The phone rang … suddenly … shrilly. P.S. stretched out his hand and hesitated – was this a trap? What fiendish question was he now to be asked ? He overcame his fear and picked up the phone, hand trembling slightly. ‘Hello, production office’ he said. No one answered, but he could hear heavy breathing through his earpiece. He glanced at his colleague T.H. and his eyes indicated the extension, which T.H. slowly lifted to his ear.

‘Hello’ said P.S. again. The muscles of his jaw twitched and his steel-blue eyes narrowed through the thick cigar smoke that filled the office. Both men were still, tense. The phone had not rung for at least two minutes and now – this. The tension became unbearable and beads of perspiration trickled slowly down his temples, dropping from his chin and staining the blotter on his desk. He could still hear the breathing of his adversary and faintly in the distance, revolver shots – one! two!! Immediately a voice at the other end – metallic, authoritative – called: ‘Hold it there – don’t move’. P.S. tensed. It was not the first time this situation had arisen. Twice before this very day he had heard those shots, and the cold command to stay still. He glanced quickly at T.H. on his left. T.H. sat still, relaxed, but ready to move instantly to back up his colleague in any emergency. The pencil drummed lightly on the ash tray before him. Both men were experienced operators and had passed through these crises many times before. There had been that time with the lions and panthers when only feet had separated them from a terrible mauling – and they were still in action: and again, when all seemed lost, and they had fought their way through the Russian mob and beaten the crime – and punishment. But this – this, was different. P.S. glanced swiftly at the schedule hanging by his side. Nothing sinister – all should have been quiet. But it was always in these moments of apparent calm that the greatest danger came. Although it seemed like hours, in fact only a few seconds had elapsed since that first terrifying ring.

Suddenly the door was flung open and D.N. stood framed in the opening. His sharp eye took in the situation at a glance. ‘What now?’ he gritted and took one sharp, nervous pace into the room. P.S. held up his free hand in a gesture of silence. D.N. stood stock still, his eyes never leaving the telephone in P.S.’s hand.

In an instant the tension broke as a sharp, incisive voice said ‘Is that the production office? Oh! Studio 5 here – will it be all right if we go to lunch five minutes early?’ The air whistled through P.S.’s lips in a surge of relief. ‘O.K.’ he said. Slowly he replaced the receiver, slumped back in his chair and lit a cigarette. Another crisis over. He smiled: ‘How about a quick jug in the club before lunch?’ There was a quick flurry, the slam of a door and – silence.

I must confess that the above is a slight exaggeration, but sometimes this is how it appears to us on extension 207 in the production office at Wembley. It is not a large office, but every day from early morn until half an hour after the last studio closes, these is always a duty manager on hand to answer queries on studio technical requirements, dressing room allocation, special effects, staff problems, hygiene, safety first, and 100 other subjects of a production, whether it be of a personal or domestic nature.

On average, about 15 productions are transmitted, telerecorded or videotaped every week at Wembley, and four or five at Television House.

Those of you who read articles on ‘Hippodrome’ and ‘The Informer’ in Fusion will have realised the enormous problems facing members of the production teams, and these are but TWO series. Apart from these two there are also other series such as ‘The Rat Catchers’, ‘No Hiding Place’, ‘Orlando’ plus drama, science, schools, features, light entertainment, children’s and religious programmes, all of which have their own (and equally important) administrative problems and, in all of which, somewhere along the line, the production office is involved.

For example, while ‘Hippodrome’ was in production, the production office team were responsible for the housing, feeding (and bedding) of 12 elephants, 12 lions, six tigers, two pumas, and five leopards, plus assorted dogs and trainers – not to mention the acts – Mexican, French, Spanish, and German – who required facilities for cars, caravans and cages and the laying on of electricity, water and heating.

During ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ every week cloakrooms are set up to take care of the coats and handbags of up to 150 teenagers and while ‘Five o’Clock Club’ is transmitting and recording parents must be accommodated and facilities for them to view the programmes laid on – somewhere. We have in our time, dealt with a fire in dressing room 26, flood in Studio 2, a ‘punch-up’ in Studio 5 and a robbery (and arrest) in dressing room 513.

