academic Programs

From Broadcast Communication to Broadcast Media Arts and Studies

The Broadcast Communication (BC) undergraduate curriculum was last revised in 2007, and was implemented in 2008. This revision saw the design of more holistic production courses, where research processes and production flows from concept to execution became fundamental in teaching audio and visual production. Three-unit radio and television production courses were revised into six-unit core courses to intensify the role of each creative component (brainstorming, research, scriptwriting, editing, etc.) in the larger context of broadcast production flows. The revision also included the institution of the BC 180 series (Political Economy of Broadcast Media, Criticism of Broadcast Texts, and Audience Studies). These three required courses equipped students with critical theories and research approaches to analyzing broadcast media organizations and institutions, texts, and audiences.

The curriculum has in fact been evolving into an interdisciplinary program, integrating and synthesizing the philosophical approaches and methodologies of both the Humanities and the Social Sciences. In its first few decades from the 1960s, its teaching was founded on the training of professionals with a view that broadcasting was an aesthetic tool for mass dissemination of information. Since the 1990s, the Department has been steering the curriculum towards a broader, more holistic program that maintains the teaching of broadcasting as an art but also borrows and assimilates perspectives from several disciplines. This is particularly reflected in the use of the term "Studies," which implies a critical cultural studies approach in the study and teaching of the ways in which the practice of broadcasting participates in the creation of cultures and everyday life, maintains and challenges social relations and the exercise of power, and promotes or frustrates social transformations. The changes are premised on the complex paradigm shifts in the practice of broadcasting in the last three decades, shaped and reshaped not only by technologies but by the profound transformations in the global and local public spheres.

The bridging of theory and practice needed review, especially with the key output of the program, the thesis, implementing research through audio-visual methods and using audio-visual projects as final projects. These insights echoed countless conversations with several batches of undergraduate students who wanted to do production theses but were daunted by the task of producing a written thesis and an audio-visual production as a solo project within a semester’s three-unit course.

It is important to note that the shift from a predominantly arts and skills-building curriculum to a critical cultural studies approach in the BC program does not abandon the ideation, writing, videography, and editing aspects of broadcast production. Instead, we strengthen the theoretical and methodological aspects within the creative work. In the BC curriculum, there already exists a balance between and a bridging of theory and practice. However, we as a faculty articulated that the Department should not only produce, create or enhance talents and, as part of UP that is a teaching, research, and public service university, that it should nurture the audiovisual creativity of graduates who will teach and will be involved in research and public service.

The term "Broadcast Media" in place of "Broadcast Communication" indicates the multifarious cultural and technological platforms in which conventional broadcasting is now practiced alongside new mediations, such as digital media, and other media that have yet to emerge. The program name maintains the term “Broadcast” as its audiovisual anchor and reimagines the discipline to be inclusive of digital Web-based, mobile, and other emerging media, its practices, and its audiences. This move signifies the program’s intent to examine the connections and intersections of “old” and “new” media, the contexts that inform the evolving uses of these media, and the way the new media ecologies encourage dynamic modes of meaning making among producers and audiences.

The BA BMAS Program Outcomes are seen as qualities embodied by our ideal BA BMAS graduate:

1. An ethical practitioner who is a social justice advocate and is socially aware and self-reflexive;

2. A visionary producer who produces meaningful content and innovates genres, a meticulous planner and executor, and a team player and motivator;

3. A critical thinker who is steeped in histories of broadcast media and links knowledge to Philippine history; applies critical frameworks in conceptualizing, executing, and analyzing broadcast media content; and is aware of the relationships and discourses of power that shape content and culture of media industries and production environments;

4. A technically proficient practitioner, who creatively applies skills in handling production hardware and software; troubleshoots workflow systems in content production during its different stages; and experiments with genres, conventions, processes to introduce and test innovative ideas; and

5. An inclusive, interdisciplinary practitioner, who welcomes the use of different research and production methods, engages with arguments and counterarguments to build richer discourses, and embraces changes in the uses and functions of technologies.

To achieve the goals of the BA BMAS program, and produce our Ideal BA BMAS Graduate, the program lists the following as its objectives:

1. critically assess media's role in society, as well as their roles as producers of media content, members of media organizations, and consumers of media texts

2. develop proficiencies in production techniques for conventional and emerging media ecologies

3. cultivate critical creativity and practices in the production of content, research, and implementation of conventional and emerging media production strategies

4. contribute new perspectives in media production and the producer's role in a changing media environment

5. update the practice of creative content production with creative methods and historical and theoretical lenses

6. produce research on Philippine media texts, institutions, practices, and audiences that is ethical, theoretically informed, socially aware, and methodologically sound.