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.

LOOKING back over the achievements of TV during 1965 is like studying a panoramic photograph of the moon. All is a wasteland except for occasional promising shadows which on closer examination turn out to be the Sea of Despond or the Valley of Blighted Talent.

With the exception of Winston Churchill’s funeral I cannot think of a single programme on Channel 9 during 1965 that has advanced or enlarged by an iota the art, the aims, the grasp or the potentialities of television.

In a year which might best be labelled and forgotten, as The Year That Never Was, it is clear that my annual awards will hardly be included in those annual reports which take such pride in listing the prizes won in remote and undistinguished festivals throughout the world.

BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR – This undoubtedly goes to ATV who, under the tireless chivvying of Lew Grade, has finally produced British TV films that have broken into the America TV networks.

From the series The Saint, Danger Man, and the Baron (yet to be seen), it is possible that Britain could earn something in the region of 10 million dollars in the next two years.

This, for the first time, opens up the golden American market to British TV producers and, for the first time, puts TV into the posture of a significant foreign currency earner.

RASPBERRY OF THE YEAR – This award – an Op Art version of the fruit that periodically emits derisory sounds of contempt – has been tidily won by Rediffusion – the London-based TV company.

Not only was it responsible for the three programmes that received the worst critical receptions of 1965 – Groucho, The New Stars and Garters and Riviera Police – but it has confessed to a sterility and rigidity of creative ideas by its apparent inability to think of anything fresh or novel with which to replace its mouldy programme relics – Double Your Money, Take Your Pick and No Hiding Place.

Rediffusion’s board – which has persistently refused to have anyone from the programme side as one of its directors – has finally admitted, by implication, that its thinking on this matter has been wrong.

Within the past few months it has invited five new men to the board – although only three of them have actually produced programmes and it will be interesting to see what difference this will make in Rediffusion’s performance.

I cannot say that the changes announced by their programme chief, Cyril Bennett, have caused any pulses to race in TV circles.

Best Programme of the Year – The coverage of Winston Churchill’s funeral by both the BBC and ITV. This showed what could be done by outside broadcasts when talent was united for one goal, and when when money was no object. This solemn and momentous occasion was enhanced by this great record of it.

Most Noble Gesture of the Year – ITV’s decision broadcast, entirety, the BBC’s obituary of Richard Dimbleby. This was a most fitting tribute to one of broadcasting’s great personalities. The fact that ITV recognised in this way the achievement of the man who symbolised, more than anyone else, their greatest rival, displayed an adult and becoming sense sense of judgment.

The post In a TV year That Never Was these were my worst programmes appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

WITHOUT current affairs programmes or documentaries, television would be hard put to it to justify any claim to being a serious medium of communication.

It is programmes like Panorama, This Week, World in Action and Gallery that provide the solid bulwark of respectability behind which television channels can cower while peppering us with Compacts, Coronation Streets, Beat the Clocks and Take Your Picks.

They achieve a remarkable standard of consistent, pungent, informed comment and their continued existence and well-being is as essential to TV as the Kremlin is to Communism.

But there are signs that longevity has brought its inevitable toll of orthodoxy, smugness and hardened thinking. This is particularly true of Panorama, where methods of presentation have remained as static and predictable as a pagan ritual.

There inevitably sits the Buddha-like figure of the Great God Dimbleby aura-ting (if the verb doesn’t exist it ought to) resplendent waves of common sense and reliability.

With the slight frown of a benevolent teacher asking a series of hypothetical questions to which he alone knows the answers, he takes us gently by the minds into the confusing maelstrom of such issues as Vietnam, the trade gap or the Congo.

On Monday, with a condescending smile, he showed us the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, defending his latest fiscal statement against the combined scepticism of a BBC reporter, a financial journalist, Edward Heath and ICI’s Paul Chambers.

Then he whisked us off to Rome and a short profile by John Morgan on the new British Cardinal, Dr. John Heenan. And finally Derek Hart summarised for us the argument for and against travelling to Spain during the present crisis over Gibraltar.

Everything was impeccably well-mannered and balanced. Mr. Callaghan answered questions from the reporters without being remotely drawn on anything concerning the Budget or anything he had not said in the House.