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An acorn of an idea can grow into an oak covering many hours of TV programming. Anybody can have an idea at any time. The hard part is to translate it into something which can be put into a TV studio and transmitted: to unite into a team all the dozens of people involved. On these pages, Fusion has taken two highly contrasting subjects… an educative series based, of course, on facts and a scripted entertainment series based on vivid imaginations. Two contrasting people write in their own way about each. The first article is by executive producer STELLA RICHMAN (ATV’s ‘Love Story’, Rediffusion’s ‘The Hidden Truth’, ‘Blackmail’ and ‘The Informer’ which is to come this autumn). She allows her imagination full fling by putting down her ideal conditions for the production of a series. The second article is by executive producer GUTHRIE MOIR (Towards 2000′, ‘Design for Living’, ‘Royalist and Roundhead’). He sticks to the facts which led to the present 13-week series on the Civil War.

Cultivate under blue skies

The truth about television is that, apart from the actual title and perhaps original idea, no successful series ever belonged to one person alone. An idea is only something in a person’s head. Success or failure depends on the execution of that idea and, in the making of a series, dozens are involved, all of whom contribute.

It is, however, vital that the development of the basic idea is carried out as thoroughly as possible before the series reaches the studio. If we
lived in an ideal world, I would dream of something like the following happening…

First, Cyril Bennett as director of programmes would have to give his blessing to an IDEA – just a germ confined to two sheets of paper. I should then put someone else behind my desk. Preferably he would be someone with a heart of steel and an ability to add, someone who is con-man proof. Then I would collect people like Peter Collinson (producer), John Whitney (editor), Reuben Ship (writer) and Ian Hendry (actor) and go off on a yacht, preferably to the Greek islands. Oh yes, there would either have to be a tape recorder, or a super-type James Bond girl complete with an electric typewriter. We should then live on full pay for about six weeks, talking and thinking about our idea.

Ian Hendry is the only type of actor who would be allowed on this working jaunt, because he not only thinks like an actor, but is also one of the few actors I’ve ever known who can think in terms of a whole idea, not just his own character.

After six weeks, I should return to Cyril Bennett with a most beautifully typed working document, not, repeat, not format, for that is far too rigid. This working document would outline the character who would dominate the series, the background, six complete story lines, the supporting characters and the general development of the series. Perhaps there would be a little on how the producer intended it to go in terms of techniques. The whole lot would be tied up in beautiful ribbon and bound in leather (not too expensive).

After Cyril Bennett had read it and if he was in between crises, I am sure his good sense would prevail and he would join us on our yacht. There the clear air, the blue sea and the bluer sky would add to his already highly-developed critical faculties. He would go through the whole document with us, adding bits here and asking us to lose something there. After giving us some more money, he would return to Kingsway, happy and confident that we were going to bring home the bacon – eventually.

Our two writers would then start work on one script each from two of the six story-lines. The producer and I would then start thinking about the casting, the other writers (only two) we should approach. It might then be necessary for he and I to return to London to start planning the production and to talk to writers and actors and directors. Six weeks later, the two sun-tanned writers would return to London with their two scripts.

They would hand them over and beat a hasty retreat. Only after the producer and I had had them revised after much discussion with the writers would we give them to Cyril B. These scripts would show the leading characters and any other permanent characters, plus whatever permanent sets would be used throughout the series. They would get certain attitudes and behaviour across which had come out of our discussions. One of these would then be chosen as the pilot. By this I mean not the opening episode, but the one we should use as an exercise for the rest of the series – it would be slotted in around episode 5 or 6. While the producer (wearing his director’s hat) set up this episode for a production date six weeks later, the two other writers would be given the first two scripts to read. They would then be asked to a ‘talking out’ session and invited to submit three complete story lines each, but not a script yet. The story editor would be working with the producer on the pilot. Six weeks later we should have taped our first show. This would be nearly five months from the day we were given the go-ahead. At that point, this pilot would be shown to Cyril B., the other directors who were to follow the producer, the four writers and the leading characters. The camera crew, film camera man and editor and any other technician who worked on the show would be asked to come and see it probably a few non-contributors like secretaries and night-watch- men, would be asked too. Then a few of us would see it again for analytical purposes. After that, the real writing operation would start. Changes might be made to the second script before it would be given to a director. Four writers would now be working on 12 accepted storylines. Each would have three months to write and revise three scripts. Production of the series would start approximately three months after we had seen the pilot. All 13 scripts would have gone through to a second draft.

