For a moment, at least, there is an uneasy hush about the question of politicians and TV.

Having been hit by the verbal blunderbusses of two Cabinet Ministers – Richard Crossman and Anthony Wedgwood Benn – charging them with trivialising the political scene, the TV executives are brooding about the accusation and, as yet, doing nothing about it.

Now, in his Granada lecture Richard Crossman asked why the minority of people interested in politics should be given less TV time than minority groups interested in sport, music, drama or religion.

He estimated that the minority really keen on politics would be “far more numerous than all the opera-goers and the balletomanes put together, and at least as numerous as the active Christians.”

“Sixty minutes a week of straight outside broadcasting would seem a lot to us,” he said, pointing out that this was the time allotted to all-in wrestling.

Privileged

But what Mr Crossman failed to ask himself, and what few politicians are prepared to face, is whether or not any serious or concerned aspect of man’s activities can hope to benefit by increased support or respect if it becomes a recognised and accepted ingredient of a medium which is itself fundamentally trivial.

Tie one sector of our communal life that TV has continually given a privileged position in terms of hours has been the Christian churches.

Although the Postmaster-General does not have much say in the programme content of either the ITA or the BBC. he does insist that the hours between 6.15 p.m. and 7.25 p.m. on Sundays should be confined to a limited category of broadcasts (religious, charitable, Welsh language, those for the deaf) and which, in practice, has meant a quarantined zone largely occupied by religious TV. In addition to this hour and 10 minutes of privileged time, the ITV usually provides about 35 minutes a week of religious chat in what used to be the Epilogue slot and the BBC has a half-hour repeat of one of its Sunday religious programmes late the same night.

Definition

In other words, over three hours every week are granted, almost as a right, to Christian churches to put over their message and philosophy on TV. No other serious institution — Parliament, the Monarchy, the City, the Press, the Universities, the Law, the medical profession — is granted a fraction of this time to say what they would like to say to the public.

The definition of what is a religious broadcast is almost exclusively decided by the Central Religious Advisory Committee which advises the ITA and the BBC on these matters

On this Advisory Committee, which was established by Lord Reith – the BBC’s first Director-General — there are no minority religious groups or non-Christians. It represents exclusively the “mainstream of Christian tradition.”

The Chief Rabbi, in a recent letter to the Times, pointed out that the Jewish community receives but a fraction of its proportional share in religious broadcasting time based on the ratio of Jewish citizens.

And a number of MPs have also written to Lord Hill at the BBC complaining about the fact that the humanist position does not get its fair share of representation on the box.

Declining

But a more fundamental question than this volume of time each faith or interest gets on TV is whether or not there is any evidence that the constant exposure of Christianity on TV in its present context brings about a heightened awareness of Christianity and a rise in the number of its adherents and followers.

Judging by a Gallup Poll taken last year, there has been a serious increase in the number of people who believe that religion is losing its influence.

Compared to 1957 — which is a date that roughly corresponds to the advent of commercial TV on a popular scale and the consequent change in serious TV standards — there was an increase of some 17 per cent. in the number of people who thought religion was on the decline.

In 1957 52 per cent. of the people thought religion was losing its influence, in 1967, this had jumped to 67 per cent. In 1957, 17 per cent. thought religion was increasing its influence; in 1967 only 9 per cent. felt its significance was greater.

It is interesting, too, that it was members of the Church of England — the faith that gets the biggest slice of the TV religious cake — who provided the largest number of those who felt religion was losing its influence.

On the other hand, if we examine the records of the Jews and Humanists — groups who are concerned about their lack of access to the box — we will find no such precipitate decline in the over-all adherence to the importance of their beliefs.

The number of recognised Jews in Britain has remained relatively static — around the 450,000 mark — in the post-war years. The Humanists, on the other hand, are galloping ahead with membership in the Humanist Association – although tiny — increasing by some 20 per cent. per year.

No one would try to deduct from these figures a generalisation that TV is chiefly responsible for a fall in churchgoing or a decline in Christianity. Other factors — materialism, science, permissiveness, scepticism have made their impact. But why, for example, have these factors left the Jews relatively untouched?

TV, being the mysterious, unknown quantity that it still is, could be having its effect.

Commercial?

Isn’t there an element of the concealed commercial about many religious unobtrusive priest trying to make some sort of subliminal impact in a discussion on pop music or sex — which puts viewers in mind of TV advertising films and therefore stimulates their most intense defensive and cynical responses?

Judging by the surreptitious disguises now being used to flavour religious programmes with a secular masquerade, it appears that there is a growing doubt about the value of straight forward Christian programmes attempting to reason or proselytise or argue directly from the small screen.

Series such as Malcolm Muggeridge’s The Question Why and the current series on London Weekend, Round House, which is a sort of Speaker’s Corner on current affairs, are only peripherally religious and almost make nonsense of the Postmaster-General’s edict that these Sunday night slots should be devoted to religious programmes.

The post Is TV doing God any good? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

TALK IS CHEAP. No one is more conscious of the truth of that maxim than TV executives.

Talkers get less money than actors. They need no elaborate sets to back them up. Studios can be small and rehearsal time almost minimal.

There is no need to supplement them with original film material which entails the expense of large film crews. There is little to be paid in the way of hotel or travelling expenses.

A half-hour talk programme ran be laid on for about one-tenth the cost of a half-hour drama or documentary. Transmitting 30 minutes of conversation that costs £400 [£5,945 in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] instead of a play that costs £4,000 [£59,450] can save a TV company, on one programme alone, something like £175,000 [£2.6m] in a single year.

Another advantage of talk from a TV executive’s point of view is that he can use it to substantiate his claim that he is fulfilling his serious and cultural responsibilities to the medium. And it doesn’t cost him much.

Thus in their annual reports, the commercial companies can include long lists of dons, philosophers, authors, artists, composers, editors, scientists, who have appeared on their programmes which helps provide a smokescreen of social responsibility.

For minimal costs the maximum amount of goodwill is achieved.

Little

With such obvious benefits to be gained, it is surprising how little thought, imagination and effort goes into the average talks programme. This is one area of TV where it costs no more to make a good programme than it does to make a bad one.

TV is, of course, largely the art of the cheap budget. Since the BBC is being starved of its additional fee and since the commercial companies are being faced with the increased expense of introducing colour, it is perhaps natural that talk programmes should begin to proliferate on all channels.

If late on Sunday you switch from BBC-2 to BBC-1 to IIV, you will get no surcease from talk, talk, talk. The BBC has just introduced a regular Monday evening show of talk conducted by Michael Aspel. The new London TV companies promise us Eamonn Andrews talking three nights a week and David Frost talking another three nights a week.

