An outsider looks at A-R … for a start, that fusion introduction makes me sound like Colin Wilson. So let’s state here and now that I’ve no intention of being horse-whipped. Still that Outsider tag is probably justified, since this article arose out of a lunch date I had with your editor. I was sounding off about A-R in the approved John Osborne AYM manner when he pulled me up.

‘Don’t waste it on an audience of one’, he said, ‘put it on paper and tell the whole company.’ Let’s get one point straight. When you’re an outsider looking in it always seems easy to do the other chap’s job. But let the theorizing end and the practical business begin and the snags queue up. We can all be Stanley Matthews until the ball’s at our feet.

My newspaper work brings me in touch regularly with four ITV companies – each of which is taking on a distinctive personality. To my mind A-R is the least easily identifiable of the Big Four.

Think of ATV and the picture is of show business, variety, gimmicks, professionalism, the big drum, visiting Americans and Val Parnell. Turn to Granada and you sec Sidney Bernstein ruling the roost and hatching out a lot of good ideas and programmes, with here and there a bad egg in the entertainment basket.

ABC conjures up fast-talking Howard Thomas, a mixture of good and indifferent shows, and a general air of slow but steady progress.

Which leaves A-R. How do you sum up the company? It gives no impression of onemanship. Who is the single individual who can be cornered and asked for a quick answer to the 64,000 dollar question? This is important to everybody writing about TV because when key questions are being asked we look for an answer today. Tomorrow or later on is useless. And by answer I don’t mean a diplomatically phrased ‘it could well be that…’ or ‘when the consideration arises A-R will take due notice’ piece of nonsense.

Of course there are times when A-R prefers to play it strong and silent. However, when facts are getting out and questions being asked then let us please have a quick and definite answer. That way A-R will get a better Press than by letting limited information and guesswork produce half a story.

TEAM SPIRIT?

Does the same team spirit and enthusiasm exist inside A-R that is found in your competitors?

This isn’t a matter of individual outlook. Some of the nicest people to be met in TV nestle under A-R’s wing. But collectively does the vitality and urgency which marked those invigorating early days of Channel Nine still exist?

Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that the spirit is there and kept for private consumption rather than the public gaze. I hope it is so.

For my money you’ve slowed down. Some of the fun seems to have gone from life – which is surprising to an outsider when TV is so obviously one of the most alive-o industries with thousands of lookers-on-and-in only too keen to break into it.

Ignoring the financial side of things A-R snatched the viewing plum when it landed the London Monday-to-Friday contract.

But what unique contribution has the Company made to the service? Whatever your answer, here is a further question – has that contribution been as important as you expected?

I’ve been disappointed. A-R as one of the pioneering companies had to pay the penalty for the many and expected mistakes. It seems you stockpiled too much and these ‘canned’ shows played too big a role in your programme schedules. If you’re loading schedules with film it doesn’t leave much space for the live products of your staff.

So the impression gained from the screen was that A-R was more interested in the ready made product than in do-it-yourself shows. This impression remains. I’d like to sec A-R come out with a lot more live shows devised and mounted by the staff.

They couldn’t all be winners but a fair proportion might ring the bell.

HOLBORN AT EIGHT?

It is in variety that I believe A-R needs a boost. Where is your Palladium show or ‘Chelsea At Eight’? Where are your Maria Callas’s or Bob Hope’s?

From time-to-time you get the celebrity names but usually it is left to ATV or Granada to scoop the pool.

Where’s your comedy rival to ‘The Army Game’? I’m not forgetting those Top Ten quizzes ‘Double Your Money’ and ‘Take Your Pick’. A-R screens them, yet can hardly claim credit for either.

I’d like to see better scripting in variety, better productions, less tclcrccording, more showmanship and, well – glitter.

You’ve had your successes with offbeat shows like ‘Fred’, ‘Son of Fred’, etc. – but they are no longer around. More’s the pity.

Drama has hit the heights. I remember Pete Murray in ‘The Last Enemy’ … some of the Ted Willis plays. Lately, the impact has seemed less strong.

