The creation of production practice in the early B.B.C. with particular reference to music and drama.

This study focuses on the occupational setting of programme support personnel in broadcasting at the point where engineering and art worlds intersect. It traces the creation of production practices and the emergence of hybrid sup ort occupations of artist- technicians. This phenomenon posed for management the problem of establishing the place and the relativities of a host of artist-technician occupations in the organizational hierarchy. The problem existed in a specially acute form in broadcasting as perhaps in the mass culture industries generally.;Chapter One shows that for its idea and its personnel, music broadcasting was indebted to the Newman - Wood movement to 'democratise good music.' The chapter centres on the concordat sealed by the institution of a 'Music Balance and Control' staff in 1927: between musicians, journalists sprung from the music appreciation movement, engineers inspired by the possibilities of high fidelity, organizers responsible for programme quality and executives wishing to rebut the charge that broadcasting 'mechanised' music. Drama broadcasting was inspired by two independent visions - that of a National Repertory Theatre of the Air and of new dramatic art that would exploit technical resources to a maximum.;Chapter Two focuses on the joint endeavours of engineers, producers and executives to create from a sounds-manufactory studio-suite and a specialist Effects staff a 'blind' drama that would rival silent cinema. Chapter Three shows Music, Drama and Variety support personnel developed craft consciousness in the thirties and became the focus of conflicts of interestsand vision among the engineers, producers and administrators who encircled them. In the post-war years, the heterogeneous studio staffs in the recently - founded A.B.S. found common ground in their wish to become Programme Operators in a division independent of Engineering.