Someone at the ITA is finally showing some common sense, and a little courage, I would like to think it is Lord Aylestone.

Mrs. Wilson’s Diary, the political satire about life at 10 Downing Street, has been declared clean and acceptable for viewing. It is scheduled for January 4.

The controversy that kept it off the air last month, when it was due to go on, was always pretty much a storm in a hip flask

Should the public be allowed to see an actor portraying George Brown staggering around the stage waving a bottle and singing, “Give me the rum back, I’m making a come-back”?

The ITA felt that such a scene was “contrary to good taste or offensive to public feeling.” The fact that a character named Brown had been doing exactly the same thing for many months at the Criterion in London’s West End did not, in the authority’s view, make a tolerable.

Nor did they feel that their decision to eliminate these lines should be reversed by the mere fact that almost every paper in the country, in reporting the incident, had already printed the offending lyric that was presumably against ‘good taste.’

On this major issue, Lord Aylestone or somebody dug in his toes, and London Weekend TV decided to cancel the transmission.

It is an interesting sidelight of this silly squabble that one of the major causes of the elimination of the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor plays was the argument that TV, as demonstrated in the satire shows, had more freedom to comment on politics than the theatre.

Freedom

Now we have the reverse situation of a play that had already been seen by many thousands in London — and had been passed by the Lord Chamberlain – but could not be shown to a wider public on TV because someone at the ITA had greater sensibilities about political satire than even the Lord Chamberlain.

Second thoughts have however, won the day. Mr. Brown and the bottle have been eliminated. In its place the telly public will see instead “Mr. Brown” asking “Mr. Wilson”: “What happens if you’re run over by a bus?” which is followed up by “Mr Brown” singing the lines. If destiny calls me, can I refuse? Though bright lights appal me I’m still bloody big news.” Sung, I am assured, sans bottle.

By such a narrow margin is good taste maintained, the public saved from offensive feelings and the dignity of politicians preserved.

The larger question raised by this issue is the nature and extent of the freedom to be given to broadcasting authorities in their handling of politics and politicians.

Compared to the lethal barbs that were shot at Sir Alec Douglas Home [Prime Minister 1963-4 – Ed], Henry Brooke [Home Secretary 1962-4] and Anthony Eden [Prime Minister 1955-7] in the hey-day of the BBC’s satire phase, Mrs. Wilson’s Diary is comparatively amiable stuff.

Such, however, is the fear of politicians for the television medium that what they will countenance from cartoonists, newspapers, music-hall and theatre, they will do their damnedest to throttle on television

Yet a recently published book, Television in Politics, by Jay G. Blunder and Denis McQuail, would seem to indicate that TV is not merely the terrifying, formative monster — anarchically reshaping political attitudes – that politicians think it is.

Based upon a sample of 748 electors in the West Leeds and Pudsey constituencies during the election campaign of 1964, the authors conclude that TV only marginally influenced voters during this three-week period of intensive electioneering.

Smug

The book also revealed that the Liberal Party, given more TV time, did better because of this extra screen exposure; that party political broadcasts were useful in imparting knowledge about the issues; and that there was not sufficient hard evidence to determine just how much leaders like Home or Wilson helped or hindered their parties by their TV appearance.

While accepting the validity of these largely obvious findings, I feel that in its writing down of the significance of TV on politics the book may lead to some glib and smug conclusions.

I suspect that the reason this detailed survey has produced such undramatic results is because its area of investigation has been too narrow and too limited.

It was surely obvious that a short, three week campaign could have only marginal impact on attitudes already hardened before the campaign began.

The converted would look only for confirmation for their opinions; the unconverted — the much smaller segment of the electorate – would use TV, along with other sources, for making up their minds.

Conditioned

But what caused political altitudes to harden in the first place? What part did TV have between elections, in determining the polarisation of political opinions?

Only in two areas does this book touch upon this much more important issue. The electorate overwhelmingly rates TV as the most up-to-date, impartial and trustworthy medium in aiding it to weigh up political problems.

The survey also showed that voters have little faith in the integrity and honesty of politicians. No less than two fifth of the voters found politicians “usually” unreliable and misleading. Only 15 per cent. thought they were fairly reliable.

Since TV is to be trusted and politicians are not to be trusted, how much of the attitude is conditioned by the former?

It is the long-term impact of that is surely more important than the short-term. If a child is conditioned all his formative years to watch his leaders cavorting in a trivial and superficial environment, is it any wonder that he views the entire political spectrum with contempt?