Watching these programmes I am constantly impressed by the affinity their producers have with the Bourbons who learned nothing and forgot nothing.

We critics are constantly bing abused for having nothing constructive to offer the toilers in the electronic vineyards of TV.

But it is clear from these latest specimens of cauliflower TV — aimed to assault the ear rather than the eye – that elementary errors pointed out time and time again by critics are repeated by new waves of talks producers as if they were either too stubborn to take good advice, too arrogant to learn from experience or loo lazy to read.

Slavish

The Sunday night chat on BBC-2’s Late Night Line-Up, for example, is modelled with almost slavish fidelity on the format of the old Brains Trust but without any apparent understanding of what made that programme a success and this one a failure.

The formula for good conversation on TV is little different from that faced by every successful hostess organising a dinner party. There must not be too many guests; they must have areas of common interest; the bore must be immediately recognised and neutralised.

Any ideal dinner party, too, must not be composed of complete strangers uncomfortably trying to get on each other’s wavelengths and rarely succeeding before the brandy stage has been reached.

There must be some guests who know each other so well that they can exchange gossip, banter and abuse without feeling self-conscious or inhibited.

Unease

Instead of a team of anchormen like Commander Campbell, Huxley and Joad in the original Brains Trust or Michael Foot, A. J. P. Taylor and Lord Boothby in Free Speech — and these two were undoubtedly the best talk programmes yet conceived for either radio or TV – Late Night Line-Up’s Sunday conversation recruits four new faces every week and rarely has a group so regularly communicated such unease.

Not only does this motley assembly seem to have little in common, but it is only with a great deal of effort that they give any impression of being remotely interested in most of the questions they are asked to talk about.

Thus Yehudi Menuhin discussing the nation’s dedication to sport prefaced his remarks by omitting he knew very little about sport.

Irene Worth, asked to talk about the problem of amateurism in the Civil candour said: “I don’t know. I have no views about this”.

Now what is the basis of assembling Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Edward Boyle, Irene Worth and Roger McGough [respectively, a violinist, the Tory MP for Birmingham Handsworth, an actress and a poet] for a conversation on TV? I can think of only one subject they have in common — music – and possibly drama. Then why are they asked to chat about sport or the Civil Service or heredity?

On the other hand, the following week Willi Frischauer, whose field is politics and journalism, had to artificially convert himself into an authority on pop music and the Beatles.

Drab

Again there seemed nothing to link Willi Frischauer, an exuberant and likeable talker on his own subject, with the drab threesome he was trying to stimulate into something resembling a concerned reaction.

On this programme no one gets angry, no one seriously contradicts anyone, no one seems involved and no one really cares. One has the impression they are all there for their chat fees and little else. It is gentility run riot!

Michael Dean and Joan Bakewell, as the chairmen, seem obsessed with the esoteric and cultural aspects of life to the exclusion of almost everything else. When the panel are asked a question like: “Does the future of culture lie in the development of vernacular art?” not only do the guests seem to sigh a mental groan but the sound of sets switching off throughout the land must be deafening.

Another producer who seems to have learned nothing from the experience of other talk programmes is Christopher Martin, who is responsible for Malcolm Muggeridge’s new Sunday evening programme, The Question Why?

Anxious

Claiming for itself a reflective aim in which such profound questions as the basis for our need for wealth, a longer life, more happiness, would be asked and probed, this programme made the elementary mistake of filling the studio with about 30 people all anxious to get at each other’s throats.

Not only is it insulting to invite so many people to take part in a programme in which their average speaking time can only be about a minute and a half each, but when the topic is to be something as complicated and combustible us the right to strike it is courting verbal chaos to jam so many participants into the same studio.

The Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner format has been tried time and time again on TV — Man Alive only recently had to abandon it — and always the result has been disastrous.

Malcolm Muggeridge trying to discipline the storm of shouts, interjections, insults looked like some benign King Canute stemming the incoming tide with the pat of his hands.

If the questions Mr. Muggeridge wants to ask cannot be answered by civilised talkers in a civilised atmosphere, given a civilised amount of time for reflection and argument, then I’m afraid he has no business asking them at all.

The post Talkers get less money than actors and the results suggest the reason appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

NO ONE expects logic or consistency from TV executives. The medium has always been a jungle of anomalies, paradoxes, non sequiturs and ad hoc decisions.

But television’s approach to advertising would, by comparison, make the adventures of Alice in Wonderland sound like an exercise in pure reason.

The precise answer to a question like how long is a piece of string is no more elusive than trying to determine when an advertisement is not an advertisement.

Thus the commercial channel was prevented by the ITA from televising the International Trophy motor rave from Silverstone because the cars carried advertisements. Since the natural scenery for this type of event has always been hoardings and banners carrying every conceivable type of advertisement, who would be offended or corrupted by small advertisements on bonnets of cars travelling at 100 mph – would they emerge as more than a blur? — certainly escapes me.

Making this decision even more incomprehensible is the fact that the day following the ban, I watched on the commercial channel highlights of a football match between West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City where hoardings, proclaiming the delights of White Horse Whisky, Esso, BOAC, Haig Whisky, Coca-Cola and others, competed directly for my attention with the cavorting players.

Surely, then, the ITA should, if only to save itself from the charge of being ridiculous, reveal to us the subtle, perhaps Jeusitical reasoning that has enabled it to distinguish between these two forms of unpaid TV advertising.

The dilemma, of course, arising from the wording of the Television Act, which clearly states that “advertisements must be clearly distinguishable as such and recognisably separate from the rest of the programme.”

This simple cannot be done with sports programmes, and the ITA should obviously stop trying to split semantic hairs in their efforts to prove one form of outdoor display advertising acceptable and another beyond the pale.

If the ITV truly wants to discourage this type of advertising, they might consider adjusting their fees in relationship to the number of hoarding and banners likely to be caught by their cameras. The more advertisements of this nature the promoter has accepted, the smaller should be the fee the TV companies pay him. This sort of rough justice could be effective.

But even a more flagrant form of free advertising that occurs on all three channels is the plug for films, plays or books dropped casually, and not so casually, into light entertainment and discussion programmes.

On the Eamonn Andrews Show recently I saw Mrs Gretchen Wyler, whose main interest, judged from its appearance, was a passion for animals — she didn’t say much about animals — but we heard a good deal about the fact that she was taking over from Juliet Browse as the lead in Sweet Charity.

