Abstract:

It is my intention to review the editorial research carried out for TVTimes since 1968, and to attempt to assess how and where it contributed to the development of the magazine. In the six years of its life, TvTimes has changed in many ways and of course many of the changes owe nothing to research. I shall try to evaluate the research contribution by stating what we set out to do and describing how we did it. Each job was planned as a part of a policy of continuous editorial development and took into account changes in the public acceptance of the new publication, so I shall describe briefly each piece of work that we did in the order that the jobs were done. I should also add that hindsight is one of the greatest allies of any researcher and I have that advantage. Rationalisation after the event is an obvious danger that I shall try to avoid, but in the late nineteen sixties the crystal ball looked a good deal murkier than it does now.