Martin Dibbs
E-mail: mgrd@st-andrews.ac.uk
Shaping popular culture: radio broadcasting, mass entertainment and the work of the BBC Variety Department 1933-1967.
After careers in transport and as a musician, I became a mature student and graduated from St Andrews in 2006 with an MA in International Relations and Modern History and with a MLitt in Modern History in 2007.
While at the BBC’s Written Archive Centre researching my MLitt dissertation on BBC radio comedy 1945-1967, I became fascinated with the Variety Department which produced many popular light entertainment programmes for BBC radio but which has been largely hidden from history. My research therefore examines how successful BBC radio was in catering for the radio audience‘s popular entertainment needs between 1933 and 1967.
My main archive for primary source material is the BBC’s Written Archive Centre at Caversham, Berkshire and to a lesser extent the Mass Observation archive. I have also introduced an oral history element into my research by contacting some former BBC Variety Department staff from the 1930s to the 1960s. I am using these interviews to support my academic argument.
If popular culture reflects the ordinariness and reality of daily life, then a historical study of broadcasting offers a fascinating insight into the character of 20th century society. The historiography of broadcasting cannot be regarded as extensive and it is intended that this study of the BBC’s Variety Department will make a contribution to British radio history.