Similarly, Clint Eastwood, although he had appeared in many violent films, displayed only a repertoire of cliches on the subject of violence which he was presumably there to discuss. Why then was he chosen? I can only assume because he happened to be making a film called Where Eagles Dare, in England.

But BBC-1, in its present slide towards mediocrity, has recently been providing two of the most blatant plug-infested programmes on the small screen:

DEE TIME, presided over by Simon Dee, has become a rich hunting ground for public relations men every where.

On this programme, conversation takes almost second place to free advertising for whatever the guests are involved in.

A few weeks ago three peers of the land were shamelessly boasting about the delights of their stately homes during a discussion that was presumably meant to be about the new image of the aristocracy.

They giggled about the attractions they were offering to the public; they boasted about their takings; they vied with each other about the relative merits of their stately products.

A few moments later Donald Sinden and Bernard Cribbins turned up to tell us they were in a new play in Birmingham.

Except for telling us that girls take their clothes off in the play, that a Miss World was in it and that Simon Dee should say something more about the play, I cannot recall a single contribution either Mr. Sinden or Mr. Cribbins made to the show.

Faced with this avalanche of free advertising, all Simon Dee could say was: “Gosh, there’s so many people I gotta give plugs to!”

The newest recruit to this who’s-for-plugs type of programme is the BBC’s A Spoonful of Sugar. Because it proclaims to be a programme to brighten up the lives of people confined in hospitals, it naturally makes it a somewhat ticklish programme to criticise.

Stephen Potter, in his book Lifemanship, noted that the way to avoid bad notices for a book was to dedicate it “To Phyllis, in the hope that one day God’s glorious gift of sight may be restored to her.” To attack a book with such a dedication would always hold up the critics to a charge of bad taste.

But the fact that A Spoonful of Sugar is concerned with the blind, paraplegics, bedridden nonagenarians cannot deter me from describing it as one of the most embarrassing, ill-prepared, squirm-making programmes I have seen for many years.

There is something basically cheap about using handicapped people – eager to be friendly and cooperative to those who are presumably trying to be charitable to them —to plug actors, BBC’ shows, comedians and even hairdressers as this show does.

To watch Keith Macklin or Sheila Tracy trying to get the poor victim to admit some interest in the personality that waits, beaming and smiling, behind some hospital door is a teeth-grinding experience.

I don’t really believe that these occasions, with the inevitable paraphernalia of cameras, sound equipment, crews and wires that must by crammed into a hospital room, can be anything but a depressing, somewhat nerve-wracking experience for those poor patients, chosen for this spot of limelight.

The let-down, the anticlimax, when all the reporters and performers and technicians have gone must be in some cases most depressing.

I am all for entertainers devoting all the time they can to cheering up those less fortunate and restricted in life.

But they should do it quietly, personally and away from the glare and mechanics of the techniques of plugging. Otherwise their motives are bound to be misunderstood or suspect.

The post Seen any good plugs lately? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Syndicated to newspapers on 27 April 1968

MR. PAUL FOX was made Controller of Programmes of BBC-1 on June 18, 1967.

In his new post Mr. Fox has something like £15m. [£223m in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] to spend. He is responsible for putting out more TV programmes than any other organisation in the world, and he supervises the production of more hours of entertainment than Lew Grade, Sidney Bernstein, the Boulting Brothers, Darryl Zanurk, J. Arthur Rank and Sir Philip Warter all put together.

What qualifications has he for such a formidable task? He was editor of BBC’s Sportsview for six years, until 1961. He edited Panorama and was head of BBC Current Affairs. Thus, his background has largely been concentrated on sports and news.

When he was appointed, Mr. Fox modestly claimed that his personal influence on BBC-1’s programme schedules would not be much in evidence before sometime in 1968.

Philosophy

He has now had 10 months to assert himself, and I think it is fair to appraise the trends in programming he appears to have set in motion.

Such comments of Mr. Fox’s that I have seen reported would seem to show that the acquisition of viewers plays an exceedingly prominent part in his philosophy of broadcasting.

Soon after he took over he indicated that be would give the ITV a much tougher battle for viewers, and last December, be was concerned about the audience ratio of 60-40 which the commercial channel had in their favour on Sunday nights.

To correct this dire state of affairs, he offered the British public a peak-time fare which began with the Smothers Brothers followed by Dr. Finlay’s Casebook, and ended with a long, feature film.

Since the Smothers Brothers were a disastrous flop, it must be assumed that Mr. Fox’s much-hoped for switch of viewers did not take place.

There has been some more schedule juggling, and BBC-1 now offers us on Sunday night — to woo us away from Channel 9’s delectable treat of The Saint (a repeat), The Big Show (variety) and a feature film – The Andy Williams Show, The First Lady (a series about a female councillor) and a feature film.

The end result of this fierce competitiveness is that there are only a marginal difference in quality of programme between the two major channels and that any discriminating viewer will be driven to the nearest pub or book.

Not content with turning the week-end into a battlefield for ignorant insensitive and complacent scalps, Mr Fox has apparently turned his diligent drive tor viewers to the week-days as well.

It you eliminate the daily 24 Hours programme from BBC-1 (which has a rough equivalent on the commercial channel with the News at Ten), there is practically nothing to choose between BBC-1 and ITV as far as the aim, tone quality and spirit of their programmes is concerned.

Monday’s schedule offered us Z-Cars, The Dick Emery Show, Panorama, Professional Boxing, Dance Date. To-night you have The Virginian, Mum’s Boys, The Wednesday Play (a repeat) and the European Cup. On Friday it’s A Spoonful of Sugar, The Newcomers, Man from UNCLE, Comedy Playhouse, Miss England and Tennis.

Bland

There are 28 hours of peak-time viewing on BBC-1 every weeks (ie, 6-30 pm to 10-30 pm) and, excluding the news and 24 Hours, the proportion of time devoted to what I might loosely call “non-entertainment” programmes (ie, drama, ballet, opera, documentaries, discussions, music, art, social and political comment) is about four hours per week.

In other words, for its mass viewing audiences BBC-1 now feels that 80 pc of its prime time should be devoted to bland, innocuous, unconcerned, uninvolved, soporific, uninformative, desensitising programmes.

Its tendency to move serious programmes to off-peak hours — which has always been the policy of the commercial channel — shows that there will soon be no difference at all between BBC-1 and ITV.

Since Mr. Fox has taken over we have seen the disappearance of the satire snows, the end of controversial comedies like Till Death Us Do Part, more a conventional plays into The Wednesday Play slot and an annual schedule which boasts of 1,000 hours of sport, or almost 25 per cent of its total output.

