Daytime TV
American sociologist, Laura Grindstaff worked as a researcher on American shows while writing her book The Money Shot: Trash, Class and the Making of TV Talk Shows while Robert Kilroy-Silk, well he’s just "Kilroy" to millions. They’ll be discussing the rights and wrongs of getting a crowd of real people into a studio to talk about their problem in an often highly emotional atmosphere. There’s a thin line between providing a platform for the participants to have their say and exploiting them for audience figures and advertising money. Trash TV or bedrock of society? And what does a person’s attitude to this kind of television say about them?
Social Statistics
When statisticians got to work on human populations they were looking to quite literally synthesise an average human being. Whether by height, weight, longevity, wealth, health, sex or education - the average man or woman is to be found bang in the middle of society’s standard distribution curve - though such a perfect specimen remains only a mathematical possibility. However, the power of the idea of 'the norm' is seen everywhere in our daily lives… it is one of the most important measurements of a society’s stability and it was the desire to maintain 'the norm' which was one reason for the recent A Levels grading contretemps. Laurie talks to Professor Ian Diamond, one of this country's leading social statisticians and the man behind the 2001 survey, about surveys and statistics and what they can do for us. Joining them is Dr Jonathan Scales, from the University of Essex and head of the British Household Panel Survey.
Additional information:
The Money Shot: Trash, Class and the Making of TV Talk Shows by Laura Grindstaff (University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 0226309096)
Polaris House,
North Star Avenue,
Swindon SN2 1UJ
from the University of York
Land ownership - Last week's programme
During his interview Kevin referred to something he called the real Doomsday book. It is in fact: The Return of Owners of Land, in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales and is also known as The Second Doomsday Book or New Doomsday. It was commissioned by Parliament as a result of a debate in the House of Lords on the 19 February 1872 and published in 4 volumes over the next two years. A copy is in most local reference libraries and is available on request. However if you are interested in following up your own family history you might be better to approach good reference or university libraries, as they hold the book on microfiche amongst the parliamentary papers and you will be allowed to make copies.
Andro Linklater
Measuring America
Harper Collins
ISBN: 0007108877
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