The purpose of this research is to identify and discuss the main developments in the press of the United Kingdom (UK) beginning in 1945 and continuing to the present. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context in which the UK's media outlets evolved after World War II and to discuss the details of corporate and personal relationships that constituted the structure of press behavior over the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st.
In order to appreciate the results of the evolution of the British press after World War II as seen from the standpoint of the Information Age, it may be useful to consider the context of that evolution in terms of what the UK press was not as of 1945, chiefly because of the far-reaching impact of World War II. In this environment, the press was by no means computer-driven. It was a national presence but not ubiquitous, in the manner of modern 24-hour cable programming. It was not under corporate/conglomerate ownership but decentralized and controlled by what were known as press barons, in part because they were also titled barons (e.g., Beaverbrook, Northcliffe). The UK press establishment may have had an international reach, with the reputation for mutedly decorous presentation of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) a matter of record. Even so, the grasp of British media outlets in general was not extensive. In particular, the newspaper business was fairly localized. To be sure, there were nine putatively competing major titles in London, but the fact is that all of the newspapers tended to serve constituencies based chiefly on social class, and virtually all of them were controlled by barons with a politically conservative turn of mind. Otherwise, spread across the green and pleasant land were 750 local village weekly newspapers, plus 29 daily morning papers and 76 evening papers situated in the larger cities of the kingdom (Seymour-Ure 1-2). There were illustr...