What seems to be happening is that BBC-1, like commercial TV, is opting out of a responsible position in shaping the taste, values and aspirations of the British public and is contenting itself with playing the role of a national yo-yo.

Deterioration

Its hierarchy can probably rationalise this position by claiming that BBC-2 can offer the more discriminating and more sensitive viewer all the serious, cultural, non-entertainment programmes programmes they want.

One can even envisage that when BBC-2 becomes more popular — when it shares a larger proportion of the audience — it, too, will deem it necessary to cater for bigger and bigger audiences, like its rivals, and eventually succumb to the temptation to become just floss and froth on the fabric of our national life.

This deterioration in the impact and power of TV is just what those with vested interests in the status quo would like.

Politicians, establishment figures, groups opposed to change and reform, have watched with a baleful eye the increasing intrusion of TV in their domains of influence and power.

Nothing would please them better than the cutting back of this involvement of TV in the central issues of our time. And the best way to do it is, of course, to turn the medium into visual chewing gum; innocuous waffle; soporific pap unworthy of the attention of those seriously concerned with our affairs. This has almost been achieved in America.

But TV is, for good or ill, a medium more powerful than any that exists in society to-day. It becomes the duty of those who run it to refuse to have it converted into a national bubble-bath. They must claw, fight, scream and shout for the right to be responsible and involved.

Serious

The BBC — because it is a national institution financed by the people’s money — must always be at least as serious as a popular newspaper. There is not a popular newspaper in the land that does not devote at least 40 per cent its non-commercial space to a discussion of the serious, demanding and involved aspects of the day. And in prominent places like its front page!

If TV is used by governments and those in authority as a new opium for the masses; if it portrays a bland, reassuring, comforting picture of life; if it is not used properly as an outlet for all the doubts, arguments, controversies and fears that rage through our lives, then watch for the explosion when disillusion sets in.

Some of the violence and anger of Negro rioters in America has been attributed to the contrast between the miserable reality of their existence and the chummy, benevolent, affluent, fictitious picture of American life seen on the small screed.

Similarly, the German students have been rioting because they claim that not only the Springer Press, but TV as well has provided the people with a false illusion of what is going on about them.

Mr. Paul Fox and Lord Hill, who joined the BBC as its chairman, have responsibilities towards the British public which, at the moment, they show few signs of either understanding or grasping.

The post A sad, sad look at the sad, sad decline of BBC-1 appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

[sic on typo in headline – Ed]

THE documentary is an art form that is nearly always perched precariously, and uncomfortably, on the horns of a dilemma.

If it has a point of view, it is unlikely to be denounced as unfair, partisan, perverse or provocative. If it hasn’t a point of view it is just as likely to be attacked as innocuous, bland, timid or uninspiring.

Don’t Count the Candles, Lord Snowdon’s documentary – which was made for CBS in America and shown on BBC 1 last week — had a point of view. It said that old age was a state none of us wanted, most of us resented and a few of us did every thing in our power to deny and resit.

As a generalisation it is hardly very original or very profound. Indeed, on this theme it is, perhaps, an almost classic statement of the obvious.

Yet it drew protests. People (not many, I am assured) phoned the BBC to complain that the programme was harrowing. Others were indignant because it did not show more happy and jolly old people.

Neglected

On “Late Night Line-up” a sociologist, Peter Townsend, thought the film was a complete failure because it had neglected, among other things, to show what the Welfare State was doing for old people.

None of these people was prepared, it would seem, to allow Lord Snowdon

who photographed and directed the documentary and Derek Hart, who wrote it, to project their own personal vision of the nature of old age.

Because the film did not correspond to what they thought old age was all about, these viewers denounced it. In other words, they wanted Lord Snowdon and Derek Hart to end up with a film they had never started to make.

Now these are dozens of aspects of old age that might be the subject of a programme of this kind: the opportunities of old age; its wisdom; its power; its physical and mental adjustments; its effect on the family; its sexual attitudes; its economic needs; its place in a modern, industrial state; its reflections on euthanasia. A documentary that attempted to discuss all these thoroughly would probably be about two weeks long. And even then someone would be bound to protest that something had been left out.

One of the persistent cliches that has bedevilled documentary makers is that their films ought to present “a slice of life”. By its very nature – limitations of resources; the tolerance of viewers; the inability of a camera to depict the fine nuances of logic – the best documentaries never attempt anything as large as “a slice of life.”

They concentrate on a wisp, a sliver, a chink, a scrap, a crumb, a morsel, a fragment or a shadow of life. They are more concerned with leaving out than putting in.

Lord Snowdon and Derek Hart had about 55 minutes in which to cram their tiny statement about old age. That meant a limited goal and a fierce problem of selection.

Essence

They decided to do a mood piece about the fear and frustrations of getting old. It was the essence of this state, not its reality, that they were trying to capture.

To complain that a great deal had been left out is to object to Modigliani painting only thin seamen when the world has many fat women in it — or to attack Graham Greene’s novels for concentrating on Catholic issues when Jews and Hindus also have religious problems.

But, judged by what it had set out to do, Don’t Count the Candles was a most successful documentary. Considering that it was Lord Snowdon’s first venture into TV filming, it was a most commendable achievement.

The close-ups were particularly telling: the wrinkled flesh; the knotted veins, the eyes being dabbed by an old man left in an old people’s home by his daughters; the desperate gaiety of the elderly trouper; the silent, resigned faces in a seaside hotel.

And if these images were necessarily bleak, they were counter balanced by Leopold Stokowski, at 80, conducting with all the fervour and intensity of a man in his prime — and Compton Mackenzie, even older still, planning to write another 25 novels.

I felt that there was probably too much emphasis on the attempts of the old beauty through health clinics, glandular extracts and dubious rejuvenators.

Promises

The middle-aged, too, are suckers for promises of eternal youth. And every current affairs or documentary programme — Panorama, Twenty-four hours, Whicker’s World, Man Alive – has a go at this very visual subject whenever ideas are scarce.

Because it was done by Lord Snowden, Don’t Count the Candles has had more critical analysis than such an exercise would normally have warranted. There have been much better documentaries that have received only a fraction of this attention.

But because he happens to be married to the Queen’s sister this should not prevent us from recognising the fact that if he was still Tony Armstrong-Jones he would probably now have earned a reputation as an exciting and imaginative film-maker.

