The English programme

THE ENGLISH PROGRAMME is a school television programme produced by Thames Television for the ITV network. It offers a variety of resources for secondary English teachers. “Young One” is part of a media studies unit (Viewpoint II) which examines media treatment of youth, race, welfare claimants and industrial relations. The scriptwriter and narrator is D. Stuart Hall, Professor of Sociology at the Open University. SYNOPSIS The idea of young people as a group apart with their own interests and spending power is a recent phenomenon. The media have treated successive groups – Teds, Rockers, Mods, Hippies, Skins, Punks- with a mixture of fascination and alarm. Teenage violence and sexual behavior is simultaneously exploited and censored. Teenage magazines assume that girls are interested only in boys and roman; boys are fed a macho diet of muscle, guns and speed. When a boy and girl try to form a natural relationship, this indoctrination may cause problems. The programme combines film clips from feature films, documentaries, news and current affairs programmes with rostrum camera sequences of newspaper and magazine stories to provide a fast-moving montage of media images. The music track uses popular music from the 1950s to the 1980s.