Involvement of regular characters would have been worked out to allow the maximum rehearsal schedule possible while still recording weekly. The story editor would stay with us until the last show had been recorded. We should work with a team of four directors only. Each director would have his three scripts before starting. And so, roughly 32 weeks after the idea had been passed, production on a major series would start. For eight months, a creative team would have been paid to think and there would have been no results to see for maybe a year.

Too much time and money? I don’t think so. An unrealistic dream? I hope not. Anyway, like most of us working in television, I am still a child at heart and believe that dreams always come true.

Stella Richman

Fertilise with facts

The idea for the series came to me as I was visiting Boscobel House in Shropshire, where the young King Charles II hid after Worcester. Admiring the venerable oak in the grounds – descendant of the original in which the monarch hid – one halcyon spring day more than a year ago, I resolved to try to transmit to a wider audience some of the magic of these battles long ago and of our nation’s tortured conscience. The original oak was pulled apart by eager Restoration souvenir hunters and vandals the Age of Reason had them too – and its successor is fenced around to deter their twentieth century counterparts. The Boscobel Oak, as portrayed on a contemporary coin, has been adopted as a symbol for the television series among the screen titles and on the supporting literature. It even features on a special ‘Royalist and Roundhead’ series tie which will be presented to participants and distributed to a wider public.

Rediffusion possesses a small dedicated team of adult educationists: two directors Graham Watts and John Rhodes – the editor – Peter Hunt, and three researchers, Helen Littledale, Edward Hayward and Simon Buxton, the last two history graduates. The team is completed by Frank Jessup, head of the extra mural department at Oxford University, who compiled a special source book for the series Background to the Civil War (Pergamon Press, 12s. 6d.).

Working against the clock is the greatest nightmare for most adult education television producers. They and their schools programmes colleagues are the odd men out in an industry which prides itself on living intensely in the present and in putting out important special programmes at a few hours’ notice. They alone have to plan their programmes’ contents and set their presenters to work on draft scripts as much as six months to a year ahead of transmission if they are to relate their supporting literature effectively to the programmes and encourage serious viewers to creative follow-up work, without which even the best programmes remain just so many arrows fired into the air. Some months of research followed last autumn in the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and obscure local museums and sites of battles up and down the country. This produced the plan to interpret the period through its great representative figures like Clarendon, who spanned in his life of astonishing political and literary activity the whole period, and more, Coke and Eliot, Pym and Hampden, Strafford and Archbishop Laud, Charles I, Cromwell, Prince Rupert and Fairfax, the poets Milton and Marvell, Lilburne the pamphleteer, Hobbes and Sir Henry Vane, Charles II. University dons, including Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper of Oxford and Professor John Hale of Warwick, were consulted and contracted to write outlines.

Purely didactic programmes, particularly if they take the form of straight lectures on television, fit uncomfortably into an evening’s viewing in which entertainment predominates, and can deter even intelligent viewers who are not ready or in the mood for profound concentration. All speakers were requested, therefore, in conceiving their outline scripts, to try to assemble their material in a way that would lend itself to visual and dramatic treatment. Dons, like bishops, are accustomed to addressing their audiences from above and as a result many of them find difficulty in adapting their customary lecture-room techniques to the needs of television, where an effectively personal and relaxed manner wins viewers and its opposite repels.