Is not the five-year period between elections – as we watch it on TV – more significant in determining how people will vote, and their attitude to political leaders, than the short burst of three weeks’ frantic activity during an election campaign?

The post The significance of George (with or without bottle) and how you vote appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

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.

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.

WHEN Labour came to power in October, 1964, British TV faced a number of outstanding problems. Ever an optimist, I envisaged a TV millennium.

“The appointment of young and vigorous Anthony Wedgwood-Benn as the new Postmaster-General should presage some bold and exciting developments in British TV,” I wrote at the time.

Having outlined some of the issues I confidently expected Mr. Benn to tackle, I ended my article, addressed to him, with the following euphoric peroration: “The time has come for a positive lead from the Postmaster-General for more diversified, more significant and more adventurous TV. Will you give it?”

At the time, the future development and expansion of TV was harassed and beclouded by a host of unanswered questions. They hung over the medium like life in one of those TV commercials a minute before taking an aspirin.

Problem

The most pressing problems included the raising of the TV licence fee, the introduction of colour, the possibility of a fourth channel, the structure of commercial TV, the University of the Air, Pay TV.

Supplementary issues which might have been influenced by a dynamic and concerned Postmaster-General were the extension of broadcasting hours, a determination to prevent excessive profits being made out of a monopoly situation, an insistence that money made out of TV should be ploughed back into the medium, and the encouragement of the production of TV programmes for export.

Well, three and a half years have come and gone.

Wedgwood Benn has come and gone. Mr. Edward Short, his success as Postmaster-General, has come and gone. Mr. Roy Mason, the third Labour custodian of our TV destiny is now in charge.

What has been accomplished? After almost four years of Labour Government only two significant changes have taken place. We have colour and three new programme companies will soon be performing on Channel 9.

On the other hand, the litany of “no changes” sounds like a particularly depressing long moan. The BBC has not received an increased licence fee. There is no possibility of a fourth channel during the life of this Government.

There will be no University of the Air. Nothing has been done about pay TV except to allow an experiment to go ahead that had already been decided upon by the Tories.

There has been no increase in broadcasting hours. Nothing has been done to prevent exorbitant profits being made by those lucky enough to get commercial TV contracts. Nothing has been done to stimulate the production of TV programmes tor export. No steps have been taken to see that money made in TV stays in it.

With this desert of negative achievements to inspire him, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr. Roy Mason, our latest Postmaster-General, should early on indicate that he, too, intends to adopt the administrative philosophy that in broadcasting the less done the better.

Although he has only had the job tor a fortnight or so, his performance last week in answering questions in the Commons about broadcasting shows that the obscurantist mantle of his predecessors sits very naturally on his shoulders.

Abrupt

He was asked nine questions and to each one of them he managed to say no; he couldn’t promise; he couldn’t comment; or he didn’t intend to do anything.

Now if these questions had been asked for purely party provocative or petty purposes, one might have understood and forgiven Mr. Mason’s stonewalling demonstration.

But some of them seemed to me to raise important issues that deserved more than a dismissive reply.

He was asked by Mr. Hugh Jenkins if he would introduce legislation that could enable him to require the ITA to withdraw the licence of any programme company whose control was materially changed by acquisition or merger.

When Mr. Jenkins received an abrupt “no” to his question, he pressed on with a supplementary suggestion that since these contracts were in many cases licences to print money wasn’t it desirable that the nature of the company to which it was given should remain the same?

In other words, if Thames TV or London Weekend or Yorkshire TV received their contracts because of the nature of the men who were going to run it and back it, shouldn’t Parliament be concerned if another group of individuals bought themselves into controlling positions after the contracts had been allotted?

A perfectly reasonable question, you would think, demanding a considered reply. There is, for example, the case of EMI, which, when it was part of a consortium trying to get the Yorkshire contract was rejected, turning up again as a possible large shareholder in Thames TV because it has bought itself into ABC Pictures, which has a major stake in Thames TV.

If it was right for EMI to be turned down by Lord Hill in Yorkshire, is it right for EMI to be accepted by Lord Bowden in London? Surely a subject that should concern the Postmaster General?

But no. Mr. Mason shrugged off the question with the cryptic remark that Mr. Jenkins was concerned about “this developing into a monopoly situation” and thought it should be referred to the President of the Board of Trade.

The post Latest in the long line of No-men! appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.