Panic is clearly in the air. After only three months of operation the new look in commercial TV is being relentlessly driven back to the old look.

Harassed by newspaper reports, falling ratings, impatient advertising agencies, bewildered manufacturers, the independent companies have the frightened glazed look of a fox being surrounded by ravenous hounds.

Having assumed for so many years that they had the magic formula for popular appeal, that they alone could unerringly supply what the public wanted, they are now faced with the fact that Auntie BBC has acquired a mini-skirt and a come-on leer, and can dish out friviality, [sic] vulgarity and triviality as expertly as their show biz rivals.

Catastrophic situation

The statistics for October viewing make very depressing reading for executives on Channel 9. According to JICTAR, which has replaced TAM as the source of TV ratings, the BBC acquired 53% of the total audience last month against the ITV’s 47%.

The BBC’s own statistics, which have always marginally differed from those of TAM and JICTAR, claim that in October the BBC had 60% of the viewers against ITV’s 40%.

Accompanying this decline has been the words of woe tumbling out of the mouth of advertising agency executive – “A catastrophic situation,” said one. “The present state of things cannot continue beyond two or three months,” said another.

If these signs of discontent are designed to get the programme companies to change their schedules, put out different programmes, revise the quality of their product, then one must ask in which direction they want the companies to go and ought they to have the power to force the companies to comply.

Already it is quite clear that no one has interpreted the dissatisfaction of the advertisers as a call for better quality programmes, more serious drama, more committed or involved or responsible programmes

Such news as has been forthcoming about the company reactions to their falling ratings indicates that a return to worse, less demanding, more familiar and more orthodox entertainment programmes is now being planned for the New Year.

Classic examples

We are promised a return of variety along the lines of the Palladium Show. Back in the London area Thames TV will bring back Crossroads and Peyton Place – both classic examples of what TV can do worst.

Crossroads, the epitome of serial drivel and a perfect example of chewing-gum for the eyes, is coming back, we are told, partly because of heavy viewer demand.

The actual number of letters received by Thames TV when Crossroads went off the air inquiring or requesting its return were 480 in August, 75 in September and only 34 in October.

Whatever these figures show, they hardly indicate that some millions of viewers should be condemned to this kind of TV junk for months, and perhaps years, because of the demands of a few hundred viewers.

Judging by the decline in letters received, it seems even these viewers have now settled down to the loss of one of their favourite shows without any undue repercussions on their emotional well-being.

More comedy

Even London Weekend, which was one of the few companies making slight genuflections towards the goal of more mature viewing, has assured us that more new comedy shows are on the way to cheer up their audiences and, presumably, their advertisers.

But when we speak of Channel 9 returning to more popular shows, we have to ask ourselves what are they really returning from? Why only popular shows!

The truth is that hardly anything much has changed, in terms of peak-time viewing, over the whole ITV network since the new companies have taken over.

The basic reliance on serials like Coronation Street, variety shows like Opportunity Knocks, comedy shows like George and the Dragon and hours of old films has barely been questioned.

Can anyone have watched London Weekend’s fare on Saturday and Sunday and truly say they were in anyway affronted by anything remotely highbrow or unpopular or adult during its peak-time hours?

Yet, in spite of all that is being done to provide more and more popular programmes, the BBC still seems to be clobbering ITV mercilessly in every region but Lancashire.

In the London area the BBC shows that have reached the top spots — seven out of 10 — have nearly all done so against opposition that was once considered impregnably popular.

Marked change

What, then could possibly have happened? If the ITV is producing much the same diet before against the BBC’s very similar menu, why has the taste of the public shown such a marked change in a matter of a few weeks?

Could it possibly have something to do with the manner in which the taste of viewers is measured? Is there any likelihood that some of the mystery may reside in the way in which ratings are now acquired compared to what had taken place previously?

The fact is that when the new companies came on the air so did a fresh audience measurement system. TAM, the previous company gave way to AGB and JICTAR.

Although the methods of gathering the ratings are much the same – electronic meters attached to a sample of sets which record the programmes switched on – the actual people having the sets have been changed. In other words, there are now in the London area 350 different homes equipped with these special sets: 350 other homes had them when TAM was in business.

Although the method of selection of these homes, designed to represent a cross-section of the London audience is the same, could it be that with such a small sample changes of three or four per cent in the sample taste could account for the statistical switch of hundreds of thousands of viewers?

Accurate reflection

Could it be that the fresh group of viewers now being asked for their preferences is a more accurate reflection of the nation’s taste than the old sample that had been used by TAM?