All the outline scripts, setting out the gist of what was to be contained in each programme, had reached Television House by the end of January to be mulled over by all the creative members of the team. The presenters were then individually visited in their separate universities by the editor on the scripts, by researchers for guidance on illustration, and the director for timing, style and rehearsal. Dramatic sequences were discussed and agreed as were the use of actors to read speeches, poems and letters. It was commonly agreed that no dialogue should be invented and no imaginary scenes – every word spoken in the dramatic sequences had to be authentic, culled from the records of the period. By the middle of March, some of the earlier scripts were ready for recording. The session in the studios lasted the best part of a day for the presenter, with additional days of rehearsal, of course, for the actors.

One difficulty was found common to almost all the scripts. Each expert tended to presuppose in his audience a greater fundamental knowledge of the seventeenth-century background than could be counted on. After reading one or two programmes, it was decided that a special introductory programme to set the scene must be added. The programme started with the dramatic scene on the scaffold outside the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, Henry Soskin playing Charles I, not forgetting the stammer. Cromwell appeared twice, portrayed by Patrick Wymark, who said he had always wanted to try that part. Ludovic Kennedy, a professional historian himself, though of a different century, put the questions that the average viewer would need answering to get the most out of the rest of the series to Dr. Maurice Cranston. In the end not all the programmes were recorded in the studios. For Professor Trevor-Roper’s programme on Charles I, the whole team flew up to Chiefswood, his vacation retreat near Melrose in the Scottish borders.

It is difficult to assess the comparative value of adult education on television. Adult education programmes have only been regularly seen for the last three years. It is too soon yet, therefore, for completely satisfactory methods of audience research and assessment to have been established. Without much more detailed research, feed-back of audience reaction and follow up methods, such as are envisaged in the Prime Minister’s ‘University of the Air’ project, producers can never be absolutely confident that their programmes are giving their audience exactly what they want. All that can be claimed now with certainty is that the audience for series like ‘Royalist and Roundhead’ constitute incontestably the largest adult education classes in the country. A television series can present a string of experts of national repute in a way that no local class or group could hope to. Producers of such series have a two-fold responsibility and it is sometimes difficult to reconcile the two parts. While it is legitimate to assume some basic knowledge of the subject matter and equally some will to learn in the viewer, as an educationist himself the producer is keenly conscious of the chance always open on the television screen, of catching and drawing and keeping the more general viewer almost unawares or in spite of himself. The dilemma with all education programmes remains how to satisfy the minority of serious searchers after new knowledge without alienating the majority of viewers, without whom national television networks could not exist.

Guthrie Moir

Drawings by Brian Morris

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The year 1966 started with political praise being heaped on the head of ‘This Week’ when the programme celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 6. A publication to mark the event carried messages of goodwill from the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberals. Later that night a programme title ventured into the realm of the astrologer with what at that time seemed an amazingly rash prediction… The World Cup – England to Win?’ Then on January 31 the first of a new series called ‘The Rat Catchers’ started to win predictably high ratings.

In between, however, had come the death of a member of the board of directors – Sir Bracewell Smith, a former Lord Mayor of London, chairman of Wembley Stadium and an honorary vice-president of the Football Association. February brought yet another award to the company when ‘Children of Revolution’, the Intertel production on young people growing up in Czechoslovakia, won a Silver Dove from the International Catholic Organisation for Radio and Television (UNDA) at the sixth Monte Carlo International Television Festival. Another award came the next month when Hughie Green and Michael Miles received a joint special award from the Variety Club of Great Britain at the Show Business lunch on March 8 for the continuing popularity of their programmes.

March 31 once again saw Studio 9 as the hub of the ITV network when everybody went into action to cover the General Election.

Mr Wilson was given ‘A View from the Bridge’ shortly after on April 4 with the transmission of Arthur Miller’s play. Meanwhile the ITA announced that its present three-year contracts with the programme companies would be extended until the end of July, 1968, as no decision had been taken on whether to extend the ITV service.

A flurry which was to extend for quite a few weeks hit the Wembley studios when the first of the colour ‘Hippodrome’ series went on the floor on April 19.