Mr. Heath and Mr. Chambers made their statements to which Mr. Callaghan listened with firmly closed lips since it appeared obvious that they had agreed not to talk to each other but at each other. The new Cardinal’s profile was friendly – almost obituary-like in tone with John Morgan failing to take up the one issue which non-Catholics might have been curious. The Cardinal said it was the Church’s view about contraception he was supporting and not his own. own. [sic] He was merely concerned with the truth.

He agreed, however, that he would find no difficulty at all in accepting the changed attitude to contraception if the Church decided a different line was valid.

If, then, to-day’s truth can become to-morrow’s lie, how is Cardinal Heenan so convinced that what he supports to-day is the real truth? John Morgan did not ask the question.

Derek Hart’s contribution on Gibraltar, with its efforts to brighten up to discussion with some long-ish sequences of flamenco dancers was, by journalistic terms, a very dated story that should have been scrapped since it had nothing really new to offer.

A typical Panorama week. A dehydrated discussion, a scrappy profile and a tired news story. The programme has been better but, of late, traditional reporting and respectability seems to be clogging its arteries.

This Week, under Jeremy Issacs, has streamlined its format by eliminating the resident compere and being more flexible in the time it gives to any one subject. Lately, indeed, it has tended to devote a whole half-hour to subjects that hardly warrant it.

With James Cameron in the chair, it managed to inject a note of urgency into an analysis of the recent financial dilemma facing the United Nations.

By stopping the story for pressing transatlantic telephone calls to Desmond Wilcox in New York one was given the feeling that Albania’s intransigence was about to smash the United Nations and that we were in an international crisis not far removed from Vietnam.

The programme’s chief weakness is using the same trite techniques – silhouetted, shadowed, masked figures – for probing into taboo sociological problems like homosexuality.

The sight of the crunched face of Magee or Wilcox displaying concern in film reverses (shots taken after the actual interviews) has now become one of the cliches of TV.

World in Action, once Granada’s challenge to This Week, has deteriorated recently in both the artificiality of its anger and the strident, hysterical note of its commentary.

It programme on bronchitis was marred by a sensational lingering on sputum and coughing sufferers as well as a faked-up procession of coffins that jarred, and to some extent nullified, the reality of the problem.

The programme last week on Vietnam was practically all old newsreel clips with a minimal amount of film shot specifically for the programme.

Its best item, seen before – was an evangelical sequence of President Johnson, before he became President, in an unbelievably home-spun and corny frame of mind.

But no one should be allowed to get away with a script that contains lines of such bathos as “This is a civil war… brother set against brother”, or: “This is a battle for the hearts and minds of Vietnam… (the Americans) failed to win friends and influence people.”

Alex Valentine, the producer, should immediately get himself a new scriptwriter or this series will drown itself in its own muck sweat.

All these programmes, exciting and provocative as they sometimes can be, are suffering from an inability to get out of a format rut.

There is no evidence of experimenting with fresh techniques of presentation nor any signs of new thinking about the way in which an old problem can be given a fresh impact.

They all tend, in addition, to see only the ponderous, significant and urgent side of life. It is a long time since any of them gave me a laugh.

Since they profess to be mirroring life surely they must sometimes be tempted to show us what life looks like in a distorting mirror and with its trousers down.

The post Just for a change why doesn’t Panorama etc get out of the rut? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

INERTIA is television’s most prevalent disease. Nothing is more likely to bring on a fit of the vapours amongst TV planners than the suggestion that a popular programme has outlived its effectiveness.

Programme paralysis is particularly virulent in commercial TV circles where it would probably need a couple of deaths or retirements in the board rooms before Coronation, Emergency Ward 10, Sunday Night at the Palladium, Double Your Money or No Hiding Place were finally tossed into their well-deserved limbos.

But the BBC, to, suffers from this reluctance to change or abandon a once-successful formula. In their case they tend to cling less to the popular shows than the programmes that give give the Corporation its image of solid, responsible, semi-intellectual respectability.

Speculation

There is much speculation these days about who will fill Stuart Hood’s vacant post as BBC’s Controller of TV Programmes. Proof of the need for some fresh mind in this job is the manner in which To-night [sic], the five-day topical magazine, has been allowed to deteriorate into a middle-class Tit-bits stuffed with incestuous techniques and in-jokes.

