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.

[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.