In the business world, company chairman John Spencer Wills became the chairman of The British Electric Traction Co. Ltd, on April 21, following the death of Harley Drayton.

On May 9 the first of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ series was transmitted. Pride, gluttony, sloth, avarice, lust, envy and wrath subsequently achieved the distinction of all getting into TAM’s Top Ten.

Three days later the first of the adult education series ‘Royalist and Roundhead’ was screened. While not hitting the Top Ten, it rose high in the opinion of educationalists.

May also saw the drama section of the club take over Studio 9 to stage ‘Ring Round the Moon’ and achieve high audience ratings. Meanwhile Fusion made its own dent in the award stakes by receiving a certificate of merit in the British Association of Industrial Editors’ contest, a top award of excellence in the International Council of Industrial Editors’ competition and the Block and Anderson Cup from the British Direct Mail and Advertising Association.

The International Television Federation – Intertel – reached the fifth anniversary of its foundation on June 14. Behind it were 34 programmes and a coveted 1965 Peabody Award for making ‘the first continuing contribution towards international understanding through television.’

Also in June came an award for ‘Stage One Contest – Caroline’. This children’s programme won the Munich Prix Jeunesse.

The Mountbatten series also made news in June when it was announced that this exclusive story of the life and times of Lord Mount-batten would be made in colour.

July started with the news that the first episode of the ‘Hippodrome’ series on July 5 had gone straight to the top of Neilsen coast-to-coast ratings when screened by CBS in colour.

This was the month of the World Cup which England won on July 30 and which stretched the joint resources of BBC and ITV in providing coverage for the world. Rediffusion contributed its share of equipment and executives.

The day after the final at Wembley historians gathered at Television House for a conference with ‘History on TV’ as its theme.

August 1 brought the first programme in ‘The Informer’ series which regularly knocked on the doors of the Top Ten during its run.

The month was shadowed by the death of Bernard Rickatson-Hatt on August 7. He had been on the board of the company since July, 1958. A former Guards officer, he had been editor-in-chief of Reuters, adviser to the governor of the Bank of England and to the Bank of London and South America on public relations.

In September came two club events. On the 10th there was the annual sunlit sports day for the children of club members at Shepperton and on the 17th the football team took part in the TV Cup knock-out competition. For the second year running the Rediffusion XI lost to Scottish, the eventual winners.

On September 21 it was announced that Sir Richard Thompson was joining the board. A former M.P., he has held various government appointments.

A conference for educationalists was held at Wembley on September 22 at which, for the first time, teachers were allowed to produce their own programmes in a television studio. September 26 saw the start of the new autumn schedules with 15 new programme presentations, the sequel being six out of TAM’s Top Ten for the week. As part of this schedule the first production of the new Rediffusion Films Ltd was transmitted on September 28 – ‘Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn’ with James Mason and Jill Bennett. The Frost Programme’ series also started later that night.

Appointments in features came in October. First there was the announcement of the appointment of Barry Westwood as producer of the networked Thursday edition of ‘This Week’. Then, on October 27, it was announced that James Butler had been appointed head of features from November 1.

During October and November, three joint Rediffusion/Talent Association productions under David Susskind passed through Wembley to be recorded in black-and-white and colour for America.

On November 8, it was announced that the present series of ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ would end on December 23.

On November 11, the announcement came that managing director Paul Adorian had been appointed managing director of Rediffusion Ltd. John Spencer Wills, chairman of both companies, relinquished his managing directorship following his appointment as chairman of The British Electric Traction Co. Ltd upon the death of Harley Drayton.

The annual general meeting of the company was held at Wembley on November 28 and at it, the winners of the 1965-66 Golden Stars were presented with their awards. Independent Television presented ‘A Royal Gala’ before the Duke of Edinburgh at the Palladium on November 29 in aid of the CTBF and the Bowles Rocks Trust.

From December 7-16, an exhibition of the work of graphic designers was held at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries.

Finally – and still to come – is ‘The Royal Palaces of Britain’, the joint Independent Television and BBC production on December 25.

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