in Postwar Britain

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the reaction to television in Britain in the immediate postwar years. Despite its invention many years before, television was not really successful until after World War II, for a number of social and technological reasons. However, the acceptance of television was by no means inevitable, and many voiced concerns about its influence, often manifested in anxiety around the objects themselves as well as what was broadcast. These apprehensions influenced the way television was discussed and how it was put to use. In a nation recovering from war and directing resources towards exports, television in Britain was constructed as an agent of production rather than consumption. The presence of the television in the home also demonstrated and contributed to the complex relationship between public and private space in postwar Britain. The resistance surrounding television did not prevent its popularity but did have a profound impact on the form it eventually took.

KEYWORDS:

• television
• postwar Britain
• resistance
• production
• public and private space