Шпаргалка по лингвострановедению для подготовки к экзамену (30 вопросов + лексика)
29. The characteristics of the national press.Newspaper publication is dominated by the national press.The only non-national papers with significant circulations are published in the evenings, when they do not compete with the national papers, which always appear in the mornings.Most local papers do not appear on Sundays, so on that day the dominance of the national press is absolute. The „Sunday papers“ are so called because that is the only day on which they appear.Another indication of the importance of „the papers“ is the morning “paper round”. The “quality papers”, or “broadsheets”, cater for the better educated readers. The “popular papers”, or “tabloids”, sell to a much larger readership. They contain far less print than the broadsheets and far more pictures. They use larger headlines and write in a simpler style of English. However, the broadsheets do not completely ignore sex and scandal or any other aspect of public life. Both types of papers devote equal amounts of attention to sport.The reason that the quality newspapers are called broadsheets and the popular ones tabloids is because they are different shapes. The broadsheets are twice as large as the tabloids.To broadsheets belong: The Times, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and the Sunday Telegraph. The tabloids group include: The News of the World, The Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express.London has two evening newspapers, the London Standard and the Evening News.The four most famous provincial newspapers are The Scotsman (Edinburgh), the Glasgow Herald, the Yorkshire Post (Leeds) and the Belfast Telegraph, which present national as well as local news. What counts for the newspaper publishers is business. All of them are foremost to take money. Their primary concern is to sell as many copies as possible and to attract as much advertising as possible. They normally put selling copies ahead of political integrity. The British press is controlled by a rather small number of extremely large multinational companies. This fact helps to explain its freedom from interference from government influence, which is virtually absolute. The press is so powerful that it is sometimes referred to as “the fourth estate” (the other three being the Commons, the Lords and the monarch). This freedom is ensured because there is a general feeling in the country that “freedom of speech” is a basic constitutional right.This emphasis on revealing the details of people’s private lives has led to discussion about the possible need to restrict the freedom of the press. This is because the press has found itself in conflict with another British principle (as strongly felt as that of freedom of speech) – the right to privacy. Many journalists now spend their time trying to discover the most sensational secrets of well-known personalities. Complaints regarding invasions of privacy are dealt with by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). This organization is made up of newspaper editors and journalists. In other words, the press is supposed to regulate itself. It sets limits on the extent to which newspapers should publish details of people’s private lives.
30. Television: Style and organization.
The most powerful sound broadcasting in Britain is BBC. It has 4 television channels: BBC1, BBC2, The ITV (Independent Television) and Channel4. There are 15 different television programme companies, serving different parts of the country. These companies get most of their money from advertising. There is no advertising on the BBC. But Independent Television (ITV), which started in 1954, gets its money from advertisements.
There was pressure on ITV from the start to make its output popular. In its early years ITV captured nearly three-quarters of the BBC´s audience. BBC1 and ITV show a wide variety of programmes. The ITV is in constant competition with BBC1 (that mostly shows light plays and series, humour and sport) to attract the largest audience (this is known as the ratings war). Of particular importance in the ratings war is the performance of the channel’s various soap operas. They depict ordinary lives in ordinary circumstances and they are popular, because their viewers can see themselves and other people they know in the characters. In the early 1990s, the BBC spent a lot of money filming a new soap called Eldorado, set in a small Spanish village which was home to a large number of expatriate British people. Although the BBC used its most successful soap producers and directors, it was a complete failure. Viewers found the story and the Spanish accent too difficult to follow and could not identify with the situation in which the characters found themselves.It became obvious in the early 1960s that operas and light entertainment left less room for programmes, which supported the original educational aims of television.
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