SINCE this year began I have written 20 weekly pieces on television. Looking through them the other day to answer a reader’s letter I was surprised to find how much they concentrated on BBC programmes and how little on those seen on commercial TV.

In 1968 I have only written three columns which concerned themselves primarily with ITV programmes. Two of them dealt with the ethics of certain discussion techniques on The Frost Programme and The Eamonn Andrews Show.

Contracts

The other was an attack on the Government and the ITA for the arbitrary method by which they made certain people rich through their handouts of commercial TV contracts.

The BBC, on the other hand, has been pushed through the critical sieve with a vengeance. I have vigorously questioned its obsession with sports; its current policy of attracting viewers by plumping for peak-time mediocrity; its curious view that no more jokes about Mr. Harold Wilson should be permitted on light entertainment programmes.

The individual BBC programmes I have discussed have included At The Eleventh Hour, Dr. Barnard Faces His Critics, Talkback, Man Alive, Till Death Us Do Part, the Val Doonican and Rolf Harris shows, the Smothers Brothers, Don’t Count The Candles, Dee Time and a Spoonful of Sugar.

Now the only thing that these programmes have in common is that none of them has been consistently on TV for over three years. Even Man Alive, which is the oldest, has recently undergone a face-lift which changed much of its style and approach.

By comparison programmes on Channel 9 tend to cling to schedules like desperate limpets. It now requires on my part a fierce effort of will to switch over from the BBC to the independent network.

Circus

The general impression of the commercial channel is that of a grey, unenterprising circus where the ringmaster announces the same old acts – year after year — because there are always enough customers to fill up the tent.

Searching for a fresh idea, for a programme that hasn’t been grinding on for six years or longer, for something that isn’t an almost exact replica of a hackneyed formula, is a task that has long ago exhausted my patience.

Although the ITA has never divulged its reasons for demoting Rediffusion as a programme contractor, one of the factors that they must have considered was the tenacious manner in which they stuck to programmes like Double Your Money, Take Your Pick and No Hiding Place for something like 12 to 13 years.

Now that Thames TV has decided that it will not be taking Double Your Money after July of this year, Mr. Hughie Green has said that he is shocked that a minority of people should be able to take off a programme which is so popular with the majority.

One would think that after having had the longest run in TV — a run that has seen him mature from youth to middle-age with his grinning bon-homie as glacially intact as ever— Mr. Green would have bowed out gracefully with a few grateful words about the powers of tolerance and resignation of the British public.

Instead, Mr. Green is now arguing that, since some 6,000,000 homes still tune into his programme, that it is almost anti-social for a “minority” to take him off.

Who this “minority” might be and how they managed to get their views to Thames TV, is not explained by Mr. Green. Since decisions of this kind are usually taken by minorities of one, two or three men who control programmes in the various companies, does Mr. Green think there ought to be a “majority” of 6,000,001 executives before anyone dare drop Double Your Money?

Justified?

Ot course. Mr. Green will claim that the mere size of his audience justifies its continued existence. That is evidence of “what the public wants” — and who dare defy the will of statistics?

But if the public is offered no choice, how do we really know what it wants? If Double Your Money continues to occupy a prime slot for 13 years, how do we know that there is not a better panel or quit game in somebody’s imagination that would not be more popular than Double Your Money?

If the BBC had not taken off some very popular comedy shows, how would we ever have known that Steptoe and Son or Till Death Us Do Part would be more popular?

And has Mr. Green ever considered that stultifying effect that programmes like his, with their unchanged routines year after year, has on the creative talent that has to put them out?

And has he ever thought of what these long-running programmes do to audiences? It cocoons them in a world of routine where their ability to make an individual choice is eventually atrophied.

Conditioning minds to be unselective, undemanding and unadventurous is hardly the purpose of TV. Yet that is what its end result would be if programmes were never changed, never altered just because they were preferred by millions too lazy or mentally unequipped to do anything but enjoy what they enjoyed before.