I don’t put that forward as a necessarily correct view. However, it’s mine. I realize that A-R’s drama maintains a good standard and it’s not easy finding unusual stories popular with the mass.

In documentaries and features A-R has been seen at its best. Here you have had intelligent, first-class programmes which other companies must have envied and which assaulted the BBC where it thought itself unchallengeable.

You found an outstanding interviewer-reporter in Michael Ingrams, screened two talked about and enjoyed ‘Look Out’ and ‘Look In’ series and promptly forgot about him.

I’m not forgetting those major documentaries of Russia and America – both highly praised but using him once every six months or so seems a waste.

I’d also like to mention Caryl Doncaster, Dan Farson and Nick Barker. They’ve all added to A-R’s reputation.

Do you recall the documentary that the Company did on fan fever? I still remember it and I’d like to know why A-R hasn’t turned out many more like it.

Can I pay a well-earned tribute next to weatherman Laurie West? It’s not the easiest of jobs telling viewers why it was wet yesterday, was wet today and it’s going to be wet tomorrow.

I like Mr West’s friendly personality, his commonsense and understandable explanations about deep depressions and the like, and I’m sure the majority of viewers prefer his performance to that of the BBC’s weather team.

But let’s take a look at the programmes which follow him in a typical week this summer. On Mondays the London viewer gets two Granada shows and one from ATV.

A-R’s contribution? The ‘My Wife and I’ series, the American originated ‘Wagon Train’, ‘Murder Bag’ and ‘Undercurrent’ – I’m leaving out advertising magazines. That’s a reasonable bunch. Three live shows and one film.

Tuesdays it’s not so good a story. Two live shows from Granada and two more from ATV. A-R chips in with youth-club show ‘Who Knows?’, Bob Cummings and Late, very Late Extra.

Better on Wednesdays – two from Granada and three from A-R. A play, a quiz and musical variety.

Thursdays? Equally good. Two from Granada and the rest from A-R. These are ‘Cool for Cats’, ‘San Francisco Beat’, ‘This Week’, a ‘Jack Hylton Half-hour’ and ‘Palais Party’. Finally, Friday. Three from ATV, one from Granada, and ‘Gun Law’, ‘Turnabout’ and a Jack Hylton show out of the home stable.

Where is the highlight to the A-R week? Where are the shows that are adding something lasting to the development of TV?

Maybe I’m being too critical? A-R is pleasing millions of viewers with the existing schedules. I believe it could please many more and give fresh incentive to the staff by working on new shows and ideas.

However, until you strike your own path and present many more live programmes I don’t think A-R will increase its stature.

Jogging along in the middle of the road with a passable but not exceptional collection of shows makes for an easy life.

Personally, I’d like to see the resources of writers, designers, directors and the rest tapped much more frequently.

Does it matter that some ideas might fall by the wayside? Much more likely is that half-a-dozen shows will emerge which are worth staying home for.

Do I qualify for that horsewhipping?

The post They Say… James Green appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

If I thought that Good Taste in TV was a difficult subject to tackle, I can tell you I just didn’t know what I was talking about… this one is a real stinker! I’ve trudged the length and breadth of TV House, questioning the weak and the strong, burning up the wires between here and Wembley and have ended with a bulk of statements either too libellous to print or too technical to understand, but despite this, I managed to salvage a few serious opinions and at least one so unnerving, so night-marish, as to shake the knees of the most hardbitten TV Mogul. George Orwell’s Big Brother concept is about as lethal as Brer Rabbit, compared with our lot under the iron heel of mass TV. As one overwrought PA put it ‘There won’t be any Big Brother, just a world of people with pin heads and enormous eyes’.