Is it possible that commercial TV never had the long lead over BBC that they had claimed over the past number of years, and that nothing has really changed with the advent of the new companies but a different standard of measurement?

And on such uncertain statistical evidence is it right that the standard of TV programmes should be pushed even lower than they now are?

The post The case of the vanishing viewer appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

CHAMPAGNE sparkling translucently. Cigar smoke mingling with a merry babble of conversation. Ripples of laughter.

Three key characters from Crossroads were relaxing over lunch—Noele Gordon, elegant and sophisticated; polished Brian Kent, and enchanting Jane Rossington.

The meal was over and I talked to them about Crossroads, a vital, ambitious series that looks like becoming as much a part of British television life as Coronation Street.

Crossroads … a highly organised routine by a 100-strong production team and a seven-day week for actors to transmit a daily serial.

Crossroads … set around the lives of two sisters, Meg Richardson, who runs a motel, and Kitty Jarvis, proprietress of a general store. And also the human, compelling stories of travellers who stop at Crossroads Motel, deep in the Midlands, where invariably their lives entangled with those of the main regular characters.

Noele Gordon, who plays Meg Richardson, widowed owner of the motel. After eight years and more than 2,000 shows for ITV, you’d think Noele would be blasé about any new series.

But she told me: “Life is dreadfully hectic again now, but I love it. I try to make Meg Richardson forthright and honest. But with a sense of humour. I try to imagine how I would feel if I were a visitor to the Crossroads motel. I know how I would like to be treated.”

In the series, Meg has been widowed for three years. Naturally, she leans on her lively daughter, Jill, who nurses ideas about heading for London to work on a magazine.

The rich aroma of black coffee wafted across the restaurant as 21-year-old Jane Rossington, the Sutton Coldfield girl who plays Jill, motel receptionist and secretary, told me: “You might say I am accustomed to working in a serial. I had a spell in Emergency—Ward 10.

“But it’s very different working in a five days a week programme. Hard work. Very hard. But it’s lovely to be working so near home.”

Beryl Johnstone, who plays Kitty Jarvis, Meg’s sister and proprietress of a local general store, joined us, requesting a light for a small cigar — she has given up smoking cigarettes.

“This is my television debut,” she told me. “And I’m so glad this series is set in the Midlands. I’ve lived and worked here for 25 years.”

“In fact, we’ve frequently worked together,” chipped in her television husband, Brian Kent. Now, as Dick Jarvis, he is an ex-public school man who cannot readily slot into a steady job. In the series he is in partnership with Victor Amos (Anthony Howard) in a car-hire business. Most of his endeavours end in failure; the hire business looks decidedly shaky.

Other regular members of the series drifted over to exchange views. Like Meg’s son. Sandy, played by 18-year-old Roger Tonge, one-time G.P.O. clerk. “Big break for me,” he said, seriously. “Lucky I don’t look much older than the 15-year-old character I’m playing.”

Anthony Morton, who plays Carlos, the motel chef, evidently had appreciated someone else’s cooking. In the series he’s happy-go-lucky, occasionally temperamental, and at times warring with Meg Richardson.

“But I don’t have time to be temperamental in real life,” he said. “In a hectic series like this, we all depend on teamwork.”

Peggy Aitchison, who plays Mrs. Violet Blundell, the daily help, engaged in deep conversation with Christine, the motel waitress. Both are experienced actresses. Peggy has been on the stage 13 years, both in rep and in television.

Alex Marshall, who plays Christine, is 26, from Smethwick, married with a six-year-old son and has also done rep, television and documentary work.

There, too, was the other regular member of the motel staff, Philip Winter, played by six-footer Malcolm Young. In the series, he’s rather the mystery man, a deserter from the Army who works as a sort of general help. He is another actor who has worked extensively in the Midlands.

I also met David Fennell, 20, who plays Brian Jarvis, son of Kitty and Dick Jarvis, who works in a drawing office. David worked as a fashion photographer and even tried his hand a bullfighting before turning to drama. He has worked in a film of the life of Shakespeare and in a teenage pop show.

He presented his “fiancee,” Janice Gifford, a helper in the general store, played by 21-year-old Carolyn Lyster, from Cheshire, and veteran Shakesperean actor George Skillan, the Jarvis lodger Owen Webb.

Harry Shiels, cheerful Birmingham-born actor who plays Harry Leggett, landlord of the nearby “Crown” and unofficial “father confessor” of the neighbourhood, grinned when he told me: “Well at least I’m not doing pantomime this year.

“I used to play opposite the late Vic Oliver in ‘Old King Cole.’ Did it eight times with him.” Main feature that former Navy man Harry likes about Crossroads is the opportunity to live at home.