The post Were the protests over Lord Snowden’s look at old age justified? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

A GLOSSY brochure has landed on my desk proudly announcing the BBC’s plans for sport coverage on TV during 1968. Just, as two years ago, the diadem in their sports programme was the World Cup, this year the Olympic Games in Grenoble and Mexico will be the crowning glory.

Among other compelling events to come perspiring into your living room will be the Test matches between Australia and England; Wimbledon tennis; the Open Championship for golf; Amateur Boxing Championships; motor racing; international athletics; National Swimming Championships; women’s hockey between Britain and Canada; the Royal International Horse Show; Horse of the Year Show.

This you will see in addition to the BBC’s regular programme on sport — Grandstand, Sportsview and Match of the Day — and such national events as the Derby, the Boat Race, the Grand National and the FA Cup Final.

And just in case you have not had your fill of sport’s personalities there is Quiz Ball on Mondays, which pits representatives of soccer teams against each other in what is euphemistically described as a “battle of wits.”

I am not surprised then that when the programme planners totalled up this bonanza of sports coverage they could gleefully reveal that over 1,000 hours of muscular competition would be seen on BBC-1 and BBC-2 during the coming Year.

Temptation

As someone who will watch any games on TV except all-in wrestling (I just cannot believe a moment of this clutch-and-grab drama) the temptation to be glued to the small screen afternoons and evenings during the spring and summer will be tremendous.

But, tempering my enthusiasm is a nudging doubt about my right to indulge myself in such pleasures in 1968. There is no doubt that I cannot watch TV during the day and work at the same time.

Should I be writing an article or a book that will earn the nation valuable dollars or should I be fretting about Mary Rand’s jumping or the chances of Laver winning Wimbledon?

In a year when productivity ranks with patriotism as a national virtue; when stenographers are treated like Stakhanovite heroes because they are working half an hour a day extra; when unions and management have been exhorted by Government and Press to put in extra effort and extra time at the bench and the desk, the BBC blithely proclaims its intention to devote almost 25 pc of its output to sport — a good deal of which will be shown in the afternoon as a counter-attraction to work!

Keen sports fan that I am, it seems a serious mistake in judgment to devote over 1,000 hours to sport in 1968 when the BBC’s total output will be little over 4,000 hours.

The thought seems fleetingly to have occurred to Peter Dimmock, chief of BBC Sport, who, in his brochure, asks the question: Is there too much sport on television?”

The answer, according to Mr. Dimmock, is an emphatic “No. Why? Live TV is the best shop window that any sport can have”, he explains, “and the audience figures demonstrate the demand.

“In these days of a wide choice in leisure, major sports need TV to remain ‘fashionable’ and keep people interested so that to-day’s viewer becomes to-morrow’s spectator or participant”.

In other words, the BBC has a duty to perpetuate sport for sport’s sake. Nothing about competing forms of entertainment that might also like to become “fashionable” such plays, discussions, documents, satire or pop.

Nothing about why sport should be awarded 25 pc of the BBC’s TV hours and the rest of the multitudinous activities of the British people should be crammed into the remaining 75 pc of screen time.

Nor nothing about whether the national interest is served by this concentration of sport aimed at encouraging us to become either players or watchers.

Passion

If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I might be asking myself whether there was any correlation between our stagnant rate of production and our growing passion for sport and its concomitant activity – gambling.

There can be no doubt that the televising of horse racing has increased the volume of betting on horses. Any day that racing is televised, the gross takings of bookmakers goes up substantially.

The recent ban on racing, due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic, coincided with an unprecedented spending spree in the shops before Christmas.

The orthodox explanation for this spree was the fact that buyers feared increased purchase taxes and were stocking up while goods were cheaper.

Another explanation was that something like £60m. [£890m in today’s money, allowing for inflation – Ed] which would normally have been turned over in racing during these few weeks, suddenly landed in the handbags of housewives whose husbands found themselves with an unaccustomed few pounds in their pockets.

No one suggests that horseracing should be banned. But a more logical approach to the nation’s needs would be to concentrate racing on two days of the week — preferably Saturdays and Sundays (when Sundays become freer) — and to see that TV does not unduly encourage the betting habit by too many televised meetings. This is also a reason for discouraging the Pay TV channel, which would undoubtedly extend its racing services if it were allowed to survive.

Impossible

How many working hours the BBC will cost the nation this summer by its televising of Wimbledon, the Test matches and the Olympic Games is impossible to assess. But it will certainly be considerable.

Is there not a case — this year, at least — for cutting down the BBC’s obsession with sport rather than intensifying it?

The post Sport – Has this now been made the new British vice? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

I AM a sports addict. Any game involving kicking, hurling, throwing, catching, bouncing, punching or hitting a ball is bound to rivet my attention.

The sight of horses leaping, running, trotting, bucking or hurdling will attract both my time and my money. Two men attempting to knock each other’s brains out in a ring fascinates me, the jockeying for position in a six- mile marathon absorbs me, the daring of ski-jumpers risking their limbs in wondrous leaps thrills me. Indeed. I cannot resist any
competitive contest involving the use of muscular, physical or mental skill. Only wrestling on TV bores me because I have long since ceased to believe in its authenticity.

But like all addicts I am beginning to worry about my passion. What started as a hobby has now be come compulsive; what should have been reserved for my leisure hours now occupies a good part of my working day.

Duels

Three weeks ago I settled down to write a long article about the theatre which would not only have earned me a respectable but sum would have brought in much needed foreign currency to this country.

But Wimbledon was being transmitted by the BBC all afternoon and a good deal of the evening and I found myself absorbed by such strategic duels as the Santana-Davidson match and the Bueno-Jones struggle.

Then came the five-day Test match. Again I had to switch on. This time my mornings were disrupted because those white-clad figures started out-manoeuvring each other at 11.30 in the morning and went on matching skill and wits until 6.30 in the evening. There was barely time to get a meal in, let alone write an article.

Wasted

And now we are in the throes of three solid weeks of World Cup which means that the odd evening I used to devote to writing has now been washed out for me.

The hours wasted in this compulsive gawking has naturally meant that my productivity over the past three weeks has been materially reduced, my article is not yet finished and both my personal finances and the country’s balance of payments has suffered.

I think there is formidable evidence that my mania or disease (whichever you prefer to call it) is spreading like a plague throughout the land.

Secretaries are leaving their typewriters to watch tennis. Executives and salesmen stop administering or selling to see how long the Graveney-Cowdrey stand will survive and night workers will not doubt be leaving their lathes and machines to discover what England is doing against France.

Now there is nothing startling about our preoccupation with sport.

But what was once an eccentric indulgence we could afford is in danger of becoming a maniac obsession which we can no longer afford.