Although To-night has been on the air almost eight years, it reach the peak of its creative dynamism about four or five years ago. It then evolved its wry, oblique, irreverent approach to life.

It sought out with a purpose and some effectiveness some of the immoral and ludicrous aspects of British society. And in its imaginative use of film and the ranging quest of its cameras, it recognised the fact that TV is essentially a visual medium.

The quirky

But my recent viewing of To-night shows that irrelevance has been replaced by a falsetto indignation about insignificant and manufactured issues, that its spotlighting of British life is largely concentrated on the quirky and the silly and that its aim to stimulate and titillate the eye has been all but abandoned.

The unexpected was once To-night’s most endearing feature. Predictability is now its most irritating fault.

There seem to be at least three Alan Whickers on the programme and if you exchanged the beard and the Scot’s [sic] burr, who could tell whether it was Fyfe Philpot or Trevor Robertson speaking?

Metaphors

The hallmark of a To-night item is a man in a mackintosh, carrying a hand-mike, walking menacingly down an empty rural lane or across a row of suburban houses towards a camera close-up and in an apocalyptic voice saying something like (my words) “This ground on which I’m standing hides a dream… for some a dream of hope and riches… but for others it has already proved a will-of-the-wisp, a Freudian aberration, a frustrating nightmare.”

In one week such unrestrained, highly coloured metaphors have rolled over a disused lead mine, and abandoned town in Australia, a toy factory, a church in Spitalfield.

Only the picture of an Australian town vacated after the collapse of the uranium boom was worth showing. Fyfe Robertson’s attempt to find a serious social issue in an ecclesiastical decision to spend £70,000 [£1.5m today, allowing for inflation -Ed] on a beetle-infested architecturally-exciting church was contentiously forced. But perhaps it was peripherally acceptable.

There was no excuse at all for including Christopher Brasher’s two contributions from Wales. His playing about with drums was embarrassing and his enthusiasm about some disused lead and zinc mines was inexplicable and even misleading. “A few tax concessions,” he said in conclusion, “and we could be digging our own minerals and cutting our import bill.” And perhaps going bankrupt in the process?

Eccentrics

The programme, too, is plagued with eccentrics and odd inventions. Any foreigner watching it might well conclude that any attempt to drag such an odd-ball nation into the second half of the 20th century is doomed from the start.

There was the working-class home of a printer converted into a baroque, plaster-imitation of a miniature Victorian palace. There was Fyfe Robertson offering to sell us re-painted quarry locomotives for £100 [£2,500] each. There was the man who collected vintage Rolls-Royces, another chimney pots, and the fellow who was using chicken manure as a substitute for petrol.

There is, too, a ponderousness about the so-called funny items that is almost distressing. Magnus Magnusson trying to ridicule Italian politics, pretending to be lulled to sleep by an Oriental device or making up a new calendar were Teutonic and collegiate enough to have been the products of some “vitty shport” at Heidelburg University.

Dullness

It is not only prestige that the BBC is losing with this near-parody of a once-exciting programme. Its dullness and specialist appeal gives the commercial channel and opportunity to pick up its mass audiences for the night.

Double Your Money and Take Your Pick have for years made the Top Ten largely because they were pitted against To-night. Even such relatively serious programmes as All Our Yesterdays and Cinema can reach Top Ten status with To-night as its opposition.

With the BBC trying to justify a higher licence fee, this almost wilful chucking away of audiences seems either short-sighted or stupid.

What To-night desperately needs is a change of time-slot, approach and editor. Moved to 10-30 p.m., it would be more likely to pick up the kind of audiences to which it is appealing and a fresh zest and look would obviously come with its late-night atmosphere.

Obsession

It must stop living on its former glories and get rid of its obsession with the past and the eccentric. It should concentrate on the urgent, the vital and the genuine absurd. If it campaigns, it must make sure that the issue is really worth campaigning about and it must stop its present breathless, contentious, holier-than-thou approach to all God’s works and all God’s peoples.

It is obvious, on this record, that 29-year-old Derrick Amoore is hardly the Editor to take on such a renovation. Judged by To-night, he seems to be the oldest young man in the business.

The BBC might also stop to consider whether or not their current passion for youthful executives has not already gone too far.

The post Is this the root of the trouble with Tonight? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.