One by one, the regulars of the series slipped out of the restaurant.

I collected my notes thinking that the signposts at the Crossroads pointed very definitely to success.

CROSSROADS IN VIEW

The Midlands. A place of spreading industrialisation, progress. Crossroads, ITV’s new daily serial, draws out the colour and dimension of this new world. And playing one of the leading parts is Noele Gordon. The programme, by its own day-to-day nature, is an immense challenge to any actor or actress. But Noele, who plays a widowed mother of a young family who also owns a motel, is used to long, strenuous, successful runs. Many will remember her in “Brigadoon,” which ran for over a thousand performances.

The post Make a date at the Crossroads appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

“THERE HAS always been a disparity between the critical attention paid to plays and feature programmes on the one hand, and series and serials on the other. Yet it is the series and the serials that are, for most people, the staple diet of television viewing.”

The quote comes from this year’s report of the Independent Television Authority. I presume this means that in the Authority’s view critics get more fussed about This Week or Armchair Theatre than about such long-running, immovable dinosaurs of the TV scene as Emergency – Ward 10 or Coronation Street.

Since inertia is the most prevalent occupational disease in TV, it could be that critics are also in danger of catching it.

Disgust

I suppose there is a limit to the amount of times you can go on expressing disgust, resentment, annoyance or irritation with programmes like Double Your Money or the Eamonn Andrews Show without being accused of conducting a personal vendetta against their producers, their stars or the company’s board of directors.

In other fields of art or entertainment, there are other sanctions backing up or rejecting critical opinion. The most powerful, of course, is financial.

But the BBC with its monopoly licence position and ITV with its monopoly advertising position are immune to almost any sort of pressure – with the possible exception of a discreet nod from someone on Cabinet level.

As long as they play safe, do not shock, subdue life to the lowest level of receptivity, they can thumb their noses at both critical and public opinion in the sure knowledge that their annual income will not be affected.

Worst

A programme like Crossroads, for instance, if it were made into a film would empty the most undiscriminating flea pits in the land. If it were put on the stage, it would be about as popular as Epilogues at the Atheists’ Convention.

Yet there it is, spread across the nation, not once a week like The Power Game, or twice a week like Coronation Street, but no less than five times a week.

When I first wrote about Crossroads over a year ago, it was an afternoon programme. “In this environment,” I said, “life is shrunk to the dimensions of a dried pea being pushed into a small hole by a lazy snail. Nothing is generated; nothing is achieved; nothing is finished. The nation is reduced to the status of watchers at a construction site where the workers are on strike.”

The result of strictures like this – most of my colleagues have been even more abusive and derisive than this relatively kind assessment – has been that Crossroads has been promoted to an evening spot just on the edge of peaktime.

Thus, one of the worst programmes on the air now gets over two hours per week of screen time – more than twice as much as any other adult programme on British TV.

Masquerade

As a series, its most unique feature is the total forgetability of most of its characters. With the possible exception of Marilyn, the Cockney barmaid, they are ciphers masquerading as people and they fade out of one’s conscious and one’s memory with the credit titles.

The plots have the sameness of pub conversation and not since the age of four when I was confronted with a crisis about sugar on my semolina have I been asked to occupy my thoughts with such trivial and mundane issues.

The Flying Swan, a better series on the same theme, was quickly smothered by the BBC when presumably they realised what it was doing to their reputation.

The post The time has come to smother Crossroads appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

THE TELEVISION SERIAL – the nearest thing man has yet devised to talking opium is proliferating like an ugly weed across all channels.

Coronation Street. Crossroads. Weavers Green. The Newcomers. United. Emergency-Ward 10. Mrs. Thursday – together they add up to a massive indictment of the TV hierarchy whose collective intelligence can find nothing more imaginative with which to hook its millions of undiscriminating viewers.

It is bad enough that companies like ATV and Granada should confess to the sterility of their creative machine by clinging so desperately over the years to the formulas of Coronation Street and Emergency-Ward 10.

Tolerated

In no other country in the world is it possible to find audiences that have tolerated popular serials for so long or TV executives who have not felt ashamed that they have not been able to come up with something fresh and different after so years.

Even more worrying is the prospect that the pummelling the public have received by these long-running serials will lower their receptivity to any thing more demanding that plots and characters of an even lower standard will have to be devised in order to keep them happy.

There are signs that the present deplorable state of American TV is due to this fearful escalation in moronic taste. If a nation is brought up on a diet of pap it is not surprising that it never develops either the teeth or the stomach for something better or stronger.

