This article by general manager JOHN McMILLAN outlines the organisation of the programme department – how it has been shaped in its present form and why. It was written for The E.B.U. Review and is published here as one of an occasional series of articles dealing with the company’s organisation.

Someone in our business – perhaps it was myself – once said: ‘Vanity is the biggest item in this particular programme budget and it has no code number of its own.’ We were examining the projected costs of a documentary film which was to be produced by someone who had created a mystique around himself in the outside world. Those who were closer to the person concerned knew that a good deal of the credit belonged to a scriptwriter and a film editor who customarily worked with him.

Vanity kept on popping up in the budget. ‘First class air fares to Rome from London … Unit to be met by special representative of XYZ Travel Agency at Rome Airport … One chauffeur-driven limousine for producer and assistant … two chauffeur-driven cars for rest of unit … both to be available at all times throughout Rome location.’ And so on and so on. The particular producer is not with us now. The film editor was promoted and the writer would write no more. But, more importantly, the producer priced himself out of our business and it was cheaper just to pay his salary until his contract ended than to make him work for it.

I had that episode partly in mind when I wrote the article for Fusion 32 (October, 1963). Specifically, I said:

‘Waste – waste of time, waste of physical resources and waste of money – is the enemy of success. Waste can frustrate the best creative resolutions. In the system of graded delegation of responsibility, which is the company’s method of organisation, every person has some particular power to protect our production ability. The simple test of the value of a decision is to ask the question: “Will the result be seen or heard on the TV set and, if so, will the viewer benefit?” … In a few words, everything we have to spare and spend must be directed towards the viewer.’

It is necessary first to describe the present organisation of the programme department in Rediffusion Television and to refer to personnel in the accounts and publicity departments.

The programme department comprises two-thirds of the total staff, including all the electronic engineers, and is presided over by the controller of programmes. He is chairman of the programme board which consists of a chief programme executive, five executive producers and three service chiefs whose titles describe their specific responsibilities. They are the programme planning executive, the programme production executive and the senior technical executive.

The programme board resists enlargement. There are no representatives of any other departments in attendance for the simple reason that their presence would obscure the points of responsibility. The controller of programmes and his executive producers particularly, are thus clearly responsible – inter alia – for budgets, for initiating publicity, for screen promotion. To assist them to carry out these duties each executive producer has a cost assistant attached to his office from the accounts department and a publicity officer from the publicity department allocated to him. Both these people are finally responsible to their own departmental heads in order to ensure that company policy is constantly maintained. In practice there are seldom any clashes and, at the same time, the lines of communication are advantageously shortened by the system.

In addition, each executive producer has one or more assistants and managers, according to the volume of production in his group, to whom he delegates routine planning and administration.

Each manager is also responsible to the programme budget officer who in turn reports directly to the chief programme executive. This arrangement enables the controller to keep in constant touch with the flow of expenditure at early planning stages. He also receives from the chief accountant weekly and three-monthly projections of future costs and reports of actual costs which are derived from the cost assistants attached to each executive producer.

All this combined information gives him considerable flexibility of control. He can immediately reinforce one programme or replace a series or take remedial action of any kind in the full knowledge of his financial position.

The programme planning executive is mainly responsible for transmission schedules. Because the independent television system in the United Kingdom is composed of 14 autonomous companies operating a co-operative network, his responsibilities are extremely complicated. He is also in charge of transmission presentation and is traditionally the main link with the BBC and the EBU on operational matters.

The programme production executive is in charge of all studio personnel, excluding stage hands, house electricians and administrative personnel. His immediate staff operates the schedules office, that is to say, the office which plans the disposal of the studio staff and location production personnel. The system used is comparable to one which is just finding its way into industry in general, particularly in building construction, and is curiously called ‘network analysis’.

The programme production executive also has two other interesting responsibilities. He is in charge of the allocation of all programme directors who are centralised in a pool in order to ensure that they do not become victims of specialisation. This poses special problems at frequent intervals and requires delicate handling of what can only be described as negotiations. His other interesting responsibility is that of an executive producer for one series at all times. (In effect, we thus have six executive producers.) The purpose of this arrangement is to ensure that the person responsible for the running of the studios is constantly in practical touch with the forces and problems of creative evolution and remains sympathetic to the demands of television life at its most critical point. The senior technical executive is, as his title implies, responsible to the controller of programmes, for all technical staff and operations. This is an unusual arrangement in an organisation as large as Rediffusion Television. In many much smaller companies the chief engineer is independent. But we so believe in our method that even if we were to increase our size and output by 10 or 20 times we woulld not have it otherwise. As a director of the programme board, the senior technical executive is also a member of the creative force and is expected to play an equal part in discussions and decisions on all subjects. In that way we ensure that we get the most out of our equipment without demanding too much from it and that the programme people run the machines rather than being run by them.