Michael Ingrams has very definite ideas. He visualizes round-the-clock viewing, with the screen hanging on the wall like a picture; a vast number of channels, an automatically timed telerecording system in the home, so that any householder can go out for a whole day and still be able to play back any particular programme in his own good time, with library companies doing flourishing business in Teletapes. There will be worldwide TV links, and complete evenings or even days will be given over to integrated, planned-in-the-round programmes from one particular country (so you can watch out for a whole evening of Kabuki from Japan, or corn on the cob from just anywhere). He feels there might well be a strong cultural renaissance, because ‘coin in the slot’ viewing will enable small specializing managements to profitably give minority viewers the chance to see the non-pop type programmes, such as ballet, Greek tragedies and documentaries. Apparently we must expect sponsorship in TV, but through the back door – recorded programmes from the States will be beamed direct or via ‘pirate’ Continental masts and this inevitably will lead to a cry of unfair competition from the British counterparts, who will demand more say in the actual content of the programmes. Sports promoters please note, climb on the wagon now, give up this petty carping about TV affecting the Gate, or you are likely to find it very cold outside. For by 1984, opines Ingrams, all major sports will be run and owned by TV promoters, so that we shall have the A-R Rattlers playing in the World TV League against the Moscow State Moonrakers.

Next I visited the seat of Engineering to get Bill Cheevers’ more technical views. There was much that sailed over my head like one of Wordsworth’s clouds, but I’ll give you the gist of what I think he said. We shall certainly have colour 3-D TV, and multi-channels. We can expect a tremendous revolution in equipment, the miniature camera, weighing 4 to 5 lb. [1.8 to 2.3kg], which naturally allows for greater mobility. This increased mobility will allow us to get farther afield with our ‘Remotes’ teams, and open up unexplored vistas, a fixed centre for channelling programmes to viewers will probably be of relative unimportance. With the establishing of space stations, we should get excellent TV reception for nationwide hookups, and intimate looks at the moon may well be part of our daily viewing diet. We must expect a lot more automation and a great improvement in presentation. At the moment we are still too tied to the camera techniques of the film industry, a live show still looks as if it had been edited, by the film method of cutting from one camera to another, and the multi-camera method must be developed. Asked if everything would be pre-recorded, he gave me a very definite negative. The actuality programme must remain, because it holds more impact than the prerecorded, which often loses its bite by striving for perfection. Because of the speeding up in the tempo of life, he thinks an hour will then be the maximum length of a programme. Once again we have the picture frame screen and the ‘coin box’ viewing, and the quality of the programme content improving … the rest I must leave to your technical imaginations, … because this is where I have to opt out.

Another technical advance, culled from Wembley, that I vaguely understood was that programmes would be recorded on nylon thread, of course in 3-D colour, but this time projected onto a wide home screen … There will be interplanetary news and sports programmes, linked by Space stations…. Dave Vigo pointed out that with the advent of colour, the whole concept of set design, wardrobe and make-up would have to be revised, but that we would still have les girls … other comments made by those-who-shall-be-nameless varied from ‘Palais Party will still be with us, but Lou Preager will have a beard’ … to … ‘It will still break down just the same’ … and … ‘There will still be scheduled Amendments’ …!

I met Harry Hart in the Editor’s office, so he didn’t really stand a chance, with us both gazing at him earnestly, but he was game to the last and came up with one or two off-beat ideas. He naturally accepted 3-D colour, picture-frame screens and limitless channels, but he thought that instead of a ‘coin in the slot’ scheme, you would dial some central depot, and ask them to punch up on your screen your choice of programme, in fact, specialized viewing on each channel. Whereas light entertainment and drama would be pre-recorded and shown at some later date, reportage would be recorded as transmitted. Television will be used for traffic control, and Secretaries will have to hide their bosses under the desk, while saying they are out, because our phones will be equipped in glorious television. The art of reading and writing will virtually disappear, as the TV will be used as a visual dictaphone, so presumably we shall have to transmit our innermost thoughts to our nearest and dearest, visually; I feel it’s all going to be rather exhausting … imagine writing a visual love letter…. Apparently life will be so hectic, that all viewing will be done whilst travelling, or having a bath, there just wont be any other time for it … and get this … all advertising will be subliminal … so look out for the modern version of the pin and the wax image.

I asked Caryl Doncaster for her ideas on 1984 viewing. Newspapers in printed form will disappear, and will be replaced by a system whereby any viewer at any time can punch up the news, which will be recorded direct on to the individual screen. By then she hopes that the TV Acts will be modified to allow for a definite editorial line to be taken on everything that affects us. (I myself envisage that the Press Barons of today may well be superseded by the Visual Press Baron, and all Conservatives will automatically tune in to the Visual Times, and so through every political colour, to the Communists who will view the Daily Worker.) By the way, she thinks that cinemas will just become car parks!