Similarly, it seems, that in the serial field bad begets worse with Crossroads, Weavers Green, Mrs. Thursday and United! all aiming at targets lower than Coronation Street. The Newcomers is the only one with a slightly more ambitious standard.

It is clear that these increasing hours of drivel and gush can only have long-term deleterious effects on the creative abilities of all those writers, directors and actors who have to pump the stuff out.

But what is it doing to the nation? We are spending increasing millions on raising the educational standards of the young. And if education means anything it means, in addition to gaining knowledge, an opportunity to widen experience, to stretch imagination, to cultivate judgment, to sharpen sensitivity, to exercise observation and to stimulate energy.

Advantages

But these programmes are tugging the young in exactly the opposite direction. They shrink experience, limit imagination, blunt judgment, dull sensitivity, discourage observation and stagnate energy.

These serials are naturally favourites of TV executives because, from their standpoint, they have certain built-in advantages. Scripts, sets and actors are relatively cheaper than other forms of TV drama. And because of their innocuousness and puerility these programmes are seldom subject to the complaints of pressure groups.

But none of these factors matter if would really these programmes did not justify themselves by appearing regularly in the top echelons of TAM ratings.

How accurate, then, are the TAM ratings? For it is their guidance and inspiration that undoubtedly decide whether or not we will get more and more of the drip serials.

TAM, of course, merely contends that it is recording the sets switched on to a particular programme and not whether anyone is actually watching it or enjoying it.

Disquieting

But in America recent Senate investigations have produced some disquieting facts about this method of assessing public taste and it has been a great national joke that one adventurous public relations man, merely by finding out the names of a few of the watching panellists was able to manipulate his programmes to the top of the charts.

Some five years ago an independent investigation showed that TAM was as reliable a method of assessing the volume of viewers as had yet been devised. Since then TAM has increased the size of its viewing panels so that it claim it is even more accurate.

Yet any reasonable man must wonder about some of the statistics that TAM has recently been issuing. For example, there is decided clash of opinion between it and the BBC about who was watching which channel on election night.

At midnight the BBC claims there were three times as many viewers watching the BBC as were switched on to ITV. TAM claims that viewers watching both channels – about 3,000,000 homes – were almost equal. This is a staggering discrepancy.

Again we have the remarkable fact that the five-a-week Crossroads, easily the worst produced of the present serials, had four of its programmes in the Top Ten in one week in Border, all five in the Top Ten in Ulster and three in the Top Ten in the South West.

Yet not a single programme of Crossroads in that same week was listed amongst the Top Twenty in the National TAM ratings. Nor did it reach the Top Ten in most of the other large regions with the exception of the Midlands where two programmes made it. Now it may be that people of Ulster, Cumberland and Plymouth have lower taste standards than the rest of Britain and just prefer Crossroads most days of the week to anything else TV has to offer.

It may be, too, just a coincidence that three regions have the lowest number of people a their TAM viewing panel – 100 sets as compared to the large regions with 400 set – but surely it is a coincidence that needs some investigating.

Measurements

In America it is being suggested that TV audience measurements should be administered by a government agency. To avoid any such suggestion in this country, it is imperative that the public have absolute faith in the reliability of these figures.

Since the small screen is being flooded with more and more nonsense because it is claimed that it is what the public wants, but isn’t it about time we hear positively that is the public wants.

Five years is a long time in the changing world of public opinion measuring techniques. Isn’t time we had another independent investigation of both the BBC and TAM methods allegedly telling us what we want?

– Milton Shulman

The post The drivel and gush of the television serial appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

It takes a masterpiece of manipulation by her cheerful little Tunisian keeper to prevent Noele Gordon and I, dubious passengers both, from ending up in the lazily-lapping Mediterranean.

Honestly, there’s simply no holding Lotus since she became a star!

Talk about tantrums. Until now she has been perfectly happy with a dollop or two of cactus feed a day and a gallon of water a week. But the Crossroads team have moved in on her native island of Djerba, 197 square miles of date palms, olive trees, sun and scorching sands off the coast of Tunisia.

And Lotus has been discovered. She will be appearing on British television, as part of the background scenery as Meg Richardson, Carlos Rafael, Marilyn Gates, and Geoffrey Steele reconnoitre the possibility of setting up a new motel headquarters for Crossroads on the island.

Until now it’s been quite an event if Lotus has ended up on a holiday snapshot. Now she’s in the big time, and the other 250 camels on the island are very proud of her. So please excuse her star temperament…

The “Sheik” who nearly ended up among the waves is me, Lanning of Arabia, all dolled up in Arab gear.

