"We do accept license fee-funded BBC needs to be popular.
             But it does not need to be populist.
             It has the money to give us something different."
             –Gerry Murphy, CEO Carlton Communications, speaking to Royal Television Society
             Since its inception, the BBC, the British subsidized television and radio broadcaster, has made a vow to extend programming – both physically and in terms of content – to all viewers and to broadcast material that contributes to a unified sense of life. However, since the years of the original director general's strict policies were set forth, the BBC has been leaning more and more towards entertainment controlling its airwaves, and has been found seeking to win bitter ratings battles against other stations, namely ITV1. This behavior would surely not be accepted by the original director general's ideologies, nor does it fall under the BBC's continued commitments to be a public service. So then how was the BBC allowed to launch its very first reality TV show this fall and provide blanket coverage across three of its television networks as well as one radio network for three days a week? Aren't money-grabbing, ratings-hungry programs such as Big Brother and Pop Stars: The Rivals simply commercial, uneducational excuses for people to sit at home and watch the tube? An analysis into why this first reality show, Fame Academy, was allowed to hit airwaves on October 4, 2002 would help to clarify the current relationship had between the BBC and its public service promise and perhaps even help to tell the future of public broadcasting in the UK.
             Fame Academy, the most recent addition to the wave of reality TV shows, is produced by the Dutch company Endemol, the makers of Big Brother. Versions in France, Spain, and Holland were runaway successes and so in July of this year, Endemol propositioned the BBC with the idea. Ho...