Charles Siepmann’s Forgotten Legacy for Communication Research and Educational Broadcasting

• In Event: Listening Learners: The Political Economy of Media Education During the New Deal, 1935-1948

Abstract

The contributions of Charles Siepmann, a British-born, American-naturalized media scholar and progressive policy advocate are largely missing from the dominant historical narratives of the field. Siepmann exemplifies an early—and mostly forgotten—critical thread of communication research. Drawing from a social democratic orientation toward media, Siepmann was overtly political in his scholarship, and frequently engaged with media policy interventions around educational programming. He was a central figure in the early days of the BBC and the primary author of the controversial “Blue Book” published by the Federal Communications Commission in 1946, which attempted to establish strict public service responsibilities for commercial broadcasters. He was also the founding director of one of the United States’ first graduate-level communication programs (perhaps the first, as it predated Wilbur Schramm’s efforts at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which is usually granted this distinction). At NYU, where he taught for nearly two decades, Siepmann mentored a number of leading broadcast historians and practitioners, and authored several influential books.
Beyond his scholarship and teaching, Siepmann was first and foremost a public intellectual who engaged with important policy debates across three countries, and played an important role in advising the Ford Foundation in their significant work on educational broadcasting. Throughout his career, he was adamant that a space should be carved out of the commercial broadcast system devoted to educational broadcasting. While he was skeptical that a commercial system could ever be compatible with educational programming, he never gave up hope that an engaged public could pressure commercial broadcasters and the FCC—through listening councils and other activist projects—to create a more democratic and enlightened media system.
Given his historical significance, Siepmann’s legacy for communication research and educational broadcasting deserves closer scholarly attention—as does his continued relevance within debates about the future of public media. Drawing from Siepmann’s writings as well as archival materials and interviews with his former students, this paper situates his scholarship within historical policy debates about educational broadcasting.

Author

• Victor W. Pickard, U of Pennsylvania