The whole system of education is almost certain to be revolutionized and the standard will become exceptionally high; the best brains in the country and the world being channelled to schools on closed circuits, controlled by the Ministry of Education. The role of the present-day teacher will be reduced to that of a governess or nursemaid, present merely to keep order while the TV lesson is in progress. Sound radio will be a thing of the past, as extinct as the dodo.

And now I come to the last and most horrific suggestion of all; I may have caught Elkan Allan in an unconscious moment and I am still unable to decide whether to take him seriously or not, but he gave me these ideas with a completely dead-pan expression. He once read a Science-Fiction story by Ray Bradbury, in which everything was completely dominated by TV, there was an actual TV room, with all four walls a TV screen, so that they stood as if on the set, and the programme companies sent each viewer a script so they could take part in the programme themselves. Just think of all those hammy Hamlets and overblown Ophelias gesticulating in that nightmare room. As if this isn’t enough, Elkan added a few choice thoughts of his own. There will be no newspapers or books and each room will have a picture-frame TV to churn out the appropriate programme, so that in the kitchen there will always be a cooking demonstration in progress, done slowly enough for the mesmerized housewife to follow instructions while cooking the Sunday lunch. The nursery will have a perpetual game going on, and the bedroom a sleep-inducing theme … ye Gods, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ was never like this.

The post Television in 1984 appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

From Television Annual 1957, published by Odhams

The pundits sometimes forget this simple fact, that viewing is not compulsory, like school or clocking in at the factory. Viewing is voluntary and experience has shown that when the screen adopts a school-mastering demeanour the set is switched off, or over. I for one am against those programmes, which are based on the idea of the man behind the desk who looks at you in a benign sort of way (often at the wrong camera), and talks and talks about what he feels ought to interest you. A lot of this is done – not, I’m happy to say, by ITV; and there is one word for it: it is a bore.

When a treatment bores it does not teach. When a treatment entertains it does teach automatically, because the mind is in the best possible condition for receiving ideas. The political parties have arrived at this obvious conclusion very quickly. Today the political messages in their party broadcasts have not changed, but their presentation has. They aim to please, on the principle that the wrapper sells the goods.

In television, the cult of personality is a very important factor in the twin objects of entertainment and instruction. The man, for instance, who likes classical music will listen to it in any case. But if the conductor is as vivid a personality as Sir John Barbirolli and the presentation of the orchestra is entertaining, the chances are that converts will be made – slowly but surely. They begin by looking for the wrong reasons (just as a child begins to write by following lines) and end by listening and viewing for the right ones.

What I like about the ITV approach is that the stress is on entertainment first. In This Week, for instance, we aim to give even the most serious item “presentation” value – the way it is filmed, the sound effects, the music, the bite in the questions – and we consider all this just as carefully as actual content.

The same is true of the series called Look in on London, which is about the people who give us a service: dustmen and firemen, charladies and fluffers. There is nothing so entertaining as the so-called ordinary man showing us the ins and outs of his so-called ordinary job. I learned a great deal, by accident – by proxy if you like – from the little film on dustmen, without the aid of a single chart, blackboard or professor. The kind of work and approach represented by the professorial attitude had been done before this film got to the screen: research, script, “presentation” – that was the order.

What so often goes wrong is that the first phase in the venture, research, looks as if it is being done on the screen. It’s like the man who goes up on to a platform to make a speech and holds in his hands and works from the first rough draft of his notes. He might just as well sit down because we all know he is going to be a bore.

I know I am laying myself open to all kinds of charges in the future, but I’m prepared to say that this is not the ITV approach. All our programmes that are about events of the week or about people with problems are designed to entertain. For instance, there’s the new series called People Are Talking, which is about the kind of problems that affect us all – income tax, gambling, drinking, sex – and all done without any schoolroom equipment. But the facts and the points of view are there just the same.