The Government is constantly urging us to raise our productivity by about three per cent. What that means in man hours worked, I have no idea.

Crazy

But I would guess that the increase in man-hours wasted through watching sports in the past year or two has seriously affected the total productivity of this country.

And for this encouragement to watch rather than work, I think TV, particularly the BBC, is largely responsible. By making the country sports crazy, the BBC is certainly diminishing our productive potential.

Stimulated

Let us examine something like horse racing. There can be no doubt that the televising of horse races has not only increased interest in the sport but has stimulated a startling growth in gambling and bred a vast army of fresh punters.

There are something like 16,000 betting shops in Britain and during any afternoon each one of them has its quota of taxi drivers, manual workers, clerks, salesmen, etc., lingering on the premises betting and waiting for results.

I am sure that it could be said that something like two million man hours per day are lost because of horses and greyhounds.

As if this were not enough, the BBC commentators and publicists use every exhortation and trick in their vocabulary to get viewers to the goggle box during working hours.

When the BBC decided that they would start transmitting the second day of the last Test an hour earlier in the morning, the good news was announced repetitively with joyous enthusiasm and one commentator urged viewers to tell everyone in ‘factories and offices’ that they could now watch cricket earlier than anticipated.

Priorities

And now the decision by the BBC to fill the screen for three weeks with football.

Not only does it blandly alienate viewers who do not care about football and hand over on a plate to the other channel a once-loyal audience probably numbering millions, but it indicates a sense of priorities which is out of touch with the prevailing sense of urgency and crisis which the country has to face.

The argument that the BBC was morally bound to devote this time to football because an event like the World Cup takes place in this country only once in 40 years is both specious and naive.

There are far more important events that take place in this country – events meaning much more to our tradition, our image, our well-being, our purpose than football – that the BBC would never contemplate honouring in this unprecedented fashion.

The 440th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth – and event that can hardly be said to occur with regular frequency – was not celebrated by a week’s peak time viewing of his plays let alone three weeks.

A duty?

Would the preparations for the launching of a British rocket to the moon or the details of a British discovery of a cure for cancer or even a successful London conference on disarmament be considered worthy of two evenings’ peak-time viewing, let alone three weeks?

By enshrining football in such a unique pride of place in its schedules and thoughts, the BBC undoubtedly expects us to place sport, and the watching of it, among the most worthwhile and magnificent achievements of our people.

With such authoritative encouragement and such responsible sponsorship, who can blame the average man for assuming that watching games on TV has taken on something of the aspect of a pleasant national duty?

– Milton Shulman

The post The sporting life could be the death of us appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

THE GROWING reliance of all channels on old films to fill up their contractual hours is perhaps the most insidious element depres- sing programme standards and which will eventually lead to the deterioration of all TV.

Over Whitsun BBC-1 showed four old films while ITV in London were exhibiting three. During this week we were able to see five ancient films (all at peak time) on ITV and seven on BBC-1 and BBC-2 (all but one at peak time).

Something like 18 hours will be devoted to this chewed-over fodder of the cinema-most of it in peak time-and unless Lord Hill or Sir Hugh Greene calls a halt to this practice all TV. like Pay TV, will become merely another distribution outlet for the film industry.

As if this not enough, each channel now has a programme devoted to the glorification of old films and the plugging of
new ones.

Granada’s Cinema. with the saturnine Michael Scott in the chair. seems to have lost the wit and intellectual bite it had when Derek Granger was running the programme.

Although it still comes up with some amusing and freakish film clips, there is a lazy. desultory tone about the proceedings that is merely time-wasting rather than time-enhancing.

Typical was last week’s assessment of 50 years of 20th Century Fox. This turned out to be a series film snatches Shirley Temple, Carmen Miranda, Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe – without any effort to assess, diagnose or evaluate the overall contribution of the company to Hollywood or discuss the pressures or influences that had determined its output. A disappointing affair.

Self-plugging

But the BBC has started a much more blatant exercise in self-plugging and humiliating abasement to the cinema industry.

This is called Film Preview and compered by the fast-talking, vitamin-crammed Philip Jenkinson. Put out at 6.30 p.m. Fridays it is nothing more than a half-hour trailer for the coming films to be seen on BBC with some uninhibited plugs for a few films soon to go on current release.

I cannot think why this programme should consist of this unholy combination of wholesale puffs for films on TV and in the cinemas, unless it is some arrangement to keep the filmmakers happy about so many rival films in the home.

But the result is that Mr. Jenkinson – who can be very knowledgeable about films – has to gush enthusiastically about every film he discusses and fill his script with lines like: “It’s crammed with great songs and wonderful dances… it’s one of the best musical numbers for a long time… who else could put so much into a number?” in the worst huckstering tradition.

Eighth-rate

For its own self-respect, I think this is a programme that the BBC must either axe or change to a more objective formula.

Of course, some of these old films are well worth seeing again. And if it was only the best of the cinema product, no one would have any cause for complaint.

But most of them were eight-rate when they were first made and a patina of dust has not made them any more appetizing.

Most of these films are about 15 years old and when they made up an occasional item on the schedule. they could obviously have no influence on the taste of the viewers.

But I can see nothing but complacency and inertia emerging from this creeping cinematic takeover of the small screen.

The presence of old films discourages TV companies from making their own programmes – they are much cheaper than an original play or series – and shrinks the already limited opportunities for creative TV talent.

It is astonishing that a Government that exhorts everyone to produce more is disinterested and gormless about the stifling of TV and its foreign currency potential.

For there can he no doubt that it is Government policy that has contributed in some measure to the danger of TV becoming a poor second cousin of the cinema trade.

A hint

Starved of funds the BBC has to resort more and more to non-creative measures to keep up their schedule and must buy old films rather than produce programmes of its own.

The commercial companies, uncertain of their future, have no guarantee that large sums spent on original production will be rewarded since they have no idea if they will be in business in a year’s time and on what terms.

And the pummelling of the audience with these old-fashioned techniques and plots is sure to further reduce that area of intelligent receptivity in the viewer and create a public even less capable of enjoying anything fresh, different or mature.

I might, incidentally, add that if Equity is seriously concerned about work for its members they would do well to make representations about this increasing use of old films and stop look making themselves silly by insisting on monopoly over the reading of nursery tales.

– Milton Shulman

The post 18 hours of old films in one week’s viewing is much too much appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

‘I LIKE him a good deal more now than I did when we started!’ John Slater talking about Tom Stone, the character he has played in Z Cars. The programme reaches its two hundredth episode this week.