Eamonn

Now every commercial company has had its share of programmes that have on too long for anybody’s eventual good. ATV had Emergency Ward 10. ABC looks like turning the Eamonn Andrews Show into another runner in the eternity stakes.

But the company that has displayed the most resistance to change on the commercial network is, surprisingly enough, Granada.

I say “surprisingly” because Granada has always had a reputation as an aggressive, social-conscious, vigorous programme company. It is a reputation that needs some drastic re-justifying.

Granada’s main contributions to the network include Coronation Street (over seven years old). What the Papers Say (12 years old). All Our Yesterdays (seven-and-a-half years old). University Challenge (six years old). Cinema (tour years old) and World In Action (five years old).

Individually, there is nothing much wrong with any of these programmes. They all tackle their particular subjects with reasonable professionalism and skill.

But to have any company content with a schedule in which over 80 pc of its main programmes are between four and 12 years old indicates a smugness or apathy which is somewhat disturbing.

The dynamic Sidney Bernstein who will, unbelievable as it may seem, be 70 next January, may be preparing the end of some of these hoary programmes when the new contracts are taken up in August [Actually the end of July – Ed].

Whether Mr. Bernstein will be leading his company into the new TV era remains to be seen since, according to the new 1TA regulations, all company directors must retire at the age of 70, unless there are exceptional circumstances to justify their staying.

A positive demonstration of his continuing youth and vigour would be the drastic pruning of some of the ageing programme vines that are now choking his TV schedules.

The post The dreariness of the long-distance runners 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.

This week my ITV programmes are coming from Rediffusion, ATV Midlands and Granada.

4th June
Custer ‘Under Fire’
Rediffusion

It’s quite something to get through life without realising that the man’s name was not General Custard, but I was most grateful that I found out before I ever had to say it out loud. This follows Custer and his men just after the American Civil War. We left most of the Western series behind a while ago but while this is similar and has the stereotypical Indians as the bad guys, it’s military theme does make it stand out from other series.

Custer is to be lured to an Indian called Crazy Horse in exchange for land with gold on it. There is also a large gun that Crazy Horse wants destroyed so that his men won’t be mown down when they attack. A couple of Custer’s men are kidnapped and it all builds to a huge climax of everyone fighting it out. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this compared to some of the other Westerns and may well go back for more.

5th June
Mission: Impossible ‘Fakeout’
Rediffusion

The titles for this show are fantastic. That theme tune is great and a fuse is burning down across the screen, always almost running out before we cut to another clip. It perfectly suits the show.

Our team consists of two men and a woman and their mission this week is to get a drug dealer out of his current country and into one that the US has an extradition treaty with. Lloyd Bridges plays Poltroni and I really enjoyed him as this up-himself, nasty man. If you didn’t know he was the villain of the piece already, you would want him to be.

Dan, Cinnamon and Barney work well as a team, with each having their task to take care of, though it’s clear that Dan is the leader of the group. They use that trusty foil that had fooled our hero in The Baron; the fake diversion signs. They eventually manage to get Poltroni over the border entirely voluntarily before he is immediately arrested.

No – That’s Me Over Here!
Rediffusion

This is the only episode from the first two series of No – That’s Me Over Here! that still exists so I feel rather lucky that it’s fallen during the week of my visit to 1968. The Two Ronnies was some of the first comedy I discovered through UK Gold so I feel I know this programme’s lead, Ronnie Corbett, rather well. I’ve never been particularly enamoured with his later sitcom, Sorry! (did Corbett have a thing for sitcom titles ending in exclamation marks?!), but I actually quite liked his NTMOH! character.

There’s a ‘don’t mention the war’ feel about this episode as Ronnie has invited his boss, Mr Robinson, over, hoping to win some work brownie points, only to discover his wife has also invited her German teacher. Ronnie tells Mr Robinson that Jurgen is Austrian and spends the evening trying to steer the topic away from Germany.

