Presentation’s moment of normality

This article was prompted by the Machiavellian thought that by airing in Fusion something really misleading about the activities of the presentation section the so far unpenetrated mystique of our main effort may remain unpenetrated. I must admit that certain sections, notably vision mixers, sound balancers, telecine, VTR, links, MCR and certain production assistants, have a shrewd knowledge of our day-to-day operation, but beyond this club there is such a wide misunderstanding of the role of presentation’s duty team (programme officer, programme officer’s clerk and announcer) that by occasionally letting slip selected phrases like ‘…network considerations … Post Office switch … clock-hour entitlement … electronic cue-dot … George or clean feed …’ we can scare away without much difficulty those people who fondly imagine that the programme officer only has problems at times of breakdown or national crisis. To protect our interests we try to ensure that such people remain in a permanent state of healthy bewilderment about all that goes on in the presentation control room on the first floor at Television House – in fact, to have gone so far as to reveal its location is almost a breach of professional ethics.

It is with this delicate and necessary feeling for the irrelevant that I draw your attention to the photograph reproduced here. It shows Muriel Young and announcer Mel Oxley consorting with Charlie Squires’ mina bird, Will, and a Spanish girl called Magadelaina who is dressed like a Goya painting. The fact that they are all in Studio 10 (another of Presentation’s Secret Weapons) is accounted for by an exhibition of cage birds at Olympia and of Goya’s works at the Royal Academy.

But I had better explain.

For 125 consecutive Fridays ‘London Weekend’ has been transmitted after the early evening news bulletin. Its brief is to tell people what is happening (in the real world, not the telly world) in London over the weekend. The time-honoured ingredients are Laurie West’s weather forecast, a run-down of London’s main sports fixtures and, above all, an illustrated list of selected events ranging from Sheepdog Trials in Hyde Park to a route map of the Lord Mayor’s Show – whatever happens to be on.

It can, of course, be argued that one or two of our viewers might conceivably be unmoved by the prospect of an exhibition of cage birds – though Will is a good ambassador – but it is not London Weekend’s job to invent popular happenings only to describe such exhibitions or goings-on as seem to be of genuine interest in their own field, however unlikely or specialised. Unbelievably, it is only necessary to refer to a display of medieval rooks in Soho or to a collection of antique musical instruments in Holland Park, for someone to ring up, either asking for the address to be repeated or volunteering information about some more recondite subject – such as a rally of greenhouses at Catford.

The sifting of information and the impartial selection of items which seem worthy of a mention involves research in miniature; the explanation on-air requires scriptwriting in miniature; and the transmission, which combines film, slides and Studio 10, involves production in miniature. The transmission is carried out by the duty programme officer, to whom (apart from perhaps a deep breath and a raised eyebrow) it is just part of the evening’s work. The research and preparation is done by a production assistant attached to presentation, who becomes after a few weeks so knowledgeable about London affairs that she is like a walking encyclopaedia. Our current P.A., Helen Best, is always having adventures in the course of her inspection of subject-matter. She has permitted me to reveal that at a preview of rare pottery, including oriental vases worth thousands of pounds, she observed that the experts were inspecting the bottoms of the vases by holding them aloft. Not wishing to be outdone she lifted up what she thought was a particularly beautiful example of Nth dynasty pottery and gazed at it knowledgeably. A mink-clad lady near by eyed her rather oddly. A moment later poor Helen was engulfed in cocktail snacks. Unfortunately the crush was so great that she could only stand her ground with a wintry smile.

One obstacle in the path of accurate research is the unbounded enthusiasm of the PRO types at exhibitions, who provide a flood of information of varying relevance: ‘Two Irish Romany caravans have just managed to make the Camping and Outdoor Life Exhibition. One arrived at Paddington Goods Depot in good time for the show, but its wheels were with the caravan which took a devious route from County Cork to London. Irish Wagontrain Master Mr. Matt Murphy said…’ Sometimes there is a barren-looking weekend, when there really seems to be nothing to which we could send people with a clear conscience. To cover this contingency we have a number of old faithfuls like Kew Gardens, Dockland, the Tower and London Parks, which do yield, if squeezed, a surprising flow of interesting material. When there is a surfeit of events we concentrate on those which have just begun or are just about to finish, and in this way the weekly content remains fairly constant. Frequently it is the ‘dull’ weekend which on close inspection reveals odd little exhibitions of high calibre; on the other hand a reasonably interesting-sounding ‘Display of Boats’ may turn out to be a couple of shelves of dusty models, in which case we ban it loftily from our script.

We do not have any illusions about ‘London Weekend’. It is the kind of item, like the BBC’s ‘Points of View’, which inevitably gets handed to a presentation section because it is short and regular and complicated without being creative in the sense of a proper programme. Nevertheless, although it forms such a small part of the section’s work (a point which I might well be lynched for failing to labour) I have a soft spot for the assignment because for once we are indulging in something which at least approximates to other activities in the programme department. For the section which is obliged to be to some extent ‘apart’, 6.08 p.m. on Fridays is our Moment of Normality, when for a few minutes we find ourselves initiating a contribution to the station output. But who knows? By the time you read this some Master Finger may have tapped the kaleidoscope which governs the pattern of our programmes, and ‘London Weekend’ may have disappeared.

 

The last sentence was prophetic: after 131 editions ‘London Weekend’ was buried on April 3, 1964