‘It takes you a good thirty or forty episodes to get really settled with a character, but after that the rest come very easily!’ Stone, John Slater thinks, is basically a kind-hearted man who has had to impose the nastier side of police-work almost reluctantly on his own character. ‘Of course, he’s changed over the years and having three different bosses has helped.’

Hudson (John Barry) was a great warm bull of a man so Stone had to be hard and sour. Then there was Todd (Joss Ackland) who was harder and sourer than Stone could ever be so the character started to warm a bit. Now, there’s Witty (John Woodvine), a dour man with a very dry sense of humour, and this has allowed Stone’s own cockney sense of humour to come out a bit. He sets up the gags for Witty’s telling dry smile. ‘Takes me back to my five years at the Whitehall as Brian Rix’s feed…’

For an actor who has always been renowned for his versatility, appearing in a popular long-running series like Z Cars could have been a risk. ‘Long runs don’t really worry me – at the start of my career I did lots of Ealing comedies, then went into the Shaw Festival, then up to Stratford-on-Avon to play Bottom and Iago, then to the Whitehall for five years, so I don’t think a few years in Z Cars will affect my career that much.’

He began his career when he was eight with appearances as mid-shipman and drummer boys in amateur productions of Gilbert and Sullivan. From the age of fourteen onwards he acted with left-wing theatre groups like The Workers’ Circle and the Unity Theatre. ‘Not that I was particularly politically committed – if the Young Conservatives had had as good a theatre group I would just as likely have joined that!’

Actors, he thinks, should not involve themselves in politics. He added, tongue in cheek, ‘Nor should they be expected to support their families, nor be given the vote, nor pay income tax. Everyone else makes a transition between the ages of about eleven and fourteen, from playing “make-believe” to being self-conscious and responsible. Actors never really grow up.’

John has one regret – that he doesn’t have the time any more to write and tell his own stories on television. ‘I keep promising myself that I will start writing again, but somehow I never quite get round to it.’

The post ‘Tom Stone is not the man he was’ appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork. A year ago they were unknown in Britain. But their BBC-1 show and three top discs changed all that. Now they have a bodyguard each. Two permanent hairdressers between them; and a staff of thirty-four. They are all dollar millionaires, and they only talk to the Press when they want to. Overleaf, Jack Lewis brings you up to date with The Monkees

‘We are booked for another year in America. We think we can keep going for another year after that’
Prophecy by Monkee Mike Nesmith. June 1967

If all the millions of words that have been written about The Monkees were strung together, there would be enough to encircle the Regents Park Zoo with a tight, verbal cocoon. Some people might like to see the pop group put inside there first.

It would be a harsh judgment. This is the age of the young and the young have seemingly grown very fond of this quite extraordinary amalgam that sprang to life a year ago in a quite extraordinary way.

The Monkees have been accused of aping the Beatles but the manner of their birth suggests they were created in the image of a Frankenstein monster.

Group manufacture

Inspired by the success the Beatles achieved in the Dick Lester film A Hard Day’s Night, two American television producers, Bob Rafelson and his cousin, Bert Schneider, decided to manufacture a group and cash in on the product. The raw material would be supplied by America’s own zany youth.

Into the show business newspaper Variety went the following advertisement:

MADNESS. Wanted, a quartet of hip, insane, folk-orientated rock ’n’ rollers, 17 to 21, with the courage to work.

More than 400 hip, insane, folk-orientated rock ’n’ rollers answered the call. Rafelson and Schneider put them through a series of daft tests. Stupid questions were fired at them and the replies noted.

Sometimes the interviewers remained silent for long periods; or juggled with golf balls; or, as when they had Dolenz before them, balanced a pile of bottles, glasses, and cups and watched his reaction.

It was a swift one. Micky took a paper cup, placed it at the top of the pile and said, grinning: ‘Checkmate!’

Potty behaviour and quick wits were not the only criteria. Health was another factor — poor health. Fit young men would be liable for call-up to serve in Vietnam.

Micky Dolenz earned points with his sharp, amusing reactions but his place in the group was clinched when they discovered that his back and eyesight were weak.

Tork reported that the U.S. Army authorities had classified him as 1Y because he had failed the mental tests. Nesmith had already done his military service. Jones, from Manchester, couldn’t be called up.

The four were duly chosen but now they had to be welded into a group—a musical group— although only two could read music professionally and none could sing well. It hardly mattered. They were bundled into a locked studio room with a door-sign which read: MONKEES — KEEP OUT.

A single entity emerges

A talented twenty-nine-year-old director, Jim Frawly, was put in charge of them. His job was to put the four-man robot together and tighten its nuts. He took three months to do it.

They had entered as four, rather bewildered youths. They emerged as a single entity, thinking alike, acting alike, utterly responsive to the show-business scientists who had created them in the likeness of The Beatles.

In this respect, the timing of their presentation to the pop public was lucky. The Beatles were already moving away from the crazy, practical-joke era.

Filling a gap

Yet the fans’ appetite for mad fun (it wasn’t new — The Marx Brothers and Olsen and Johnson had done it thirty years before, but it was new to the 1960s) had been whetted. Who could fill the gap? The answer was, of course, The Monkees.

Musically — and they themselves agree — they are far behind the Beatles. In fact, despite a few hits like ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ ‘I’m a Believer’ and their theme tune, all written, incidentally, by others, they can hardly claim more than a moderate success as a pop group.

Television, however, was another matter. If aurally they just secured a pass mark, visually they roared to distinction. The crazy capers they cut in their TV series earned them a stupendous popularity.

Frawly — the first backroom boffin of pop — had done his work faithfully. The electronics of its TV show had brought the robot to life with a vengeance. There were those who prophesied that the monster would soon blow itself up.

But, artificially sparked off though it was, the mad machine didn’t short-circuit simply because it didn’t short-change the public.

Signs of metal fatigue?

Yet, are there signs now of metal-fatigue? Will Nesmith’s forecast of a short, merry life prove correct? It is difficult to say. There are no apparent indications that the trend for berserk humour is on the wane.

There are plans for a Monkees full-length feature film. Movies could keep them in business for years.

But something quite fascinating is happening to the erstwhile-ersatz pop group. The Monkees are developing their own individual personalities! They are struggling to free themselves and to show themselves as real, flesh-and-blood people.

Lulu’s view

Lulu, who appeared with The Monkees on their tour here last summer, knows them well. ‘My conception of them was that, as a group, they might last only a few years,’ she told me. ‘But then, they said that about Elvis Presley and even the Beatles.