The ingrained culture of smoking is demonstrated when Mr Robinson offers round his cigarettes and despite the fact that Mrs Corbett doesn’t smoke, Mr Robinson and Jurgen don’t hesitate to light up. Ronnie can’t make up his mind whether or not he does want one.

“What a terrible habit this is!” remarks Mr Robinson. “Yes,” Mrs Corbett politely agrees. “I was going to give it up at one stage but I’ve been smoking solidly ever since ’19.” And that’s that. Mr Robinson has been a committed smoker for nearly fifty years so he may as well keep at it. The Royal College of Physicians released their Smoking and Health report in 1962, showing the link between smoking and lung cancer, as well as other diseases. Despite this, Mr Robinson was typical as changes were slow and in the late 1960s over 50% of men and 40% of women smoked. I love old cigarette adverts and though by 1968 they had been banned from television, TVTimes still features several in print each week. Smoking is such a regular thing at this time and I’ve become very used to seeing it. If programmes ever leave it out, it tends to feel conspicuous by its absence.

Ronnie Corbett’s character is also called Ronnie Corbett. Characters having the same name as the actors is a trait that seems to persist in sitcoms. Tony Hancock springs to mind, Fred and Thora from Meet the Wife back in 1964, Hugh and Terry in Hugh and I/Hugh and I Spy, and Sid in Bless this House. More modern shows are not exempt with Lee in Not Going Out and Miranda in, er, Miranda. I find it a little strange and I wonder if performers who considered themselves actors first, rather than comedians, became more reluctant to use their own names for characters.

While I enjoyed NTMOH!, there aren’t many big laughs. I certainly wouldn’t call it a lost gem but it is nice to see some pre-1970s’ Ronnie Corbett in a substantial role.

6th June
Pogles’ Wood
BBC One

It’s time for another visit to Watch with Mother. I had been wondering for some time what a Pogle was so was delighted to discover they are in fact little people that live in the woods and live off the land. Mr Pogle does not give the best first impression, dragging his wife out of bed, demanding his breakfast. He brings home a bean that grows a magic plant that can make bean plants appear. It all began to feel a tad surreal when the plant started playing the violin while Mr and Mrs Pogle danced around the garden. I enjoyed this little story a lot and quite fancy going back for some more. As the credits rolled, I clocked the name of Oliver Postgate, who would go on to create The Clangers and Bagpuss.

Midlands News
ATV Midlands

David Ennals is being interviewed about immigration issues. At the time, Ennals was Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department and on a tour of various areas. While his constituency was Dover, he had been born and brought up in the West Midlands. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act had been passed in March, after many in Britain had panicked about immigration levels when lots of Kenyan Asians began fleeing persecution. At one point, all Commonwealth subjects had the right to come to Britain. Ennals talks reasonably about integration and his comments on equal opportunities make him sound very modern.

7th June
Nice Time
Granada

This should be the very first episode of Nice Time but the missing episode gods have not been kind this week so instead I’m watching one from later in the year. The feature in TVTimes had intrigued me, billing the show as a mixture of all sorts of random bits, which is exactly what it turned out to be.

Each section is very short so my attention was always satisfied. Among the things featured was a saw orchestra, Richard Burton’s brother, a woman playing a tune on bicycle spokes, an interview with a window cleaner about the saucy things he’d encountered, spot the real vicar, and a dodgem car race featuring Stirling Moss.

Members of the public were asked what they saw in a naked woman/man. The blokes were fairly open about what they saw, with some giving very specific descriptions and one answering simply, “Everything.” Some of the women were more coy, turning away from the interviewer, blushing. Others had no hesitation in answering, “Sex” or “His John Willy!”. The TVTimes tells us that Nice Time ‘sets out simply to entertain’ and, greatly helped by host Kenny Everett, who I wasn’t all that familiar with, I think it achieves that perfectly.

8th June
Dee Time
BBC One

Only two complete editions of Dee Time exist so I’m watching one from a little later in the year. I immensely enjoyed this chat show hosted by Simon Dee (real name Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd). It was very laid back and cool. It was such a sharp contrast to the Henry Moore interview I watched back in 1960.

