1989 – 2002
London, the BBC begins first experiments in
DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting).
1994 BBC converts generalist service, Radio 5,
which featured programmes for young listeners,
to Radio 5 Live dedicated to sports, news and
chat.
1998 UK: Sky TV launches digital television
service, 1 October.
1999 A jury in Oregon, US, fi nes anti-abortionist
campaigners for publishing on their Internet
website a ‘wanted’ list of abortion doctors, their
clinics and addresses, seeing it as a thinly veiled
death threat.• (^) During the war for Kosovo, NATO bombers
target TV stations in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade.
• (^) UK: Greg Dyke is appointed new director-
general of the BBC in succession to Sir John Birt.
2000 UK: Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
(RIPA), extending offi cial surveillance to Inter-
net communication.
• (^) US: merger of the world’s biggest media giant,
Time Warner, with AOL (America On Line).
• (^) Launch of Women’s Enews, Internet news
service.
• (^) Ukraine: campaigning journalist Georgi
Gongadze abducted, murdered and beheaded,
allegedly with the connivance of government
authorities.
• (^) Google becomes the world’s biggest search
engine.
2001 11 September: TV viewers across the world
witness the terrorist destruction of the twin
towers of New York’s World Trade Center.
• (^) Italy: Silvio Berlusconi, media magnate,
becomes Italy’s Prime Minister for the second
time.
2002 Labour government issues Communica-
tions Bill proposing the loosening of broadcast-
ing regulations and abandoning rules concern-
ing cross-media ownership. With modifi cations,
becomes Act of Parliament, 2003.
• (^) ITV Digital services go bust, but a consortium
led by the BBC steps in to off er over 20 digital
channels (freeview). New digital services from
the BBC: CBBC (for children, aged 6–13),
Cheebies (for under 6s) BBC Four (art, history,
current aff airs), BBC Th ree (drama, entertain-
ment, music). At the same time, BBC radio goes
digital (BBC Digital, Asian Network, 6Music,
1Xtra, Five Live Sports Extra and BBC7 (comedy,
drama and children’s programmes).
• (^) China: analysts estimate that the state employs
30,000 people to monitor and control informa-
tion.
• (^) Gulf Cooperation Council, meeting in Oman,
warns satellite TV station al-Jazeera to make
1989 Th e Iron Curtain that divided eastern Euro-
pean nations – Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia
and East Germany etc. – from the West, is drawn
aside. Th e trades union Solidarity is permitted to
contest elections in Poland; in Hungary border
troops tear down the barbed-wire frontier with
Austria. Most signifi cantly, the Berlin Wall is
dismantled. However, in June, freedom protests
in Beijing are crushed in Tiananmen Square. Th e
rest of the world watches events on TV.
• (^) In Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini condemns as
blasphemous the novel Th e Satanic Verses by
British writer Salman Rushdie and issues a fatwa,
or edict, calling on all Muslims to strike down
the offender. Despite worldwide protests, the
death sentence remained active until September
1998 when the government of Iran distanced
itself from, without rescinding, the Khomeini
edict.
• (^) Tim Berners-Lee, British inventor of the World
Wide Web, fi rst scrawls the following on a black-
board: w.w.w.
1990 UK: Broadcasting Act separates control
of commercial television (ITC, Independent
Television Commission) and radio (the Radio
Authority).
• (^) The Northern Echo edited in Darlington
becomes the fi rst UK newspaper on CD-ROM.
• (^) The first tapeless answering machine, the
ADAM (All-Digital Answering Machine), stor-
ing messages on a silicon chip, launched in the
US by PhoneMate.
• (^) Iraq: Farzad Barzoft, journalist on the UK
Observer, is executed in Baghdad after ‘confess-
ing’ to spying.
• (^) UK: Calcutt Committee reports on its delib-
erations concerning ‘a wide public aversion to
newspaper intrusion’, and recommends ‘reform
by self-regulation’ and a Code of Practice. Th e
Press Complaints Commission emerged from
Calcutt recommendations.
1991 Robert Maxwell, British media tycoon, dies
in a drowning accident.
1992 Los Angeles: street riots after screening of
police beating up a black motorist, Rodney King.
• (^) UK: fi rst land-based national commercial radio
station – Classic FM – launched 7 September.
• (^) Canada: government Bill C-128 bans the
depiction of under-18s engaging in any form of
‘explicit sexual activity’, including kissing.
1993 UK: carried via London Interconnect cable
network, the fi rst black TV service – Identity
TV – begins, 13 July, with estimated audience
of 150,000, and on 1 September BSkyB launches
fi rst women’s TV channel.
• (^) Transmitting from coaches driving round