‘Then I grew to understand them. I found that each had a personality trying to burst through the artificial barriers. Each, in his way, had the potential of a star.

‘Micky is a top-class comedian. Davy may one day be the heart-throbbing romantic hero. Peter will always evoke sympathy while Mike is sure to emerge as the cool, untouchable type. And the Beatles really like them. They don’t care that they’re being imitated.

‘When George Harrison was told that the robot group wanted to meet them, he said: “Great—we dig them!” As George explained to me later, “You can’t knock success.”’

A recent article in Spotlight Weekly asked: ‘Is the Monkee craze finished?’ It pointed out that there had been a marked falling off in the attendance of the group’s show at the Forest Hills stadium, New York. It was only half-filled.

Maybe they had better make that film. Or perhaps a new hit record will give this most human of groups the fillip it needs. But over here, I can almost hear a million young fans shouting hoarsely: ‘We still love you, Monkees! ‘

P S from Hollywood

An up-to-the-minute report from our correspondent in America…

The Monkee success story goes on and on. World-wide fame has its attendant hazards. The home addresses of the four boys here in Hollywood is one of the city’s most closely guarded secrets. On their tours over here, the security arrangements are practically Presidential.

A hundred policemen at least are always on duty—a dozen of them in the Monkee hotel, where the whole floor the boys always book is searched and sealed off two hours before the group are due in.

They still get 70,000 letters a week from American fans alone.

The television series is now showing in thirty-nine countries — the most recent convert being Japan. The boys sent over a trailer with them speaking in Japanese! They’d learnt it phonetically from a local university professor.

Davy Jones has just bought himself a farm near the famous Malibu Beach where he hopes to train race horses—a throwback to his days as a jockey. At the moment, he plans to spend Christmas in Britain, and there’s a chance that Peter Tork will join him for a holiday before the group start their first full-length feature film in February.

The earliest opportunity of seeing the whole group in England will be in June, when they will be touring.

On the record scene, the boys are planning to produce their own records at more informal recording sessions in a full-scale studio, rigged up in Mickey Dolenz’s home. And there’s also discussion about changing the format for the TV show. ‘Situation comedy is very confining,’ says Peter. ‘We’d rather do TV specials or a variety series.’

Article source: the Radio Times published 26 October 1967.

The post The Monkees appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

Television plays had first appeared with television itself in the 1930s. At first they were stagey, hammy farces and drawing room comedies, designed to appeal to the middle classes that made up the audience for the new medium. When ITV started in 1955, not much had changed – plays for television were multi-camera, studio-bound and had small casts. In 1956, the new ITV company for the midlands and north on weekends, ABC, had started a strand it called Armchair Theatre. The plays were still small cast, studio-bound and usually adaptations of relatively conservative stage plays.

But the management at ABC spotted something: when they showed a play that was a bit more avant garde or intended to challenge the viewer’s opinions or lifestyle, viewing figures went up. Against the conventional wisdom, it seemed that people in the late 1950s liked having television that took them on full in the face.

Armchair Theatre was soon switched from being a family affair into being a contemporary discussion of modern life. New plays were commissioned and a vogue for “kitchen sink drama”, families falling apart or failing at what was expected of them, children breaking out of society’s straitjacket, women refusing to take the word of men as the word of law, gripped the nation.

The trend spread to other ITV companies – Granada and Rediffusion both putting out plays by new writers – and eventually to the BBC. With a popular clamour for one-off plays on television, these programmes weren’t confined to the off-hours or, from 1964, the new BBC-2. They were put in peak viewing time on the popular channels – ABC’s Armchair Theatre on Saturday evenings on ITV, The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today also at around 9pm on weekdays on BBC-1.

The plays started to push subject matter further as the 1960s progressed. Abortion (Up The Junction, BBC-1, 1965), sexual assault (A Night Out, ABC, 1960), sex (The Lover, Associated-Rediffusion, 1963), the casting couch (Afternoon of a Nymph, ABC, 1962), capital punishment (3 Clear Sundays, BBC-1, 1965) and “the colour problem” (Fable, BBC-1, 1965) all appeared to challenge the views of the viewers – often heralding real change in their attitudes and opinions.

Into this mix came Cathy Come Home. For its time, the structure of the play is very unusual. It is shot by Ken Loach more like a Panorama or World in Action feature than a play, blurring the lines between documentary and drama. While tightly written and not improvised, Carol White and Ray Brooks play their parts with a startling naivety, looking and sounding for all the world like real people in a real situation. Additionally, the play was shot on film and so covered a longer period of time than usual studio plays, and gained a realism that video (or, ironically, live performance) didn’t quite provide.

The 1960s were a time when television was seen as disposable. For most of its history, it hadn’t been possible to record television’s output. When it did become possible, the cost of the tapes were so high that reuse was the only way to keep within a budget. For film, and when the cost of tapes fell, storage was an issue. Why keep something that most people had seen when doing so cost money and the audience preferred a poorer new production to a brilliant one they had seen before?

Cathy Come Home, however, was kept. Not only kept, but repeated by the BBC several times. In the Radio Times clipping above, the play is getting its first run out since its début and warrants a mention on the magazine cover as well as most of an inside page – most unusual.

But then the effect of the play was unusual too. A fortnight after it first aired, and largely by coincidence, the homelessness charity Shelter was launched – a very successful launch with the play still burnt into the minds of its 12 million viewers. A year later, and entirely because of Cathy Come Home‘s effect, the charity Crisis launched, again with a mandate to fight homelessness. The problem of homelessness came very much to the fore of British society’s conscience in the years after Cathy, with the launch of a further housing charity, Centrepoint, and the 1974 two-day takeover of the similarly named (and long empty) office building Centre Point in central London by the capital’s homeless.

The government of the day also reacted to Cathy, first with the ill-fated 1967 Housing Subsidies Act then the 1969 Housing Act – both heavily influenced by the play. At the same time, the policy of splitting families apart – wives from husbands, parents from children – when people became homeless was stopped: the play highlighted that this was more an act of punishment similar to the hated pre-welfare state workhouses than an attempt to help those without a home, and the public swung against such barbaric practices.

Much of the work done in the aftermath of Cathy Come Home was undone by the free market policies of the 1980s and by society forgetting the impact of the play and turning back to blaming the homeless for their plight. Homelessness for families and individuals is again a big problem in the United Kingdom and we face a housing shortage not seen since Cathy Come Home convinced a government that building more houses – quickly and for a low price – was something that a civilised society needed.

The post Cathy Come Home appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.