Not my normal travelling gear; but when you join this free-wheeling Crossroads excursion into the exotic, their astonishing enthusiasm becomes contagious. You just can’t help getting with it.

Consider the activities of the four “regulars” from the daily adventures in Crossroads, which until that buried bomb brought disaster, was set in the not-nearly-so-exotic Midlands of England…

Noele Gordon (Meg Richardson) is developing a tan while you watch. This isn’t far off her own idea of paradise. She’s a fitness fanatic; and this is the place for the outdoor life. With only 50 yards of white sand between her chalet and the sea, she’s in swimming before breakfast every morning.

There are majestic Arab horses on the beach for her to ride. And, as an enthusiastic gardener at her impressive Ross-on-Wye home, she’s going into ecstasies about the abundant, purple bougainvillaea and roses which magically appear out of the sand.

Lew Luton (Geoffrey Steele) has gone sartorially overboard for Arab clothing. His personal wardrobe is straight out of swingingest Carnaby Street. But out here he isn’t seen without his loose-flowing djibba.

Tony Morton (Carlos Rafael) is all wrapped up in Tunisian food, which is only what you’d expect from the famous Crossroads chef. I didn’t know, but Tony is an accomplished cook.

In the series, he concocts most of the dishes and recipes himself. Refuses to take short cuts or use substitutes. If he’s got to make an omelette, he makes an omelette, not something that looks like one.

Here he spends most of his time in the kitchen, engaging in wild bouts of gesticulation and translation, trying to find out exactly what goes into brik, a local delight, which is an egg done in herbs, and wrapped in a huge potato crisp.

His comment: “So all the hens on the island are brik-layers!”

Sue Nichols (Marilyn Gates) is lapping up the sun (a mere 85 degrees today) in her coral pink bikini. She wears a flamboyant, Arab-looking beach coat, too.

But not purchased in Houmt Souk (market quarter) down the camel track. Oh no. She found it in a Birmingham boutique, where it was advertised as a way-out mini-skirt and has “sort of adapted it, luv”.

Sue has been posing Twiggy-like under the palms for local cameramen, giggling virtually non-stop, and wondering why some Rudolf Valentino-type hasn’t galloped up on a stallion and whisked her away into the desert…

In between all then fun, games and frolics, they’re working conscientiously on the first programme of Crossroads in Tunisia, starting on your screens this week.

Me? I’ve winged into the happy-go-lucky set-up from still-chilly London, not knowing quite what to expect. And certainly not anticipating making a true pal in Lotus the Crossroads camel, who has been following me around the beach (where she plies for hire) like a puppy, ever since the word got around that I could get her name in the paper.

Noele explains: “Camels don’t get much limelight here. After all, Dave, you can buy one for about 75 dinars (£50) [£890 in 2018 allowing for inflation]. They go on working for 20 years. They’re very common and there are only about 20 cars on the entire island.”

So a motel in Djerba, it would seem, is something of a misnomer. Crossroads “cam-tel”, perhaps, would be more appropriate? But who wants to split hairs, up here on a camel’s back? Enough to admit that Djerba is the ideal venue for any sort of caravanserai, ancient or modern.

What of the food? Well, Carlos is mightily impressed and that’s good enough for me.

He recommends the schakouka, which appears to be a vegetable chop suey; or fish-wise, poisson complet, grey-blue mullet or sea bream, dished up with peppers, tomatoes, eggs and various salads. All this… and local wine at about four bob a bottle. [20p in decimal; £3.50 in 2018 allowing for inflation]

By day, my Crossroads friends are filming — on the beach, among the sheltering palms, at a medieval fort, built by the Spaniards in 1284, and — a snorting nudge between the shoulders reminds me — with long, tall Lotus, who, for connoisseurs of camel behaviour, rises from her haunches back legs first, and lowers front legs first!

Downright awkward, both ways; both manoeuvres almost have you headlong over her wickerwork muzzle!

Crazy, busy, fascinating. Like Sue Nicholls says: “Crossroads has never been like this before!”

Tonight we have a rendezvous at the glamorous, white-domed Hotel Tanit, where an Italian group play Beatlesquc music until midnight, and where Sue and Lew have promised to teach me an extrovert new dance they’ve invented, aptly called “The Hump.”

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll slip out of my Tunisian gear, grab a shower, don a conventional suit, and prepare for the evening festivities.

The only problem is Lotus. She’s become rather attached to me. Won’t let me out of her sight. And you simply can’t take a camel to a dance, not even in Djerba. I’ll just have to shake her off, somehow.

Pssst! Wanna buy a camel?

The post Lanning OF ARABIA at Large… gets the hump at the Crossroads appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.