Latest in the long line of No-men!
Benn, Short or Mason: nothing good has come from broadcasting ministers says Milton Shulman
WHEN Labour came to power in October, 1964, British TV faced a number of outstanding problems. Ever an optimist, I envisaged a TV millennium.
“The appointment of young and vigorous Anthony Wedgwood-Benn as the new Postmaster-General should presage some bold and exciting developments in British TV,” I wrote at the time.
Having outlined some of the issues I confidently expected Mr. Benn to tackle, I ended my article, addressed to him, with the following euphoric peroration: “The time has come for a positive lead from the Postmaster-General for more diversified, more significant and more adventurous TV. Will you give it?”
At the time, the future development and expansion of TV was harassed and beclouded by a host of unanswered questions. They hung over the medium like life in one of those TV commercials a minute before taking an aspirin.
Problem
The most pressing problems included the raising of the TV licence fee, the introduction of colour, the possibility of a fourth channel, the structure of commercial TV, the University of the Air, Pay TV.
Supplementary issues which might have been influenced by a dynamic and concerned Postmaster-General were the extension of broadcasting hours, a determination to prevent excessive profits being made out of a monopoly situation, an insistence that money made out of TV should be ploughed back into the medium, and the encouragement of the production of TV programmes for export.
Well, three and a half years have come and gone.
Wedgwood Benn has come and gone. Mr. Edward Short, his success as Postmaster-General, has come and gone. Mr. Roy Mason, the third Labour custodian of our TV destiny is now in charge.
What has been accomplished? After almost four years of Labour Government only two significant changes have taken place. We have colour and three new programme companies will soon be performing on Channel 9.
On the other hand, the litany of “no changes” sounds like a particularly depressing long moan. The BBC has not received an increased licence fee. There is no possibility of a fourth channel during the life of this Government.
There will be no University of the Air. Nothing has been done about pay TV except to allow an experiment to go ahead that had already been decided upon by the Tories.
There has been no increase in broadcasting hours. Nothing has been done to prevent exorbitant profits being made by those lucky enough to get commercial TV contracts. Nothing has been done to stimulate the production of TV programmes tor export. No steps have been taken to see that money made in TV stays in it.
With this desert of negative achievements to inspire him, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr. Roy Mason, our latest Postmaster-General, should early on indicate that he, too, intends to adopt the administrative philosophy that in broadcasting the less done the better.
Although he has only had the job tor a fortnight or so, his performance last week in answering questions in the Commons about broadcasting shows that the obscurantist mantle of his predecessors sits very naturally on his shoulders.
Abrupt
He was asked nine questions and to each one of them he managed to say no; he couldn’t promise; he couldn’t comment; or he didn’t intend to do anything.
Now if these questions had been asked for purely party provocative or petty purposes, one might have understood and forgiven Mr. Mason’s stonewalling demonstration.
But some of them seemed to me to raise important issues that deserved more than a dismissive reply.
He was asked by Mr. Hugh Jenkins if he would introduce legislation that could enable him to require the ITA to withdraw the licence of any programme company whose control was materially changed by acquisition or merger.
When Mr. Jenkins received an abrupt “no” to his question, he pressed on with a supplementary suggestion that since these contracts were in many cases licences to print money wasn’t it desirable that the nature of the company to which it was given should remain the same?
In other words, if Thames TV or London Weekend or Yorkshire TV received their contracts because of the nature of the men who were going to run it and back it, shouldn’t Parliament be concerned if another group of individuals bought themselves into controlling positions after the contracts had been allotted?
A perfectly reasonable question, you would think, demanding a considered reply. There is, for example, the case of EMI, which, when it was part of a consortium trying to get the Yorkshire contract was rejected, turning up again as a possible large shareholder in Thames TV because it has bought itself into ABC Pictures, which has a major stake in Thames TV.
If it was right for EMI to be turned down by Lord Hill in Yorkshire, is it right for EMI to be accepted by Lord Bowden in London? Surely a subject that should concern the Postmaster General?
But no. Mr. Mason shrugged off the question with the cryptic remark that Mr. Jenkins was concerned about “this developing into a monopoly situation” and thought it should be referred to the President of the Board of Trade.