We take the not very revolutionary view that the approach to the man on the other side of the cathode-ray tube must alter according to the time of day. In the morning, when you read your newspaper, the mind is fresh; it can take a barrage of dry facts, which it will absorb. At night, however, the situation is entirely different. We’re all a bit tired – and yet the world keeps on turning; news and views still keep pouring in. But if they are presented “straight” the tired mind sets up a resistance.

The answer, if we aim to put over a point of view, lies in one word: presentation; and we would like to think that we are getting close to the secret of it. Can ITV educate? Answer: it already does.

The post Can ITV educate? appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The last time I saw President Diem in Saigon he took me aside and said – ‘What programme is this one?’ And when I said ‘This Week’ he considered the words rather carefully and came back: ‘You are lucky to be thinking of this week.’

A few weeks later he was dead. I talked with the priest in Cholon, who saw him go through the process of ‘accidental suicide’; Diem and his brother-in-law, Nhu. The two had worked their way from their palace to the Chinese quarter and the little Roman Catholic church there. I had the impression, from what I was told, that Diem knew that he had come to the end of his particular road.

Diem was dead. The street was empty. People took care not to be around. They were watching but they were not going to get involved. A Vietnamese friend of mine said: ‘You may not have thought much of him. Now wait and see what happens.’ And we have waited, and we have seen. That was my last assignment with ‘This Week’. The producer who asked me to go back to Saigon is now with the BBC; so is the reporter. There may be a moral in this somewhere, but I doubt it. There is a wonderful line from Don Ameche in Silk Stockings.

‘What is your theory?’ asks the Russian girl.

‘My theory is that there is no theory!’

This renders the approach to the world we live in empirical and I suppose that this is a fair assessment of the way we used to and indeed had to organise ourselves when ‘This Week’ started, in 1955.

There were no rules; only ‘Panorama’.

The assignment given us by the then controller, Roland Gillette, was to produce a lively half-hour (minus commercials) for January ’56. There were to be many items, some political, some social, some lighthearted. It was agreed that we would try to end with a short ‘sting’, a one minute semi-sardonic commentary on our ways of life.

Just after the kick-off we had a major accident. Our man in Paris phoned me (in what is now the canteen) to say that he had found a night-club in Paris, already made famous by Time magazine, in which French waiters were dressed as cowboys.

Later, Caryl Doncaster, then producer of all features and I viewed the ‘rushes’ in ITN. These consisted of some 40 minutes of synchronised and beautifully lit extracts from the club’s cabaret. There were girls undoing zips everywhere. It was riveting stuff and I was later to be amazed by the number of people who felt that the film had to be seen. That item was a hard night’s day.

A jolly time was had by some when we took the programme to Paris for our first Eurovision link. Stephen MacCormack, now in Mauritius, was location producer. The programme was sent out from the Palais de Chaillots, into which Stephen cheerfully imported some Bluebell girls. That caused a tableaux with the diplomats. We also learned, on the day of transmission, that the French had views about the use of commercials. This, in turn, had repercussions in our own network. As a result I as editor, was instructed to provide two separate programmes for simultaneous transmission. This turned out to be a record, if not necessarily an achievement.

There can be a lot of fun in a programme if you have to learn as you go along. When we started the staff couldn’t be assembled according to experience in television because there were limits. Some of us came from the BBC, some from films, some from Fleet Street. We had to shake down as best we could.

One transmission day Mrs Alfred Hinds sent us (through Geoffrey Hughes) a taperecording of her husband’s voice. He was currently on the run from gaol. There were no rules. We didn’t know whether we should use it or not. There were risks. Scotland Yard was interested. I consulted the one man who could give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It was ‘yes’ and we were plastered all over the front-pages next morning. That was the first time I met John McMillan. The rules evolved. One particularly exasperating one was the 14-day rule governing comment on things to be dealt with in the Commons. We ran into a blow-torch over this during the Suez affair. Two particularly prominent politicians had to be told that they could not discuss what they had come to discuss. One left. The other one stopped and temporised. He is, at the time of writing, Chancellor of the Exchequer. There have been embarrassing moments with politicians. One such, who has since been a prime minister (and demanded cash as soon as the programme was over) was invited to cross our red carpet into the studio, via, as was intended, one of the five star offices in Television House. I posted ‘sentries’ at both entrances. At one I eventually met the august gentleman. At another my sentry welcomed a coloured gentleman, took him upstairs to the five star area, handed him over. This was, in fact, an Egyptian journalist, destined for another item in the programme. That took some sorting.