The chief programme executive is the controller of programmes’ right-hand man and deputy. Consequently, the controller is relieved of much day-to-day management and is free to concentrate on the refinement of programme content and to maintain a wide range of contacts in the outside world. It will now be obvious to readers of this article that the central point of production efficiency is at the programme board. The chairman has the latest financial information at his disposal and it provides the essential background for all decisions in a business which must be bold and adventurous to maintain its pre-eminence in the world of communicating information, education and entertainment.

The programme board also knows what studio, outside broadcast and film facilities will be available because one of its directors is the expert and the board can safely decide whether to do this or that without fear of disappointment. The same applies to transmission scheduling on network, or locally, and to technical operations, including fine points such as the relative advantages of telerecording or videotape conversions of programmes being imported from a specific station or network in any other part of the world. The programme board meets weekly. Responsibility is established. Authority is vested in a particular member. From that moment onwards the executive machinery takes over in the different offices concerned. If an urgent improvement is conceived or an emergency arises between meetings it is referred by the authorised programme board member to the chief programme executive or to the controller of programmes according to the extent of its importance.

In general, we manage by our method of control to maintain a strict sense of intention which communicates itself throughout the production force. Because deviations from purpose are unlikely and unwelcome, the rest of the staff, including the programme directors, are not often presented with wasteful temptations and when they occur they detonate alarm signals very quickly.

Finally, it is of the utmost importance that the controller of programmes must be left to control within the broad framework of company policy set by the board of directors of Rediffusion Television which meets every two weeks. Between those meetings he has many other opportunities to consult, in case of doubt, with the managing director who takes the chair at weekly management meetings and, at all times, with the general manager.

However, he is undoubtedly the company’s chief programme man and he is given freedom to do what he thinks is right and the responsibility to do the right things. Thus, he is solely in charge of the general programme budget and can use it as he thinks fit. He is responsible for his own organisation and if (within his budget) he wishes to change it he may do so after consulting the general management. However, the production system cannot be assumed to be 100 per cent efficient. It is unlikely that it ever will be. But it is equally likely that it will be improved by the injection of new blood from an old respected and experienced source. It so happens that Stuart Hood has now become controller of programmes and he will, without doubt, take us much further towards the point when everything we have to spare and spend is directed towards the viewer.

Pictures by Dick Dawson.

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THAT was a decade that was. That was a decade that was…

Oh, put the emphasis where you like. The fact remains that all of us who were there on the night when Rediffusion and ITV first flickered on to the screen are now 10 – no, 11 – years older.

I’ve changed. How about you?

Rediffusion has certainly altered. For a start it is no longer ‘Associated’.

Incidentally, dear editor, it would be interesting to find out just how many people at present on the pay-roll were with the company on Night One (still known to some as the night they invented champagne).

The answer is 252 – Editor.

From my own memory book I recall Sally Sutherland, Red Lyle, Dennis Atherton, Richard Hawkins, and the late Hugh Finlay – all part of the Press Office over the years.

Where the nostalgia really hit me was at the ITA’s white-tie Guildhall banquet when 10 glorious years and all that were celebrated.

It might have been the wine and brandy but sitting there under the stony stare of Gog and Magog I suddenly realised that 10 years (and part of a hair line) had vanished since I was in almost the same seat for ITV’s curtain-up.

The instant reaction was to check for ‘old familiar faces’ along the tables around me. Of 40 or so TV ‘professionals’ within range only four, perhaps five, had been there back in ’55.

Now I know how Greybeard felt. If my memory is right was Lord Hill, now ITA chairman, at that September 22, 1955, dinner as Postmaster-General?

And at that time didn’t ABC TV consist of just Howard Thomas and a secretary?

Before quitting that particular celebration I wonder if the champagne would have flowed so freely had it been known that within one year Rediffusion would be over £3 million down?

By the way, hasn’t that been perhaps the most important change of all – turning those colossal losses of the early years into a profit?

