Simon Potter has long been established as a media historian with a keen interest in the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and its influence as a cultural force. In his book, he examines a portion of BBC history, which, as readers clearly know, is a subject undertaken by many an author through the years. However, Potter's contribution to this area of study is an important one. The author analyzes the corporation's attempts to maintain and reinforce a global system of influence while fighting off the onslaught of Americanization, commercialism, and transnational media. He outlines how this struggle coincided with the gradual end of British imperial influence, decolonization, and attempts to maintain negotiations of power in overseas locales.

The book's chapters are well organized into a chronological study of the corporation's primary interests as a broadcaster from 1922 until 1970, beginning with chapters on programming and the diversity of specific policies from 1922 to 1931, issues of dissension among the ranks of staff and audiences from 1932 to 1935, the integration of colonial external broadcasting from 1935 to 1939, the effects of the Second World War upon policies and procedurals during the war years, postwar continuity and challenges from 1945 to 1959, the potential dissolution of the mythical power of the BBC during the 1960s, followed by a series of conclusions that offer less of a recapitulation of the book's contents and more of a wry commentary on the failure of the BBC and the British Empire to maintain a balance of cultural influence and relevance in a postwar, globalized world. The author concludes that the BBC was clearly significant to the shaping of the colonies and the image of England in the Western world.

Potter begins by addressing the imagined importance of the BBC's mission to acculturate and inform, a mission that now required the assistance of public broadcasting authorities both overseas and within the dominions. However, the author notes that the same organizations also held agendas far less reliant on the BBC than the organization would seemingly desire. Potter's examination of those relationships is essential to his analysis of educational exchanges, cultural idioms, and citizenship in what was the twentieth-century British sphere of influence. While transnationalism is also suggested as part of the organization's authority, the author indicates how this delicate balance of international media and power relations shifted under the weight of Americanization, providing the United States with more cultural influence than ever before. The desire of the BBC to incorporate regional communities and distant provinces could not save it from its rapidly eroding power to shape postwar activities. It is this “cultural imperialism” (213) within a “declining empire” (13) that the author continues to examine throughout the book. This ideological thread further helps the reader to deconstruct the BBC's ambitions to continue the reinforcement of specific identities within its dominions during a time of imperial decline. Of equal importance, Potter queries how British studies of broadcasting added to the correlations of empire and British cultural affectations.

A study of the BBC suggests that the audience attitudes and responses to the empire-related programs were also highly important in understanding this reliance upon the BBC's perceived relationship with the audiences. This study also provides an analysis of how the BBC's personnel, who hailed from a higher socioeconomic status, only served to reinforce the organization's flirtations with a global influence and a continued sense of international importance. Potter draws upon original documentation from the BBC archives, yet he also pays homage to the works of Thomas Hajkowski, Sian Nicholas, Wendy Webster, and John M. MacKenzie, drawing upon their perspectives of BBC policies as they related to programming and those producers responsible for the shows, and the many listeners who basked in the BBC's reinforcement of “British superiority.” Of equal importance were acknowledgments of how English attitudes toward Asians, Africans, and postwar immigrant others could not be sanitized by attempts at racial inclusiveness owing to staunch attitudes of racialism and cultural incompatibilities, issues BBC producers too often sought to ignore. Despite the existence of other parties and international connections within the United States and in Europe, Potter ultimately reminds the reader that many producers and officers with the corporation indicated continuing resistance to these canonical formations of ideology owing in large part to what they perceived as a general sense of apathy. While the BBC continued to offer empire-related programs, there was very little, if any, interest in efforts to make these audiences more mindful of a crumbling empire.

Potter concludes by suggesting that within a postmodern commercial marketplace, broadcasters like the BBC often had to accept a subordinate position, particularly when compared to the exporters of American television programming. The suggestion that the Americanization of UK audiences played a large part in this transformation is underscored when considering how the BBC's power and influence continued to erode well into the 1960s and beyond. It was the commercialization of many of its operations, such as BBC Enterprises/BBC Worldwide, that helped to export certain British television programs to audiences abroad. However, Potter also notes that the BBC's acceptance of these transitions and others flirted with the advent of further advertising, advertising that included online resources, particularly after the withdrawal of financial support by the UK foreign office.

Potter offers a keen insight into some of the circumstances that led to the BBC's erosion of power around the world among British colonies and its own onetime loyal audiences. As suggested by the introduction, the book builds upon these insights and other documentation to examine how the BBC attempted to reinforce notions of empire in response to a myriad of cultural and social challenges.