Author Description

The Era of Cultural Television offers a new interpretation of the Finnish television history of the 1970s and 1980s, which has previously been interpreted as a transitional period from the politicized 1970s to the liberalization of the late 1980s. The book suggests that Finnish television of this era was characterized by an ethos in which television was seen as a cultural resource for all, playing an important role in social planning and cultural citizenship. While Finnish television has been studied mainly as a medium for entertainment and information, The Era of Cultural Television offers a new framework by approaching television from the perspective of cultural policy. At the same time, the book brings to the forefront programme types that, despite their importance, have been overlooked in previous research: television drama, international films and series, service programmes as well as educational programmes for children. The book challenges the convention of emphasizing the differences between public service and commercial television and shows that the commercial television company Mainos-TV (MTV) shared largely the same ethos as the public service Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yleisradio). The book highlights forgotten aspects of MTV’s history by describing how the company invested in art and history documentaries and developed new forms of addressing the challenges of modern life in its service programmes. From the perspective of the current abundance of channels and streaming services, television of the 1970s and 1980s may seem scarce and limited. The Era of Cultural Television shows that scarcity is a retrospective interpretation that does not correspond to contemporary understanding of television. Television addressed an audience that was expected to be highly curious and inquisitive. Television viewers were catered for with a diverse selection of arts programmes, documentaries and educational programmes as well as entertainment. Television