The Prime Minister of Australia came in to see the interview we had filmed between President Nasser and Frank Owen. It was a good interview. When it was over we had the impression that the Prime Minister was about to say something fundamental – like ‘thank you’. At that point a voice in the dark said – ‘You can’t trust these politicians can you?’ When the lights went up I noticed that Mr Menzies looked amused.

I went to Athens with Elkan Allan, to interview Archbishop Makarios. Staying in the same hotel were Elizabeth Taylor and the late Mike Todd. It seemed a good idea to try something with him. We were invited to the Todd suite and bedroom in particular, where we found Miss Taylor less than dressed. Her husband was pacing the room using the dialogue from Lady C. ‘Liz,’ he said, ‘here are two English Lady C’s.’

‘Yeh!’

‘How do you do, Mrs Todd.’

‘Hih!’

Says Todd – ‘Sit down on that Lady C bed over there.’

Later that day I was on the roof of the hotel with his beautitude.

Todd comes out on the roof and says, in his not less than megaphonic voice – ‘Who is the Lady C with the hat!’

Such situations are delicate.

All this might suggest that we acted more frivolously than now seems evident. That is not so. Our brief was different. ‘This Week’ has not grown up to be 10 years old: it has grown to be different from what it was. All my ex-companions on the programme can probably top the trivial stories I have told, and they would all have to stop short of some of the truths we could all tell. I refer to Michael Ingrams, Dan Farson, Ludovic Kennedy, Richard Gould Adams, Michael Westmore, Tom Hopkinson, William Hardcastle, Jeremy Thorpe, Rollo Gamble, Cyril Bennett, Elkan Allan, Kenneth Harris, Al Capp, and so on and on. In more than 500 issues there is a lot of heat, some dust, occasionally a lot of fun.

A lot of people cut their wisdom teeth on ‘This Week’, and some got them knocked out. The programme has come a long way from the days when Spike Milligan sang ‘I’m Walking Backwards For Christmas’ and Peter Sellers did time as Professor Smith Grant Hetherington, having seen, heard and secured hairs from the Abominable Snowman. We even once tied ‘This Week’ to ‘Late Extra’, which has its own story. I wrote and spoke the commentary for the yearly report on Noisivelet and a few people spotted how we had found the country.

Serious things happened. We have, after all, been living in the latitude of great events. I think that most were faithfully recorded. So long as you don’t take yourself too seriously you stand a good chance of staying short of a rest-cure.

I remember in the studio, Dr Verwoerd and Sir Roy Welensky, Khrishna Menon and Yehudi Menuhin, Harold Macmillan and Dr Banda, Father Huddleston and so many others.

One event I remember with personal pleasure, since this is only my version of ‘things wot used t’be’ as editor and producer and executive producer and head of features, and all that. I was sent, to my utter delight, to Monte Carlo, to interview the glittery Tina Onassis. The now Duchess will excuse me if I refer to her as a ‘dish’. However, we talked of Grace Kelly and life as lived by those who want for nothing. In my pocket I had a letter from my mother saying that my father was very ill in Canada and needed comfort. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t afford the air fare to go out and was floundering for an answer when I saw someone at Nice airport whom I thought could help. This particular VIP was first on our plane and, incidentally, occupied the little room to the discomfiture of the other passengers for a very long time.

During the flight home I wrote him a note and asked if he would consider sending my father a word of encouragement, since they knew one another well. A day later I received this letter to send on –

‘My dear Commander Hunt,

I am indeed sorry to hear from your son of your illness. I hope you will accept my earnest good wishes for your recovery. I remember well the good work that you did in the War Room.

Yours sincerely,
Winston Churchill.’

I am grateful to ‘This Week’ for that opportunity. And it helped.

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