- Vencimiento de Activos y Pasivos

Horizon is the BBC’s flagship science programme. The strand has been running since 1964. The programme was cited by focus group participants in this research as an example of a “good quality” science programme. Horizon has often been cited as an example of the best of BBC public service broadcasting, the Reithean ‘Holy Trinity’ of functions: to inform, educate and entertain.

The most interesting research about Horizon was carried out by Roger Silverstone in his 1985 book Framing Science: The Making of a BBC Documentary (surprisingly little has been done since). The core of Silverstone’s study concerns the decision-making processes through which the topic of the programme was ‘framed’ by the programme-makers. The literature on framing defines it as the process of selecting, emphasising and interpreting a situation to promote a particular interpretation (Entman, 1993).

Horizon was framed through the contexts through which the scientific research was to be presented, the selection of key personalities, the choice of visual images to illustrate the arguments, the locations within which the story was to be told. Silverstone reveals the extent to which the demands of the medium, combined with programme-makers judgements about the characteristics of the audience, take precedence over the requirements of scientists for detailed exposition of the problem. These media frames have been judged by some scholars to comprise the principle arena within which scientific controversies come to the attention of policy-makers and the public. The media “powerfully shape how policy issues related to science and technology controversy are defined, symbolised and ultimately resolved” (Nisbet, Brossard and Kroepsch 2003, p. 38).

The style of Horizon programmes has changed in recent years, moving on from a very serious, very sober exposition, which I call ‘old style’ for convenience, to a livelier more personalised format. The new ‘personalised’ format has not completely replaced the

‘old style’—both formats are current today, and indeed the old style programmes have provided a socially influential and aesthetically durable form over the years.

Horizon has been criticised for concentrating too much on the spectacular, on topics that will provide stunning visuals and for not doing enough to cover current scientific issues. It has also been criticised by scientists for becoming sensationalised and dumbed down, for example by Frank Close, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who mourned the passing of the higher quality programmes:

Physicists who recall superb Horizon documentaries of the past …. will have been disappointed that such a marvellous project as the LHC should have been

sensationalised in this way

(Close, 2007) For this analysis, I watched recordings of Horizon series 48 (2011-2012). The following is a list of the episodes in that series. Descriptions of each episode as given on the BBC website is reproduced in Appendix I.

Do You See What I See?

Seeing Stars

The Nine Months That Made You The Core

Are You Good or Evil?

Is Nuclear Power Safe?

Playing God

The Truth About Exercise

Solar Storms: The Threat to Planet Earth Out of Control?

The Truth About Fat Global Weirding The Hunt for AI Defeating Cancer The Transit of Venus

In old style Horizon programmes, the narrator remains off screen, giving the impression that he (and it is almost always a ‘he’ in old style) is all seeing, all knowing, like the Voice of God. Dramatic imagery and language are used, for example about ‘taming nature’ or ‘the golden age of …’, The following are some excerpts taken from Horizon, series 48, from a number of old style episodes:

… promises a new age in astronomy discovery [Seeing Stars]

We’re at a golden age in terms of the real discovery of the bulk of the deep earth [The Core]

Around the world the people who are keeping the lights on are on high alert. They are facing a powerful foe. The UK’s national grid is no exception [Solar Storms]

The hope is prediction will lead to protection. The point of the weather forecast is to get the predictions of extreme events spot on [Global Weirding]

Revolution in cancer treatment, the promise that one day … as simple as taking some pills [Defeating Cancer]

The more personalised Horizon style differs from this in that it uses more informal language, for example:

Everything we learn to do, becomes automatic with practice. Getting a machine to do this is one hell of a task [The Hunt For AI]

Also, the narrators appear on screen and often introduce themselves as going on a journey or quest to investigate the topic at hand, making themselves ‘part of the story’:

I’m Gabriel Westin and I’m a surgeon and a writer. I think the obesity problem has become bad enough to be called an epidemic, but it’s a puzzling one [The Truth About Fat]

I’m Marcus du Sautoy, and I want to find out how close we are to creating artificial intelligence. And what that might mean for us humans. [The Hunt for AI]

Sometimes the presenters take the personal nature of the investigation even further, even going so far as to experiment on themselves. For example in The Truth About Exercise, the presenter Michael Mosely had a series of tests carried out on himself, and in The Truth About Fat, presenter Gabriel Weston carried out experiments on herself, measuring her appetite after fasting for twenty-four hours. This realism is a growing trend in television programmes, not just in science documentaries.

The presenters also described their personal motivations for investigating the topic (often using concern for heir families as a reason):

I am a scientist. But I’m also a husband and a father and I want to know what’s the safest option for my family’s future, just like you [Professor Jim Al-Khalili in: Is Nuclear Power Safe?]

I’m also a mother, so I’m concerned about how this explosion of obesity might affect my children, and my children’s children [Gabriel Westin in: The Truth About Fat]

Another device used is that the presenter finds out something in the course of making the documentary which makes it personal:

It has altered the way I live my life, and it may alter the way you live yours [The Truth About Exercise]

My enquiry into the truth about exercise has become intensely personal [The Truth About Exercise]