I’ve been listening to the Top 20 for the weeks of my time travelling and have been surprised by just how much of it I have not enjoyed. Apart from a handful of artists, a lot of it all sounds the same to me. Yet by 1967 things seem to have turned a corner and in 1968 there is more stuff to my taste appearing. From this edition I thought The Equals (currently at no. 20 with Baby Come Back) were brilliant. It suits the youthful style of the show that they sound more modern. We’ve lost much of that sound from earlier years – as far as I’m concerned it’s time for Adam Faith and Cliff to move over so we can say hello to the likes of The Equals and The Rolling Stones.

Neither of the guests’ names were familiar to me but the face of Lionel Jeffries was. He was there to promote his latest film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He talked about the success of other musical films of recent years like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, hoping Chitty could also do well. It all seemed slightly sad with the knowledge that the heyday of musicals at the box office were numbered. Yet I loved Chitty as a kid so enjoyed hearing Lionel’s experience of filming it. His children were in the studio and I was amazed when I looked him up that though he plays a grandfather in Chitty, he was only 42 at the time.

The show’s coolness continues into the end credits as Simon Dee exits the studios and drives off in an open top E-Type Jaguar, a young lady sat beside him.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ‘The Hong Kong Shilling Affair’
BBC One

Most of the episodes of U.N.C.L.E. that I’ve seen have been from this first season so I’ve no problem with us remaining stuck in black and white – the rest of the population still is too. This is the second time this episode has been shown and, bizarrely, it’s scheduled for another repeat next month as well.

Napoleon and Illya are after a rare shilling, as are this week’s baddies. Among them is Richard Kiel, best known for playing Jaws, the man with steel teeth, in two 1970s’ James Bond films. As he would then, he’s playing a henchman, doing the dirty work for the episode’s main villain, Cleveland. Keil’s huge height (over seven foot) dwarfs everyone around him and his imposing physique was deemed sufficient enough menace that he has no conversations in either of the Bond films he appears in. As a result, I was delighted to get to hear him actually speak in this episode and my enjoyment never ceased throughout it. Being portrayed as not just big but powerful too, I winced when, having trapped him in a net, Kiel’s character, Merry, picks up Napoleon and thwacks him against a wall.

Unable to get hold of the shilling, Cleveland decides to auction off a trussed up Napoleon Solo on the basis that, “Each and every one of us in this room is sufficiently skilled, I venture to suggest, in the arts that are necessary to make him talk freely. So, I offer you one body ready for interrogation. Shall we begin the bidding at one hundred thousand dollars?” I thought that was a neat idea and it also tells us just what a bunch of scoundrels all these finely dressed people really are. Cleveland is a villain who’s been to charm school and sometimes I think I prefer these well-turned out baddies. Real rapscallions don’t all look like complete rogues after all.

What you could have won – missing and unavailable

Here are some of the listings that intrigued me but I was unable to watch this week.

MISSING The Best of Twice a Fortnight Show – This comedy compilation of the Twice a Fortnight Show has credits including Graeme Green, Bill Oddie, Eric Idle and Barry Cryer.

UNKNOWN Professional Wrestling – You can find two lots of wrestling on this week – the first on Saturday as part of World of Sport and the second late on Wednesday night. As a kid I watched the odd bit of WWF/WWE but I have never seen British wrestling. I know it was immensely popular on television at this time so am curious to see some.

UNAVAILABLE Hunter ‘The Kauffmann File’ – John Hunter was apparently Australia’s answer to James Bond. In the last two years we’ve seen The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, I Spy, and the revived Danger Man who were all arguably ushered in as part of the 1960s’ spy bandwagon. The titles depict drinking, action and women, saying of John Hunter, ‘He is part commando, part detective, part spy.’ I’ve not seen much Australian television and while this programme seems more low budget than others, I would still love to see this take on the spy genre.

The post Back in time for TV: 4-8 June 1968 appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.