A Loss of Innocence? Television and Irish Society, 1960-72

This book explores the evolution of Ireland’s national television service during its first tumultuous decade addressing how the medium helped undermine the conservative political, cultural and social consensus that dominated Ireland into the 1960s. This study also traces the development of the BBC and ITA in Northern Ireland considering how television helped undermine a state that had long governed without consensus. Throughout the decade officials in both Dublin and Belfast increasingly regarded television a threat to their interests and objected to programming that challenged government decisions and policies. This discomfort became more acute as political unrest in Northern Ireland led to the implementation of official formal and informal censorship that proved highly controversial for curtailing basic press freedoms. Importantly, television introduced into Irish homes an unrelenting popular culture that contributed to the transformation of Irish society. Both foreign made and Irish produced programmes found wide audiences and proved not only entertaining but often times highly controversial. Using a wide array of new archival sources and extensive interviews Savage illustrates how an increasingly confident television service upset political, religious and cultural elites who were profoundly uncomfortable with the changes taking place around them. Savage argues that during this period television was not a passive actor, but an active agent often times aggressively testing the limits of the medium and the patience of governments. Television helped facilitate a process of modernization that slowly transformed Irish society during the 1960s. This book will be essential for those interested in contemporary Irish political and cultural history and readers interested in media history, and cultural studies.

Robert Savage is co-director of the Boston College Irish Studies Program and teaches in the Department of History.