As a privileged spectator seeing much of the game from close quarters it seems to me that Rediffusion’s development has been in three stages.

The first, naturally, was that somewhat daffy unreal period when the newly recruited army worked excitedly to get the company on the air and keep it there.

Forgive me if there is an overlap for so many shows have been crammed into the decade, but those were the days of Gordon Harker and ‘Sixpenny Corner’. Of Ralph Reader’s ‘Chance Of A Lifetime’.

The weekly sports magazine. The Granville Melodramas. And of Sgt ‘I Only Want The Facts, Mam’ Webb and ‘Dragnet’.

Wasn’t there a freakish series called ‘You’ve Never Seen This’? Book reviews in the morning. Sheila Matthews as Friday’s Girl. Wasn’t this, too, the Jack Hylton variety era… the names which occur being Arthur Askey, Tony Hancock (he once did a one-man show in an emergency), Rosalina Neri, Bryan Michie, Ivor Emmanuel, the Crazy Gang and the Water Rats?

Roland Gillett was the programme controller, Lloyd Williams was on the production staff, and the whole period was like the froth on top of a pint.

The second stage was marked by the appointment of Paul Adorian as managing director and John McMillan as programme controller.

Now the workaday face and output of the company was being established. On went the old originals in ‘Take Your Pick’ and ‘Double Your Money’.

But morning TV disappeared. Much of the early pioneering excitement went with it. And the staff settled down to a more orderly existence.

Schools programmes started – remember Enid Love? Was it in this spell or even earlier that we had those Michael Ingrams’ series? How about those Goonish shows like ‘A Show Called Fred’, ‘Son of Fred’, and ‘Idiots’ Weekly’? Not only Sellers, but Milligan, too.

The work of putting in the foundations went on continuously.

‘Cool For Cats’ caught popular fancy and brought Joan Kemp-Welch’s name to the forefront. ‘This Week’ was going strong. Somewhere around this point Cyril Bennett and Elkan Allan began contributing to the company’s fortunes.

Peter Cotes is one more name I associate with this sector of Rediffusion’s fortune. And was I alone in liking America’s ‘Johnny Staccato’ jazz-thriller series?

I went down the Thames on one Rediffusion birthday party – and across to Paris for another. That was the day that George Sanders, then working on a special programme called ‘Women In Love’, helped to play host. Although only a voyage down the Seine, Captain Tom Brownrigg was also on hand.

So we had ‘No Hiding Place’ and ‘Intertel’, ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Rawhide’. But where was Tig Roe? Whither Alan Morris? Goodbye Kingsway Corner.

Out went advertising magazines. Out went ‘Jim’s Inn’ – after setting the standard for all shows of this type. But in came the many successful Pinter plays.

The most successful, of course, being ‘The Lover’, with Alan Badel and Vivien Merchant. It must have won almost every award possible… actor, actress, author and director. Surely Rediffusion’s most successful production in all those 11 years?

Just as the TV scene was growing contentedly sedate on came ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ to give half the nation convulsions and the other half blood pressure.

Visiting the ‘RSG’ studio at TV House brought back all the din of 1955 and that drilling year when Adastral House was being converted.

By now Rediffusion was part of life. Dan Farson, always prominent in company affairs on the screen (his ‘Time Gentlemen, Please’ show was not only entered at Montreux but must have been responsible for the introduction of ‘Stars and Garters’), was a notable departure.

But phase two was drawing to a close too. On went John McMillan to general manager and in came Cyril Bennett as the new programme controller.

This is now part of the latest story… come in David Frost, Stella Richman, Benny Green, ‘Three After Six’, ‘The Rat Catchers’, and David Jacobs.

Pausing only to nod a farewell to Buddy Bregman and a friendly greeting to Europe’s favourite TV ‘uncle’ Eric Maschwitz, it scarcely seems credible that Monica Rose was hardly walking when ‘Double Your Money’ was first televised.

Yes, you’ve changed all right. Some more memory jogs… Stuart Hood, that ‘Arabian Nights’ opening for Wembley Studios, ‘Hippodrome’ in colour, the American deal with David Susskind, ‘Dial M For Music’, ‘Alfred Marks Time’, Keith Fordyce, Groucho Marx, Dickie Henderson, and on, and on.

It’s been a long time. Perhaps after all it should be that was a decade that was? What’s more Gog and Magog are still waiting.

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